‘Heh, nag, what are you thinking of? Here I am!’

The horse stopped immediately, nuzzling towards its master as if it wanted to drink the wine in his glass. The priest made a movement to dismount, but the man held him fast by one leg, while he led horse and rider in front of the wine-shop, where he stretched out his glass to a companion who was holding the bottle.

The whole crowd, men and women, now formed a circle round the priest. In the lighted doorway of the wine-shop, smiling at the scene, stood the tall, gipsy-like figure of Antiochus’s mother, her face almost bronze-coloured in the reflection of the bonfires. The babies had wakened up startled and were struggling in their mothers’ arms, the gold and coral amulets with which all, even the poorest, was adorned, gleaming as they moved. And in the centre of this restless throng, confused grey figures in the darkness, sat the priest high upon his horse, in very truth like a shepherd in the midst of his flock.

A white-bearded old man placed his hand on Paul’s knee and turned towards the people:

‘Good folk,’ he said in a voice shaking with emotion, ‘this is truly a man of God!’

‘Then drink to a good vintage!’ cried the owner of the horse, offering the glass, which Paul accepted and immediately put to his lips; but his teeth shook against the edge of the glass as though the red wine glowing in the light of the fires were not wine, but blood.

CHAPTER NINE

Paul was seated again at his own table in the little dining-room, lighted by an oil lamp. Behind the ridge, which looked a mountain as seen from the presbytery window, the full moon was rising in the pale sky.

He had invited several of the villagers to come in and keep him company, amongst them the old man with the white beard and the owner of the horse, and they were still sitting there drinking and joking, and telling hunting stories. The old man with the white beard, a hunter himself, was criticizing King Nicodemus because, in his opinion, the old recluse did not conduct his hunting according to the law of God.

‘I don’t want to speak ill of him in his last hour,’ he was saying; ‘but to tell the truth, he went out hunting simply as a speculation. Now last winter he must have made thousands of lire by marten skins alone. God allows us to shoot animals, but not to exterminate them! And he used to snare them, too, and that is forbidden, because animals feel pain just as we do, and the hours they lie caught in the snares must be terrible. Once I myself, with these very eyes, I saw a snare where a hare had left her foot. Do you understand what that means? The hare had been caught in the snare and had gnawed the flesh away all round her foot, and had broken her leg off to get free. And what did Nicodemus do with his money, after all? He hid it, and now his grandson will drink it all in a few days.’