noon
The boy seemed almost physically to bow under the burden of his sense of guilt . `` It is quickening all his faculties , '' said the curé to himself . Zoséphine had hardly yet learned to read without stammering , when Bonaventure was already devouring the few French works of the curé 's small bookshelf . Silent on other subjects , on one he would talk till a pink spot glowed on either cheek-bone and his blue eyes shone like a hot noon sky ; -- casuistry . He would debate the right and wrong of any thing , every thing , and the rights and wrongs of men in every relation of life . Blessed was it for him then that the tactful curé was his father and mother in one , and the surgeon and physician of his mind . Thus the struggle brought him light .