Whenever he saw Madame Bavoil she was praying: over her stove, when she sat mending, while she was dusting the furniture, as she opened the door, she was always telling her rosary, without pause.
The chief delight of this rather silent woman consisted in talking of the Virgin to whom she had vowed worship; on the other hand she could quote by memory long passages from a mystic and somewhat eccentric writer of the end of the sixteenth century: Jeanne Chezard de Matel, the foundress of the Order of the Incarnate Word, an Institution of which the Sisters display a conspicuous costume--a white dress held round the waist by a belt of scarlet leather, a red cloak and a blood-coloured scapulary on which the name of Jesus is embroidered in blue silk, with a crown of thorns, a heart pierced with three nails, and the words _Amor Meus_.
At first Durtal thought Madame Bavoil slightly crazy, and while she poured out a passage by Jeanne de Matel on Saint Joseph, he looked at the priest--who gave no sign.
"Then Madame Bavoil is a saint ?" he asked one morning when they were alone.
"My dear Madame Bavoil is a pillar of prayer," replied the Abbe gravely.
And one afternoon, when Gevresin was away in his turn, Durtal questioned the woman.
She gave him an account of her long pilgrimages across Europe, pilgrimages that she had spent years in making on foot, begging her way by the roadside.
Wherever the Virgin had a sanctuary, thither she went, a bundle of clothing in one hand, an umbrella in the other, an iron Crucifix on her breast, a rosary at her waist.

By a reckoning which she had kept from day to day she had thus travelled ten thousand five hundred leagues on foot.
Then old age had come on, and she had "lost her old powers," as she said; Heaven had formerly guided her by inward voices, fixing the dates of these expeditions; but journeying was no longer required of her.

She had been sent to live with the Abbe that she might rest; but her manner of life had been laid down for her once for all: her bed a straw mattress on wooden planks; her food such rustic and monastic fare as beseemed her, milk, honey and bread, and at seasons of penance she was to substitute water for milk.
"And you never take any other nourishment ?" "Never." And then she would add,-- "Aha! our friend, you see I am in disgrace up there!" and she would laugh cheerfully at herself and her appearance "If you had but seen me when I came back from Spain, where I went to visit Our Lady of the Pillar at Saragoza! I was a negress.

With my large Crucifix on my breast, my gown looking like a nun's--every one asked: 'What can that woman be ?' I looked like a charcoal-burner out for a holiday; no white to be seen but my cap, collar and cuffs; all the rest--face, hands and petticoats--quite black." "But you must have been very dull travelling about alone ?" "Not at all, our friend, the Saints kept me company on the way; they told me at which house I should find a lodging for the night, and I was sure of being well received." "And you never were refused hospitality ?" "Never.

To be sure I did not ask for much; when I was wandering I only begged for a piece of bread and a glass of water, and to rest on a truss of straw in the cow-house." "And Father Gevresin--how did you first know him ?" "That is quite a long story.