VIII

The house with its shutters closed seemed wrapped in slumber as it stood
there in the midday sun, amidst the hum of the big flies that swarmed
all up the ivy to the roof tiles. The sunlit ruin was steeped in happy
quietude. When the doctor had opened the gate of the narrow garden,
which was enclosed by a lofty quickset hedge, there, in the shadow cast
by a wall, they found Jeanbernat, tall and erect, and calmly smoking his
pipe, as in the deep silence he watched his vegetables grow.

'What, are you up then, you humbug?' exclaimed the astonished doctor.

'So you were coming to bury me, were you?' growled the old man harshly.
'I don't want anybody. I bled myself.'

He stopped short as he caught sight of the priest, and assumed so
threatening an expression that the doctor hastened to intervene.

'This is my nephew,' he said; 'the new Cure of Les Artaud--a good
fellow, too. Devil take it, we haven't been bowling over the roads at
this hour of the day to eat you, Jeanbernat.'

The old man calmed down a little.

'I don't want any shavelings here,' he grumbled. 'They're enough to make
one croak. Mind, doctor, no priests, and no physics when I go off, or we
shall quarrel. Let him come in, however, as he is your nephew.'

Abbe Mouret, struck dumb with amazement, could not speak a word. He
stood there in the middle of the path scanning that strange solitaire,