It had been found necessary to offer the domain for sale, as Helene and Camille were minors.

Pierre, a young man of three-and-twenty, had lived rather fast, was already half-ruined, and could not hope to redeem Longueval.
It was mid-day.

In an hour it would have a new master, this old castle of Longueval; and this master, who would he be?
What woman would take the place of the old Marquise in the chimney-corner of the grand salon, all adorned with ancient tapestry ?--the old Marquise, the friend of the old priest.

It was she who had restored the church; it was she who had established and furnished a complete dispensary at the vicarage under the care of Pauline, the Cure's servant; it was she who, twice a week, in her great barouche, all crowded with little children's clothes and thick woolen petticoats, came to fetch the Abbe Constantin to make with him what she called 'la chasse aux pauvres'.
The old priest continued his walk, musing over all this; then he thought, too--the greatest saints have their little weaknesses--he thought, too, of the beloved habits of thirty years thus rudely interrupted.

Every Thursday and every Sunday he had dined at the castle.
How he had been petted, coaxed, indulged! Little Camille--she was eight years old--would come and sit on his knee and say to him: "You know, Monsieur le Cure, it is in your church that I mean to be married, and grandmamma will send such heaps of flowers to fill, quite fill the church--more than for the month of Mary.