all fear is banished; where the future is certain; where all things
are divine, even the silence. This quietude is one of the benefactions
of grace. My mother could not conceive that a man could espouse a
church. Nevertheless, seeing me happy, with a cloudless brow, she grew
happier herself. After I was ordained I came to the Limousin to visit
one of my paternal relations, who chanced to speak to me of the then
condition of Montegnac. A thought darted into my mind with the
vividness of lightning, and I said to myself inwardly: 'Here is thy
vineyard!' I came here, and you see, monsieur, that my history is very
simple and uneventful."

At this instant Limoges came into sight, bathed in the last rays of
the setting sun. When the women saw it they could not restrain their
tears; they wept aloud.



IX

DENISE

The young man whom these two different loves were now on their way to
comfort, who excited so much artless curiosity, so much spurious
sympathy and true solicitude, was lying on his prison pallet in one of
the condemned cells. A spy watched beside the door to catch, if
possible, any words that might escape him, either in sleep or in one
of his violent furies; so anxious were the officers of justice to
exhaust all human means of discovering Jean-Francois Tascheron's
accomplice and recover the sums stolen.