anybody's fault. It has happened to others who got on all right just the
same. The matter doesn't rest with us. You ought to speak to Bambousse.
He's the one who looks down on us because he's got money.'

'Yes, we are very poor,' whined his wife, a tall lachrymose woman, who
also rose to her feet. 'We've only this scrap of ground where the very
devil seems to have been hailing stones. Not a bite of bread from it,
even. Without you, your reverence, life would be impossible.'

Brichet's wife was the one solitary devotee of the village. Whenever she
had been to communion, she would hang about the parsonage, well knowing
that La Teuse always kept a couple of loaves for her from her last
baking. At times she was even able to carry off a rabbit or a fowl given
her by Desiree.

'There's no end to the scandals,' continued the priest. 'The marriage
must take place without delay.'

'Oh! at once! as soon as the others are agreeable,' said the old woman,
alarmed about her periodical presents. 'What do you say, Brichet? we are
not such bad Christians as to go against his reverence?'

Fortune sniggered.

'Oh, I'm quite ready,' he said, 'and so is Rosalie. I saw her yesterday
at the back of the mill. We haven't quarrelled. We stopped there to have
a bit of a laugh.'

But Abbe Mouret interrupted him: 'Very well, I am now going to speak to
Bambousse. He is over there, at Les Olivettes, I believe.'