a creature whom he had baptized in the middle of the
night lest his soul should decide to set out for limbo.
It was Jan who had quickly become his favourite,
and for whom he now felt that deep human affection
— the rather pathetic affection of a man who must love
a child, himself being childless. And although he took
an interest in Christophe, perhaps because it was hard
to divide them — for these cousins were very seldom
apart —it was Jan who had stirred an old fire of
ambition which the Cure had fancied must long be
extinguished; only now this ambition was centred in
Jan, who his mother had decided should enter the
priesthood.
Oh, but she was hard to endure, Madame Roustan,
for ever tormenting the Cure with her questions, for
ever wanting to know this or that in regard to the
clerical education; for ever pumping the unhappy
man about his influential relations.
'Madame, I see none of them;5 he might say, el
assure you they have quite forgotten my existence/
But Madame Roustan, who learnt many tilings, had
learnt among others that his cousin was a bishop, and
could thus be extremely useful to Jan when he, in his
turn, should become a Cure, so that now she haunted
the presbytery on the slenderest pretext in and out of
season. Moreover, she was one of those penitents who
enjoyed a long and detailed confession, keeping the
Cure shut up in his box with his ear to the grille
while her most deadly sins would boil down to gossip
or over-eating — even Goundran had ceased to provide
a relief, for now she had given up all hope of mating*
The Cure had tried many grades of penance, from five
Our Fathers and five Hail Marys to the rosary, told
from first to last bead, three times in front of Saint
Loup's privileged altar. But neither bruised knees,
nor the privileged altar, nor the sorely tried saint
who must stand above it, seemed able to damp