a genuine friendship

The Comtesse was still looking  at him:

“Come, M. le Curé, tell me about it — tell me how you made up your mind to renounce all that makes the rest of us love life,  all that comforts and consoles us? What is it that drove you, impelled you, to separate yourself from the great natural path of marriage and  family life?. You are neither a mystic nor a fanatic, neither a kill-joy nor a pessimist. Was it something that happened, a great  sorrow, that made you  take life  vows?”

The Abbé Mauduit rose up and went to the fire, holding out the heavy shoes of a country priest to the flames. He  still seemed to hesitate about answering.

He was a tall old man with white hair, and for the last twenty years he had been the pastor of the parish of Sainte–Antoine-du-Rocher. The peasants said of him: “There’s a good man for you!” And indeed he was a good man, benevolent, friendly to all, gentle, and, to crown all, generous. Like Saint Martin, he had cut his cloak in two. He freely laughed, and wept too for very little, just like a woman, — which lowered his reputation a little  in eyes of the country people.

The old Comtesse de Saville, who had retired to her castle at Rocher,  to bring up her grand-children, after the  deaths in close succession of her son and  daughter-in-law, was very fond of  her curé, and used to say of him: “He has a kind heart!”

He came every Thursday to spend the evening at the castle, and he and the Comtesse had become close friends with the genuine, open-hearted friendship possible only to the old.

Looking back - Guy de Maupassant

Bantam Edition, 1962