The Priest's Madonna Read Online Free Page A

republicans stood for the common person, the true Frenchman, while the monarchists wanted to maintain the rule of the wealthy elite. Times were changing, according to him, and it was the republicans who would usher in modernity.
    But Bérenger, I learned, was as passionate as my father about politics—and he was a monarchist. He arrived in Rennes just as Jules Ferry and the fledgling republic were excising the tumor of religion from society. Divorce was legalized; Sunday was no longer an obligatory day of rest. Public education was declared free, mandatory, and lay-taught, causing Bérenger’s brother David to lose his teaching post. Bérenger deeply resented the republic’s antireligious militancy.
    These changes barely affected my family, though my father and mother argued when divorce was legalized. Mother did not have political views, on the whole, but she supported the Church in all things. Religion, in my father’s mind, was a tower of lies constructed to contain and dominate the populace. Normally, my parents avoided the subject, but the divorce ruling set my mother’s blood boiling. The day she heard of it, she raged at my father from the moment he set foot in the door, as if he had cast the deciding vote. She took it personally: if his Republic had legalized divorce, then he must support the notion, and therefore must be planning to divorce her. She wouldn’t allow it, she told him. “Let no man put asunder!” she shouted, clanging the ladle against the soup tureen until M. Paul, who lived next door, knocked to see if all was well.
    Imagine, then, my father’s unease at Bérenger’s presence in our house. Under our own roof, a cleric and a monarchist! The first night Bérenger arrived, Father eyed him suspiciously over our meal. When we had cleared our places and they were sharing a smoke, he broached the topic. “We’ve an election coming. Three months.”
    Michelle and I were sitting by the door, trying to make use of the last light leaving the summer sky. She was sewing the eyes on one of her dolls—she was quite good at making dolls from scraps of fabric, pretty pebbles, pinecones, and dried berries, anything she could find. I was knitting, but I laid my work in my lap when I heard my father’s comment.
    “Indeed,” Bérenger said.
    “Will you vote?”
    “I always vote.”
    “Mm-hmmm,” said my father. Then, impatiently, “For whom?”
    Claude was bouncing a ball in the dust outside; I motioned to him to stop. Bérenger shifted in his chair. “I know your position, monsieur,” Bérenger began, “and I respect it. I am, however, of a different mind. The Republic has done innumerable injuries to the Church, and to society, in my opinion. I can’t, in good conscience, vote to support such a government. As a priest.”
    “Ha! How about all the injury the Church has done to the Republic? To France, better yet! Where should we begin?”
    “Maybe we’d better not.”
    “Is your cause that insupportable? Not even worth an argument?” A silence. “Your Church—” my father prompted, in a threatening tone.
    “Mine, too, Edouard,” interrupted my mother. “Your children’s, too. Don’t forget.”
    “Hush,” snapped my father. “Your Church,” he began again, but faltered. He was bursting to release the floodgates of his political opinion—how the Church peddled lies in exchange for money and power—but he knew how proud my mother was to have Bérenger in our home, and how much Michelle and I admired Bérenger. If he embarked on one of his diatribes, he might succeed in out-arguing Bérenger, but he would lose our esteem. “Let’s just say,” he said, after a long moment, “that we have our quarrels.”
    “A good quarrel aids the digestion, Edouard. It’s how we stay so trim, isn’t that right?” Bérenger clapped his hand against his belly.
    My father lit another cigarette. “Is that it?” he said, finally. “I thought Isabelle had put me on a diet.”
    My mother laughed