With this taciturn Frenchwoman I entered upon my night-watch by Minima, whose raving no one could understand but myself. The long, dark hours seemed interminable. Mademoiselle sat knitting a pair of gray stockings in the intervals of attendance upon our patients. The subdued glimmer of the night-lamp, the ticking of the clock, the chimes every quarter of an hour from the church-tower, all conspired to make me restless and almost nervous.
"Mademoiselle," I said, at last, "talk to me. I cannot bear this tranquillity. Tell me something."
"What can I tell you, madame?" she inquired, in a pleasant tone.
"Tell me about those people I saw this morning," I answered.
"It is a long history," she said, her face kindling, as if this were a topic that excited her; and she rolled up her knitting, as though she could not trust herself to continue that while she was talking; "all the world knows it here, and we never talk of it now. Bat you are a stranger; shall I tell it you?"
I had hit upon the only subject that could unlock her lips. It was the night-time too. At night one is naturally more communicative than in the broad light of day.
"Madame," she said, in an agitated voice, "you have observed already that my brother is not like other curés. He has his own ideas, his own sentiments. Everybody knows him at this moment as the good Curé of Ville-en-bois; but when he came here first, thirty years ago, all the world called him infidel, heretic, atheist. It was because he would make many changes in the church and parish. The church had been famous for miracles; but Francis did not believe in them, and he would not encourage them. There used to be pilgrimages to it from all the country round; and crowds of pilgrims, who spend much money. There was a great number of crutches left at the shrine of the Virgin by cripples who had come here by their help, but walked away without them. He cleared them all away, and called them rubbish. So every one said he was an infidel—you understand?"
"I understand it very well," I said.
"Bien! At that time there was one family richer than all the others. They were the proprietors of the factory down yonder, and everybody submitted to them. There was a daughter not married, but very dévote. I have been dévote, myself. I was coquette till I was thirty-five, then I became dévote. It is easier than being a simple Christian, like my brother the curé. Mademoiselle Pineau was accustomed to have visions, ecstasies. Sometimes the angels lifted her from the ground into the air when she was at her prayers. Francis did not like that. He was young, and she came very often to the confessional, and told him of these visions and ecstasies. He discouraged them, and enjoined penances upon her. Bref! she grew to detest him, and she was quite like a female curé in the parish. She set everybody against him. At last, when he removed all the plaster images of the saints, and would have none but wood or stone, she had him cited to answer for it to his bishop."
"But what did he do that for?" I asked, seeing no difference between plaster images, and those of wood or stone.