"And yet," said Durtal to himself as he came away, "it is quite evident that the woman is not mad. She has nothing the matter with her, either hysterical or mental: she is fragile and very thin, but she is scarcely nervous, and in spite of the laconic character of her meals she is in very good health, indeed is never ailing; nay more, she is a woman of good sense and an admirable manager. Up by daybreak, after Communion she soaps and washes all the linen herself, makes the sheets and shirts, mends the Abbé's gowns, and lives with amazing economy, while taking care that her master wants for nothing. Such a sagacious apprehension of the conduct of life has no connection with lunacy or delirium."
He knew too that she would never take any wages. It is true that in the sight of a world which gives its whole mind to legalized larceny this woman's disinterestedness might be enough to prove her insanity; but Durtal, in contradiction to received ideas, did not think that a contempt for money was necessarily allied with madness, and the more he thought of it the more was he convinced that she was a saint, and not a strait-laced saint, but indulgent and cheerful.
What he could positively assert was that she was very good to him; ever since his return from La Trappe she had helped him in every way, encouraging his spirits when she saw him depressed, and going, in spite of his protesting, to look over his wardrobe when she suspected that there might be sutures to operate upon, and buttons to replace.
This intimacy had become even closer since their life in common, all three together, on the occasion of Durtal's accompanying them, at their entreaty, to La Salette. And then suddenly their affectionate familiarity was endangered, for the Abbé Gévresin left Paris.
The Bishop of Chartres died, and his successor was one of Gévresin's oldest friends. On the very day when the Abbé Le Tilloy des Mofflaines was promoted to the episcopal throne, he begged Gévresin to accompany him to Chartres. There was an anxious struggle in the old priest's mind. He was ailing, weary, good for nothing, and at the bottom of his heart longed only never to move; but on the other hand he had not the courage to refuse his poor support to Monseigneur des Mofflaines. He tried to mollify the prelate by his advanced age, but the Bishop would not listen; all he would concede was that, instead of being appointed Vicar-general, the Abbé should be no more than a Canon. Still Gévresin mildly shook his head. Finally the prelate had his way, appealing to his friend's charity, and declaring that he ought to accept the post, in the last resort as a mortification and penance.
And when his departure was decided on, it became the Abbé's turn to circumvent Durtal and persuade him to leave Paris and come to settle near him at Chartres.
Although he was deeply grieved at this move, which he had done his utmost to hinder, Durtal was refractory, and refused to bury himself in a country town.
"
But why, our friend," said Madame Bavoil, "I wonder why you are so obstinately bent on remaining here; you live in perfect solitude at home with your books. You can do the same if you come with us."
And when, his arguments exhausted, after a vehement diatribe against provincial life, Durtal ended by saying,—