Bébée's eyes with some look that in all its simplicity had a divine gleam
in it that made him half ashamed.

He had known women by the thousand, good women and bad; women whom he had
dealt ill with and women who had dealt ill with him; but this he had not
known--this frank, fearless, tender, gay, grave, innocent, industrious
little life, helping itself, feeding itself, defending itself, working
for itself and for others, and vaguely seeking all the while some unseen
light, some unknown god, with a blind faith so infinitely ignorant and
yet so infinitely pathetic.

"All the people are gone on a pilgrimage," she explained to him when he
asked her why her village was so silent this bright morning. "They are
gone to pray for a fine harvest, and that she wants herself as well--it
costs seven francs apiece. They take their food with them; they go and
laugh and eat in the fields. I think it is nonsense. One can say one's
prayers just as well here. Mère Krebs thinks so too, but then she says,
'If I do not go, it will look ill; people will say I am irreligious; and
as we make so much by flour, God would think it odd for me to be absent;
and, besides, it is only seven francs there and back; and if it does
please Heaven, that is cheap, you know. One will get it over and over
again in Paradise.' That is what Mere Krebs says. But, for me, I
think it is nonsense. It cannot please God to go by train and eat galette
and waste a whole day in getting dusty.

"When I give the Virgin my cactus flower, I do give up a thing I love,
and I let it wither on her altar instead of pleasing me in bloom here
all the week, and then, of course, she sees that I have done it out of
gratitude. But that is different: that I am sorry to do, and yet I am
glad to do it out of love. Do you not know?"