The Complete Works: Short Stories, Novels, Plays, Poetry, Memoirs and more. Guy de Maupassant
to go and see Abbé Picot and tell him, under the seal of confession, all that weighed upon her mind in this matter.
He was reading from his breviary in his little garden planted with fruit trees when she arrived.
After a few minutes’ conversation on indifferent matters, she faltered, her color rising: “I want to confess, Monsieur l’Abbé.”
He looked at her in astonishment, as he pushed his spectacles back on his forehead; then he began to laugh. “You surely have no great sins on your conscience.” This embarrassed her greatly, and she replied: “No, but I want to ask your advice on a subject that is so — so — so painful that I dare not mention it casually.”
He at once laid aside his jovial manner and assumed his priestly attitude. “Well, my child, I will listen to you in the confessional; come along.”
But she held back, undecided, restrained by a kind of scruple at speaking of these matters, of which she was half ashamed, in the seclusion of an empty church.
“Or else, no — Monsieur le Curé — I might — I might — if you wish, tell you now what brings me here. Let us go and sit over there, in your little arbor.”
They walked toward it, and Jeanne tried to think how she could begin. They sat down in the arbor, and then, as if she were confessing herself, she said: “Father — — “ then hesitated, and repeated: “Father — — “ and was silent from emotion.
He waited, his hands crossed over his paunch. Seeing her embarrassment, he sought to encourage her: “Why, my daughter, one would suppose you were afraid; come, take courage.”
She plucked up courage, like a coward who plunges headlong into danger. “Father, I should like to have another child.” He did not reply, as he did not understand her. Then she explained, timid and unable to express herself clearly:
“I am all alone in life now; my father and my husband do not get along together; my mother is dead; and — and — — “ she added with a shudder, “the other day I nearly lost my son! What would have become of me then?”
She was silent. The priest, bewildered, was gazing at her. “Come, get to the point of your subject.”
“I want to have another child,” she said. Then he smiled, accustomed to the coarse jokes of the peasants, who were not embarrassed in his presence, and he replied, with a sly motion of his head:
“Well, it seems to me that it depends only on yourself.”
She raised her candid eyes to his face, and said, hesitating with confusion: “But — but — you understand that since — since — what you know about — about that maid — my husband and I have lived — have lived quite apart.”
Accustomed to the promiscuity and undignified relations of the peasants, he was astonished at the revelation. All at once he thought he guessed at the young woman’s real desire, and looking at her out of the corner of his eye, with a heart full of benevolence and of sympathy for her distress, he said: “Oh, I understand perfectly. I know that your widowhood must be irksome to you. You are young and in good health. It is natural, quite natural.”
He smiled, bearing out his easygoing character of a country priest, and tapping Jeanne lightly on the hand, he said: “That is permissible, very permissible indeed, according to the commandments. You are married, are you not? Well, then, what is the harm?”
She, in her turn, had not understood his hidden meaning; but as soon as she saw through it, she blushed scarlet, shocked, and with tears in her eyes exclaimed: “Oh, Monsieur le Curé, what are you saying? What are you thinking of? I swear to you — I swear to you — — “ And sobs choked her words.
He was surprised and sought to console her: “Come, I did not mean to hurt your feelings. I was only joking a little; there is no harm in that when one is decent. But you may rely on me, you may rely on me. I will see M. Julien.”
She did not know what to say. She now wished to decline this intervention, which she thought clumsy and dangerous, but she did not dare to do so, and she went away hurriedly, faltering: “I am grateful to you, Monsieur le Curé.”
A week passed. One day at dinner Julien looked at her with a peculiar expression, a certain smiling curve of the lips that she had noticed when he was teasing her. He was even almost ironically gallant toward her, and as they were walking after dinner in little mother’s avenue, he said in a low tone: “We seem to have made up again.”
She did not reply, but continued to look on the ground at a sort of track that was almost effaced now that the grass was sprouting anew. They were the footprints of the baroness, which were vanishing as does a memory. And Jeanne was plunged in sadness; she felt herself lost in life, far away from everyone.
“As for me, I ask nothing better. I was afraid of displeasing you,” continued Julien.
The sun was going down, the air was mild. A longing to weep came over Jeanne, one of those needs of unbosoming oneself to a kindred spirit, of unbending and telling one’s griefs. A sob rose in her throat; she opened her arms and fell on Julien’s breast, and wept. He glanced down in surprise at her head, for he could not see her face which was hidden on his shoulder. He supposed that she still loved him, and placed a condescending kiss on the back of her head.
They entered the house and he followed her to her room. And thus they resumed their former relations, he, as a not unpleasant duty, and she, merely tolerating him.
She soon noticed, however, that his manner had changed, and one day with her lips to his, she murmured: “Why are you not the same as you used to be?”
“Because I do not want any more children,” he said jokingly.
She started. “Why not?”
He appeared greatly surprised. “Eh, what’s that you say? Are you crazy? No, indeed! One is enough, always crying and bothering everyone. Another baby! No, thank you!”
At the end of a month she told the news to everyone, far and wide, with the exception of Comtesse Gilberte, from reasons of modesty and delicacy.
What the priest had foreseen finally came to pass. She became enceinte. Then, filled with an unspeakable happiness, she locked her door every night when she retired, vowing herself from henceforth to eternal chastity, in gratitude to the vague divinity she adored.
She was now almost quite happy again. Her children would grow up and love her; she would grow old quietly, happy and contented, without troubling herself about her husband.
Toward the end of September, Abbé Picot called on a visit of ceremony to introduce his successor, a young priest, very thin, very short, with an emphatic way of talking, and with dark circles round his sunken eyes.
The old abbé had been appointed Dean of Goderville.
Jeanne was really sorry to lose the old man, who had been associated with all her recollections as a young woman. He had married her, baptized Paul, and buried the baroness. She could not imagine Étouvent without Abbé Picot and his paunch passing along by the farms, and she loved him because he was cheerful and natural.
But he did not seem very cheerful at the thought of his promotion. “It is a wrench, it is a wrench, madame la comtesse. I have been here for eighteen years. Oh, the place does not bring in much, and is not wealthy. The men have no more religion than they need, and the women, look you, the women have no morals. But nevertheless, I loved it.”
The new curé appeared impatient, and said abruptly: “When I am here all that will have to be changed.” He looked like an angry boy, thin and frail in his somewhat worn, though clean cassock.
Abbé Picot looked at him sideways, as he did when he was in a joking mood, and said: “You see, abbé, in order to prevent those happenings, you will have to chain up your parishioners; and even that would not be of much use.” The little priest replied sharply: “We shall see.” And the older man smiled as he took a pinch