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"Why, whatever are you thinking of, Baron, my dear sir? Now the donkey's fallen down, we've got to get him up again."

[Pg 21]

And so until the lot was knocked down, and the baron gave in, green with bile.

Which the peasants quite approved of, because big dogs always quarrel among themselves over a good bone, and there's never anything left for poor devils to gnaw. But what made them murmur again was that that servant of God squeezed them worse than the antichrist. Whenever they had to share with him, he had no scruple about laying hold of his neighbour's property, since he had all the implements of confession in his own hands, and if he fell into mortal sin he could give himself absolution by himself.

"Everything depends on having a priest in the house," they sighed. And the most well-to-do among them denied themselves the bread out of their mouths to send their son to the Seminary.

"When a man goes into the field, he's got to go in altogether," said his Reverence as an excuse for himself when he had no regard for anybody. Even mass itself he wouldn't celebrate save on Sunday, when there was nothing else to do, for he wasn't one of your priest-johnnies who'd run round after the quarter-dollar for the mass. He wasn't in want. So that Monsignor the Bishop, in his pastoral visit, arriving in his house and finding his [Pg 22] breviary covered with dust, wrote on it with his finger: "Deo gratias!" But his Reverence had something else to do but waste his time reading his breviary, and he laughed at Monsignor's reproof. If his breviary was covered with dust, his oxen were glossy, his sheep had deep fleeces, and his wheat stood as high as a man, so that his half-profits laborers enjoyed at least the sight of it, and could build fine castles in the air on it, before they came to reckon with the master. The poor devils opened their hearts like anything. Wheat standing like magic! The Lord must have passed by it in the night! You can see it belongs to a servant of God; and that it's good to work for him who's got the mass and the benediction in his hands!