"Oh! I know very well. I was made to be a priest: I followed my own path."
The Comtesse kept staring at him:
"Look here, M. le Curé, tell me this—tell me how it was you resolved to renounce for ever what makes us love life—the rest of us—all that consoles and sustains us? What is it that drove you, impelled you, to separate yourself from the great natural path of marriage and the family. You are neither an enthusiast nor a fanatic, neither a gloomy person nor a sad person. Was it some strange occurrence, some sorrow, that led you to take life-long vows?"
The Abbé Mauduit rose up and advanced towards the fire, then drew towards the flames the big shoes such as country priests generally wear. He seemed still hesitating as to what reply he should make.
He was a tall old man with white hair, and for the last twenty years he had been the pastor of the parish of Sainte-Antoine-du-Rocher. The peasants said of him: "There's a good man for you!" And indeed he was a good man, benevolent, friendly to all, gentle, and, to crown all, generous. Like Saint Martin, he had cut his cloak in two. He freely laughed, and wept too for very little, just like a woman,—a thing that prejudiced him more or less in the hard minds of the country people.
The old Comtesse de Saville, living in retirement in her chateau of Rocher, in order to bring up her grand-children, after the successive deaths of her son and her daughter-in-law, was very much attached to her curé, and used to say of him: "He has a kind heart!"
He came every Thursday to spend the evening at the chateau, and they were close friends, with the open and honest friendship of old people.
"Look here M. le Curé! 'tis your turn now to make a confession!"
He repeated: "I was not made for a life like everybody else. I saw it myself fortunately in time, and I have had many proofs since that I had made no mistake on the point.