answer: 'Well, well, you may pass, Bernard, but it is only to please
Monsieur le Cure.' For you will be Monsieur le Cure up there, and Cure
of Longueval, too, for paradise itself would be dull for you if you must
give up being Cure of Longueval."

Cure of Longueval! Yes, all his life he had been nothing but Cure of
Longueval, had never dreamed of anything else, had never wished to be
anything else. Three or four times excellent livings, with one or two
curates, had been offered to him, but he had always refused them. He
loved his little church, his little village, his little vicarage. There
he had it all to himself, saw to everything himself; calm, tranquil, he
went and came, summer and winter, in sunshine or storm, in wind or rain.
His frame became hardened by fatigue and exposure, but his soul remained
gentle, tender, and pure.

He lived in his vicarage, which was only a larger laborer's cottage,
separated from the church by the churchyard. When the Cure mounted the
ladder to train his pear and peach trees, over the top of the wall he
perceived the graves over which he had said the last prayer, and cast the
first spadeful of earth. Then, while continuing his work, he said in his
heart a little prayer for the repose of those among his dead whose fate
disturbed him, and who might be still detained in purgatory. He had a
tranquil and childlike faith.

But among these graves there was one which, oftener than all the others,
received his visits and his prayers. It was the tomb of his old friend
Dr. Reynaud, who had died in his arms in 1871, and under what
circumstances! The doctor had been like Bernard; he never went to mass
or to confession; but he was so good, so charitable, so compassionate to
the suffering. This was the cause of the Cure's great anxiety, of his