Louis Hémon

“ Adorons-le dans le ciel. Adorons-le sur l'autel ... Then he fell silent, his chin dropping slowly toward his breast, and the only sound upon the road was the tinkle of sleigh-bells.
Maria was thinking of the priest's words: "If there was affection between you it is very proper that you should know regret. But you were not pledged to one another, because neither you nor he had spoken to your parents; therefore it is not befitting or right that you should sorrow thus, nor feel so deep a grief for a young man who, after all is said, was nothing to you..." ”

“ Even his hands--hands wont to dispense the favours of Heaven-were those of the husbandman, with swollen veins beneath the dark skin. But Maria saw in him only the priest, the cure of the parish, appointed of God to interpret life to her and show her the path of duty.
"Be seated there," he said, pointing to a chair. She sat down somewhat like a schoolgirl who is to have a scolding, somewhat like a woman in a sorcerer's den who awaits in mingled hope and dread the working of his unearthly spells... ... ...
An hour later the sleigh was speeding over the hard snow. ”

“ You have no call to the religious life? No. Then you must give up torturing yourself in this fashion, because it is a sacrilegious thing and unseemly, seeing that the young man was nothing whatever to you. ”

“ The duty of a girl like you--good-looking, healthy, active withal and a clever housewife--is in the first place to help her old parents, and in good time to marry and bring up a Christian family of her own. ”

“ On this occasion when the mass was ended, instead of paying visits they went to the curees house. It was already thronged with members of the congregation from remote farms, for the Canadian priest not only has the consciences of his flock in charge, but is their counsellor in all affairs, and the composer of their disputes; the solitary individual of different station to whom they can resort for the solving of their difficulties.
The cure of St. ”