“Ah!” he said, “you are making this terrace your hell, when it ought to be your Calvary from which to rise to heaven.”
“I have no pride left to place me on such a pedestal,” she answered, in a tone which revealed the self-contempt that lay within her.
Here the priest, by one of those inspirations which are both natural and frequent in noble souls, the man of God lifted the child in his arms and kissed its forehead, saying, in a fatherly voice, “Poor little one!” Then he gave it himself to the nurse, who carried it away.
Madame Sauviat looked at her daughter, and saw the efficacy of the rector’s words; for Veronique’s eyes, long dry, were moist with tears. The old woman made a sign to the priest and disappeared.
“Let us walk,” said the rector to Veronique leading her along the terrace to the other end, from which Les Tascherons could be seen. “You belong to me; I must render account to God for your sick soul.”
“Give me time to recover from my depression,” she said to him.
“Your depression comes from injurious meditation,” he replied, quickly.
“Yes,” she said, with the simplicity of a grief which has reached the point of making no attempt at concealment.
“I see plainly that you have fallen into the gulf of apathy,” he cried. “If there is a degree of physical suffering at which all sense of modesty expires, there is also a degree of moral suffering in which all vigor of soul is lost; I know that.”
She was surprised to hear that subtle observation and to find such tender pity from this village rector; but, as we have seen already, the exquisite delicacy which no passion had ever touched gave him the true maternal spirit for his flock. This mens devinior, this apostolic tenderness, places the priest above all other men and makes him, in a sense, divine. Madame Graslin had not as yet had enough experience of Monsieur Bonnet to know this beauty hidden in his soul like a spring, from which flowed grace and purity and true life.