- Pétugue: I'm not speaking to Casimir either.
- L'instituteur: Why?
- Pétugue: Oh, it goes way back. My father and his father weren't speaking. And our grandfathers were already feuding. Mine didn't even know why. It went even further back. He figured there had to be a good reason.
- L'instituteur: This is a village of idiots.
- Pétugue: Not at all! Just a village where people have their pride.
- L'instituteur: A bunch of nobodies, none of you speaking.
- Le marquis Castan de Venelles: I speak of croissants and brioches because at my castle -- which is really just a farm, but one rendered castle-like by my mere presence -- I generally host three or four women of easy virtue whom I keep in rustic luxury to provide pleasure for me in my old age and debauchery for my shepherds.
- Aimable Castanier: Perfectly understandable.
- Le marquis Castan de Venelles: Ah, no! The priest doesn't see it that way.
- Aimable Castanier: Teacher, my wife isn't bad-looking, is she?
- L'instituteur: If she tried to kiss me passionately in some dark alley, I wouldn't complain.
- Aimable Castanier: You might not, but I would!
- Le marquis Castan de Venelles: Madame, the bread touched by your lovely hands will be received in my house like a present.
- Le marquis Castan de Venelles: Good morning, madame. I am the Marquis de Venelles, retired squadron leader but old lech on active duty. Meaning I'm very susceptible to your shining face and deeply grateful to you for being so lovely.
- Le curé: You set a very dangerous example.
- Aurélie Castanier: No. Debauchery is not a vice that comes free of cost. Dangerous examples are ones anyone can afford. Sins requiring ample funds are only for those of private means. But the people here are all farmers, and when faced with my dangerous example, their poverty stands in for virtue.
- Le curé: What appalling blasphemy!
- Dominique, le berger: I saw it all of a sudden on her face this morning. She truly loves me. You know what she said? "If you're a man, be behind the church at 5:00 with a horse and take me where you will." She'll leave her husband, his money, his bread!
- Antonin: They looked like lovers in search of a place to canoodle. And if you ask me, they looked like they won't be back. And our poor baker looks like a cuckold.
- Aimable Castanier: Did you give it to him nicely?
- Aurélie Castanier: Yes.
- Aimable Castanier: So they're happy?
- Aurélie Castanier: Yes!
- Aimable Castanier: What would those two do together?
- Le marquis Castan de Venelles: Make love, quite simply.
- Aimable Castanier: Oh, come on! They just met yesterday. When I courted her, she took three years to say yes to marrying me.
- Le marquis Castan de Venelles: This may be different.
- Aimable Castanier: Can I speak to you man-to-man? Aurélie isn't interested in matters of love. Selling bread, balancing her register, mending her camisoles -- that kind of thing, yes. But speak of love and she won't even listen. When I kiss her, she just tolerates it. No disgust, but no pleasure. A door has more feeling. And I know: we've been married for five years. I'm telling you, though she's beautiful and elegant, and men look at her, and she seems made for love, love isn't made for her.
- Le marquis Castan de Venelles: So she's like a magnificent flower with no scent.
- Aimable Castanier: Exactly! A flower with no scent.
- Le marquis Castan de Venelles: Perhaps you have a cold.
- Aimable Castanier: What's he know about my wife? Beat it, rotten shepherd! Telling tales and ruining reputations! Get out of here! Watching sheep makes you see horns everywhere!
- Aimable Castanier: Maillefer, you said I was a cuckold? Fine! That's a rank you'll never hold. You can go to cuckold school all your life, but you'll never be one. Because for that you need a pretty wife. And yours, my poor Maillefer, has more hair on her chin than pink on her nipples!
- Le marquis Castan de Venelles: He doesn't want to believe it. It's not that he doesn't believe it. He doesn't want to.
- Le marquis Castan de Venelles: Where's Dominique?
- Esprit, un berger: He went off.
- Le marquis Castan de Venelles: With who?
- Esprit, un berger: Scipion.
- Le marquis Castan de Venelles: And who else?
- Esprit, un berger: The baker's wife.
- Aimable Castanier: Who told you that?
- Esprit, un berger: Dominique. They were to meet behind the church.
- Aimable Castanier: Did he say when they'd be back?
- Esprit, un berger: He took his savings and hugged his dog good-bye. He won't be back,.
- Le curé: I must admit I was alarmed by that dreadful scene.
- Le marquis Castan de Venelles: Not dreadful. Simply human.
- Le curé: That man wasn't human.
- Le marquis Castan de Venelles: On the contrary. In his madness, he was the weakness of all men. He was suffering.
