His church was old and beautiful and quite large. There were twenty-one people in it: ten in the château chapel, opposite the pulpit, Madame la Marquise and Mademoiselle and two guests in the great red-velvet chairs, and six of the servants in the benches behind them; old Ernestine, the curé's bonne, in her round white cap, erect, determined to stop awake; another white cap or two, here and there, and Père Pate's black skull-cap; two secularized sisters from the Ecole Libre, awkward in their black hats and jackets; three little wriggling girls whom they had managed to capture and retain on the bench between them; some small boys down by the door; and Madelon, the twelve-year-old daughter of the château gardener, who forsook the château pew that she might sit nearer to Monsieur le Curé.
Madelon sat twisted round in her chair to look straight up at him and adore, her hands in their Sunday gloves clasped intensely upon her blueprint lap.
It was cool in the church after the last day's rain, and dark, except where bars of sunshine and dancing sun motes struck across, and where the altar candles were little stars.
One heard the chickens cackling in the curé's garden, and the locusts shrilling close at the windows in the acacia trees of the cemetery, and the children calling and laughing in the street.
"My dear brothers," began Monsieur le Curé, looking down into the round blue eyes of Madelon.
He clutched the edge of the pulpit in both hands and leaned forward. It was indeed tremendously that he was going to scold. He had a right to scold. All night, in his little brown room, under the snores of old Ernestine, he had been working himself up to the pitch for it.
Next Sunday was the Fête of the Patronage. The Grand Vicaire was to come, all the way from Meaux. Madame la Marquise was to present a banner.
The children romped in the street. The women put on hats and went and stood and gossiped in the market-place. The men went fishing; the boys went fishing.
In a high temper, Monsieur le Curé began, "My dear brothers," and stopped short.
He let go of the pulpit edge and stood straight and looked over the heads of the twenty-one of them. All the light there was in the deep old church seemed to be upon his face.