Of all this he was conscious in their upturned glances, more limpid with pious feeling than the looks of monks; in the spiritual exaltations in which their sex indulged; in their ecstasies of love toward Christ, which made the priest indignant because it was really woman’s love, carnal love. Of this detestable tenderness he was conscious, too, in their very docility, in the gentleness of their voices when they addressed him, in their downcast eyes, and in their submissive tears when he rudely rebuked them. So he would shake his cassock when he left the convent door, and stride off, stretching his legs as if fleeing before some danger. Now the Abbé had a niece who lived with her mother in a little house near by. He was determined to make of her a sister of charity. She was pretty, giddy, and a born tease. When he preached at her, she laughed; and when he became angry with her, she kissed him vehemently, pressing him to her bosom, while he would instinctively seek to disengage himself from this embrace--which, all the same, gave him a thrill of exquisite joy, awaking deep within his soul that feeling of fatherhood which slumbers in every man. Often as they walked together along the footpaths through the fields, he would talk with her of God, of his God; but she scarcely heard him, for she was looking at the sky, the grass, the flowers, with a joy of life which beamed from her eyes. Sometimes she would dart away to catch some flying creature, crying as she brought it back: “See, my uncle, how pretty it is; I should like to kiss it.” And that passion to kiss insects, or lilac flowers, disturbed, irritated, and repelled the priest, who recognized even in that longing the ineradicable love which blooms perennial in the heart of woman. And now one day the sacristan’s wife, who was the Abbé Marignan’s housekeeper, cautiously told him that his niece had a lover! He was dreadfully shocked, and stood gasping for breath, lather all over his face, for he was shaving. When at length he was able to think and speak, he cried: “It is not true. You are lying, Mélanie!” But the peasant woman laid her hand over her heart: “May our Lord judge me if I am lying, _monsieur le curé_. I tell you she goes out to him every night as soon as your sister is in bed. They meet each other down by the river. You need only go there between ten o’clock and midnight to see for yourself.” He stopped rubbing his chin and began pacing the room violently, as was his custom in times of serious thought. When at length he did try to finish his shaving he cut himself three times, from nose to ear.