Every one now recognized the rector's foot on the resounding steps of
the portico. He bowed respectfully to the three occupants of the room,
and addressed them in phrases of that unctuous civility which priests
are accustomed to use. To the rather absent-minded greeting of the
mistress of the house, he replied by an ecclesiastically inquisitive
look.
"Are you anxious or ill, Madame la baronne?" he asked.
"Thank you, no," she replied.
Monsieur Grimont, a man of fifty, of middle height, lost in his
cassock, from which issued two stout shoes with silver buckles,
exhibited above his hands a plump visage, and a generally white skin
though yellow in spots. His hands were dimpled. His abbatial face had
something of the Dutch burgomaster in the placidity of its complexion
and its flesh tones, and of the Breton peasant in the straight black
hair and the vivacity of the brown eyes, which preserved,
nevertheless, a priestly decorum. His gaiety, that of a man whose
conscience was calm and pure, admitted a joke. His manner had nothing
uneasy or dogged about it, like that of many poor rectors whose
existence or whose power is contested by their parishioners, and who
instead of being, as Napoleon sublimely said, the moral leaders of the
population and the natural justices of peace, are treated as enemies.
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