The Baker's Wife (1938)

Robert Vattier: Le curé

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Quotes 

• 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!

• 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.

• 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.

• 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!