“Madame will die,” said Aline to the old mother.
Appealed to by Madame Sauviat, the rector, who had wished not to seem intrusive, came henceforth very frequently to visit Madame Graslin; he needed only to be warned that her soul was sick. This true pastor took care to pay his visits at the hour when Veronique came out to sit at the corner of the terrace with her child, both in deep mourning.
XI. THE RECTOR AT WORK
It was now the beginning of October, and Nature was growing dull and sad. Monsieur Bonnet, perceiving in Veronique from the moment of her arrival at Montegnac the existence of an inward wound, thought it wisest to wait for the voluntary and complete confidence of a woman who would sooner or later become his penitent.
One evening Madame Graslin looked at the rector with eyes almost glazed with that fatal indecision often observable in persons who are cherishing the thought of death. From that moment Monsieur Bonnet hesitated no longer; he set before him the duty of arresting the progress of this cruel moral malady.
At first there was a brief struggle of empty words between the priest and Veronique, in which they both sought to veil their real thoughts. In spite of the cold, Veronique was sitting on the granite bench holding Francis on her knee. Madame Sauviat was standing at the corner of the terrace, purposely so placed as to hide the cemetery. Aline was waiting to take the child away.
“I had supposed, madame,” said the rector, who was now paying his seventh visit, “that you were only melancholy; but I see,” sinking his voice to a whisper, “that your soul is in despair. That feeling is neither Christian nor Catholic.”
“But,” she replied, looking to heaven with piercing eyes and letting a bitter smile flicker on her lips, “what other feeling does the Church leave to a lost soul unless it be despair?”
As he heard these words the rector realized the vast extent of the ravages in her soul.