He was still sitting there, staring into space, when a large figure darkened his doorway and a stout man wearing the habit of a priest entered his shop. CHAPTER IX CHARLOT BURNS A CANDLE The priest’s stout figure seemed to fill Charlot’s little shop, and he stood with his hands crossed behind his back looking down placidly at the shoemaker. He had a round, rosy, face with a succession of double chins and a nose like a turnip, but his eyes were kindly and he was nearly always smiling. Père Ambroise was popular; hardly a parish priest in Nîmes was more welcome as a visitor, and none were less feared. Children ran after the amiable father, babies crowed for him, invalids were glad to hear his cheery voice. He was not intended as a persecutor or a martyr; he was round and the world was round, and both revolved comfortably in their own orbits. Père Ambroise was lazy, and, _Mère de Dieu_, these wretched Camisards were as fleet of foot as mountain goats! The good priest preferred a good dinner and a soft bed in Nîmes. It was a season of trouble for his brethren who were outside of the protection of the garrison towns, and Père Ambroise was sorry for them. Chayla had been slain at Pont-de-Montvert; the Curé of Frugères shot in a rye field; the Curé of St. André de Lancèze thrown from the highest window of his own belfry; others had suffered violent deaths, and Père Ambroise felt that Nîmes was the safest spot for his residence. He did not belong to the missionaries or the prophets, but he raised his hand against no man, and more than one sufferer secretly blessed the stout father as he ambled along the Esplanade, or stopped to chat with the children. He wore his usual expression of placidity, a certain unctuous, well-fed air,--the cheerfulness that comes from a full stomach and the digestion of an ox. He looked down with mild compassion on the drawn face of the hunchback. He pitied Charlot, but with all his worldly wisdom he had not the least comprehension of him. The cobbler greeted him respectfully, rising from his stool at his entrance. “Sit down--sit down,” said Père Ambroise, with good-humored remembrance of the hunchback’s weariness. “I only came to pay for my shoes.” As he spoke he tried the back of a chair with his hand before trusting his weight upon it. Being satisfied with its strength, he sat down with a sigh of relief, and drawing out his purse slowly counted out the money and laid it on Charlot’s bench. “How is the business, my son?” he asked, blandly; “you seem to be always occupied.” “Yes,” replied the shoemaker; “thanks to the _bon Dieu_ I am well occupied. All men must try to walk, and most men wear shoes.” “When they can afford them,” supplemented Père Ambroise. “You have a better trade than some of your competitors. All goes well with you, then?” “As well as usual, _mon père_,” the hunchback replied quietly, “I live and I eat.”