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. Mere 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?"
"Yes, I know very well. But is the Virgin all that you love like this?"
"No; there is the garden, and there is Antoine--he is dead, I know.
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