The abbé Marignan lived up to his illustrious name.1 His unwavering faith was as solid as a rock and he believed he understood God, as well as his every wish, intention and design. As he walked on the path leading to his little country presbytery he would sometimes ask himself why God had done a certain thing. He would think very carefully, and after putting himself in God’s position he nearly always discovered a reason. Far be it from him to murmur in a moment of pious humility, ‘O Lord, how mysterious are thy ways …’ Instead, he would say, ‘I am God’s servant on earth. Therefore it is right that I should know the reason for his actions and, if I don’t, to hazard a pretty good guess what it might be.’

Everything in nature seemed to him to have been created with impeccable and admirable logic. Every great ‘Why?’ could always be answered by some great ‘Because’. Dawns were made so that the world should be glad to rise; daylight so that the crops should ripen; rain for irrigation; evening to prepare for sleep and dark night for slumber itself.

The four seasons similarly met all the needs of agriculture, and never would it have occurred to the priest that nature might have no purpose or that all life might be the product of blind temporal, geographical and physical necessity.

Women, however, were another matter altogether. He loathed them. It was an unconscious loathing based on instinctive mistrust. Often he would quote the words of Christ: ‘Woman, what have I to do with thee?’2 adding, ‘It’s as if God himself were not happy with that particular work of his.’ Woman for him was most certainly the ‘twelve times impure’ of whom the poet speaks.3 She was the temptress who had first led man astray and continued to this day her execrable work. She was a weak, dangerous and mysteriously disturbing creature. Even more than her fatal body, he hated her loving soul.