- Le curé: From what?
- Le marquis Castan de Venelles: His love for a woman!
- Le curé: Can love for a woman wreak such havoc in a rational being?
- Le marquis Castan de Venelles: "Rational beings," as you call them, don't just have an immaterial soul. They have a heart of flesh. Of course, physical love for you is just a sin, known and catalogued. And you punish those who've tasted the pleasures of the flesh. Well, you've just seen the joys of the flesh, and now you see that they bare their own punishment.
- Aimable Castanier: This is her pillow. I know where you found it: in the bedroom. At 16 she had breasts like oranges. Now they're alive like pigeons. And her arms! The scent of her arms!
- Aimable Castanier: Speaking Italian should be prohibited. And especially singing in Italian. Because men never understand Italian, and women always understand.
- Le curé: Get some sleep now.
- Aimable Castanier: You make it sound like it's just closing your eyes. If I close my eyes, I see too much.
- Maillefer dit Patience: While I was fishing, I hear a woman singing.
- Le curé: Here we go!
- Maillefer dit Patience: I crept up quietly and looked out between the leaves, and what did I see? Your wife singing! The shepherd lay in the grass, playing his guitar. Your wife sings real nice.
- Aimable Castanier: That means she was happy.
- Maillefer dit Patience: Certainly looked that way. Especially since she was buck naked.
- Le curé: My feeling of being happily settled in as a priest is precisely why that scene upset me so. Like the captain of a ship who sees another ship smashed on the rocks and thinks, 'My hull is no stronger, my rudder no larger, my maps no better, I too could run aground.'
- Le marquis Castan de Venelles: My friend, to be shipwrecked one must first set sail. Those who remain on the quay risk nothing. Furthermore, the love we saw earlier wasn't born of a glance, a dream, or a confession. Of course, the agitation you felt was no doubt an initial quivering of the flesh. But for love to have time to send down roots, you must have consented to what follows. For passion feeds on more concrete realities. When the baker spoke to us of his wife, it wasn't her soul he was describing.
- Le curé: It's true. It's true.
- Le marquis Castan de Venelles: In any case, I hope the baker's torment will inspire in you more indulgence toward us poor sinners. Perhaps it will help you understand that love isn't only pleasure.
- Melle Angèle: Well, I won't play along! It's no use insisting. I'm not budging. I want to see the adulteress's pitiful return. She doesn't want us to look? Well, I'll look! And under a light, so she sees me. A lost woman is made queen of the village? Then what use is virtue?
- L'instituteur: It's no use, sweet Angèle! I'm glad you realize it now. You've wasted 40 years, but we'll make up for that! Let me bare that breast and stroke that rump! Give me those lips!
- Le marquis Castan de Venelles: Put that broom down! How could you be so foolish? Take that broom and saw off the handle, and when she comes back, you can give her a good hiding and beat some virtue into her!
- Aimable Castanier: I've tidied up the bedroom and made the bed.
- Le marquis Castan de Venelles: Ah, I see. You're not a cuckold by chance. You're a cuckold by birth!
- L'instituteur: So it's all the devil's fault?
- Le curé: There's a freethinker for you! Takes away the sinner's responsibility and places it on the Evil One. No, sir! No. We all have free will to fight off temptation. The Evil One is indisputably present in that cabin on the marsh, but our friend's wife also has her free will to use when and where she will.
- Aimable Castanier: No! I don't want this happening again! To hell with free will! I want her back now! Free will can take a hike! I'll pound her free will into pulp and bake bread with it!
- Aimable Castanier: [the Baker's female cat returns] Look at that! There she is! See that? She's back. Pomponette. You little bitch! Slut! Piece of filth! Now you come back? Poor Pompon's been beside himself since yesterday. He's been looking all over for you. He's been wretched and miserable. But, she'd run off with her alley cat, some good-for-nothing stranger. a passer-by in the moonlight.
- Melle Angèle: You two lack Christian charity. You should feel pity for the unfortunate woman who will burn in the flames of hell. Of course she'll be off again and she'll take your husbands, one after the other. She has the devil in her blood and evil in her body. But we mustn't judge. We must love our neighbor as ourselves.
- Céleste, la bonne du curé: What disgusts me is that she'll be handling the bread.
- Le marquis Castan de Venelles: What's your name?
- Aimable Castanier: Aimable Castanier.
- Le marquis Castan de Venelles: A charming name! The poet said, "Et mihi castaneae sunt molles, et pressi copia lactis." But that's irrelevant at the moment.
- Aimable Castanier: Glad to hear it.