'You see,' continued Pascal, 'there are some among the lot whom it won't
be easy to lead to Paradise. Some nice confessions you'd hear if all
came in turn. For my part, I can do without their confessions; I watch
them from a distance; I have got their records at home among my
botanical specimens and medical notes. Some day I shall be able to draw
up a wondrously interesting diagram. We shall see; we shall see!'

He was forgetting himself, carried away by his enthusiasm for science. A
glance at his nephew's cassock pulled him up short.

'As for you, you're a parson,' he muttered; 'you did well; a parson's a
very happy man. The calling absorbs you, eh? And so you've taken to the
good path. Well! you would never have been satisfied otherwise. Your
relatives, starting like you, have done a deal of evil, and still they
are unsatisfied. It's all logically perfect, my lad. A priest completes
the family. Besides, it was inevitable. Our blood was bound to run to
that. So much the better for you; you have had the most luck.'
Correcting himself, however, with a strange smile, he added: 'No, it's
your sister Desiree who has had the best luck of all.'

He whistled, whipped up his horse, and changed the conversation. The
gig, after climbing a somewhat steep slope, was threading its way
through desolate ravines; at last it reached a tableland, where the
hollow road skirted an interminable and lofty wall. Les Artaud had
disappeared; they found themselves in the heart of a desert.

'We are getting near, are we not?' asked the priest.

'This is the Paradou,' replied the doctor, pointing to the wall.
'Haven't you been this way before, then? We are not three miles from Les