VI

The road wound on between fallen rocks, among which the peasants had
succeeded here and there in reclaiming six or seven yards of chalky
soil, planted with old olive trees. Under the priest's feet the dust in
the deep ruts crackled lightly like snow. At times, as he felt a warmer
puff upon his face, he would raise his eyes from his book, as if to seek
whence came this soft caress; but his gaze was vacant, straying without
perception over the glowing horizon, over the twisted outlines of that
passion-breathing landscape as it stretched out in the sun before him,
dry, barren, despairing of the fertilisation for which it longed. And he
would lower his hat over his forehead to protect himself against the
warm breeze and tranquilly resume his reading, his cassock raising
behind him a cloudlet of dust which rolled along the surface of the
road.

'Good morning, Monsieur le Cure,' a passing peasant said to him.

Sounds of digging alongside the cultivated strips of ground again
roused him from his abstraction. He turned his head and perceived big
knotty-limbed old men greeting him from among the vines. The Artauds
were eagerly satisfying their passion for the soil, in the sun's full
blaze. Sweating brows appeared from behind the bushes, heaving chests
were slowly raised, the whole scene was one of ardent fructification,
through which he moved with the calm step born of ignorance. No
discomfort came to him from the great travail of love that permeated
that splendid morning.

'Steady! Voriau, you mustn't eat people!' some one gaily shouted in a