“In my country,” he said, “the clergy are not a separate class as in yours. They marry and live like other men; but no one in England speaks of them as you do here in France. They do a great deal of good among us. They take care of the poor.”
“Pah! a married priest!” cried Madame Dupré, with an expression of disgust. “I am no bigot, but I could not put up with that.”
“And as for what monsieur says about the poor,” cried M. Goudron, “there ought not to be any poor. A man who wants help, who cannot keep himself alive, there is no place for him in the world.”
At this a little murmur rose, and one of the silent spectators spoke. “We are all poor,” he said; “and when there is a bad harvest, or a bad winter, or illness in the house, how are we to live without the help of a kind hand?”
“Ah, it is you, Paul le Roux; every one knows why you speak. There is solidarity between the enemies of mankind,—the priest and the aristocrat; they have but one end. It is for this they wander about the village to take persons at a disadvantage who may happen to be badly off. You do not see how their charity is an impudence. What! give you their crumbs, and their fragments! ‘Take what falls from my table, I am better than thou.’ It is an insult—such an insult,” old Goudron said suddenly, with the grin that divided his face in two, “as I never would venture to offer to any neighbours of mine.”
At this there was a general laugh. “Père Goudron,” said some one from the window, “will never fail in respect to his neighbours in that way.”
“Never!” cried the old man, with his malignant grin.
In the meantime young Baptiste had escaped from the table and the drinking, and had gone back to the dancers, who were now beginning to disperse. He went across the street with his Blanchette and her friends, and secure in the occupation of both their parents, talked for half a happy hour with her at the door. When he bade her good night at last, and little Blanchette went in with the blush on her cheeks, Helen, somewhat pale from her vigil, was standing at the door of the sitting-room. “Will you come in?” she said. She had been sitting there a long time alone, since Janey went to bed, watching the dancers, and listening to the squeak of the fiddle and the hum of all the voices. It was not a kind of merrymaking which Helen could have shared; yet to see people enjoying themselves, and to sit alone and look from a distance at their pleasure, is sad when one is young. She was glad to see the bright countenance of the other girl, who was in the midst of all that little agitation of youthful life from which she was herself shut out. There was but one candle in the bare little salon, and that was put away in a corner not to interrupt the sight of the village gaiety outside. Blanchette came in, proud of the invitation, and looked out with great sympathy upon the scene she had herself left, where now the dancing figures were fewer and more irregular, and the lights more smoky and lurid than ever.
“Was mademoiselle looking at us all the time?” she said; and then she suddenly took and kissed with fervour, to Helen’s great surprise, her unwilling hand. “Mon dieu!” said little Blanchette, “but how sad for mademoiselle!”
“Oh, thanks,” cried Helen, much confused and not knowing what to do. She would have liked to kiss the little girl who felt for her, but she was too shy to do this. “It amused me very much,” she said with a little sigh—perhaps she had scarcely thought that her amusement was sad till Blanchette suggested it. “I think I saw you dancing with Baptiste.”