With everyone having drunk too much wine, most of the assembly falls asleep while waiting for the Cardinal. Lucy and her aunt try to leave but are persuaded to stay. Rammaendelo cannot get through to the Cardinal on the telephone, so Pierre sends a telegram, assuring him that Mathurin has been baptized and urging him to attend this evening.Įveryone assembles for dinner, and Mathurin's uncouth manners become apparent. Pierre blackmails Rammaendelo into persuading his brother to perform the marriage by telling him that he has proof that Rammaendelo poisoned his wife. Lucy comes across several drawings depicting bestiality and becomes sexually excited at the thought of her impending marriage, even though she has never met Mathurin. Rammaendelo, who is not in favor of the marriage because he is dependent on Mathurin to look after him, shows her a book that describes the beautiful Romilda's fight with a beast in the local forest 200 years ago. They find a back route to the house at a back door to the house, where Lucy asks Rammaendelo about rumors.
Lucy and her aunt, Virginia, are driven by their chauffeur toward the farm, but a fallen tree blocks their way. Pierre summons the local priest to the house for the baptism, but Pierre, by promising the priest repairs to his church and a new bell, performs the ritual himself so that the priest will not find out the truth about Mathurin.
Mathurin, who manages the family horse-breeding business, is dim-witted and deformed and has never been baptized. She is to be married by Cardinal Joseph do Balo, the brother of Pierre's uncle, the crippled Duc Rammaendelo de Balo, who shares their crumbling farmhouse with Pierre's daughter Clarisse, and their servant Ifany. Businessman Philip Broadhurst dies and leaves his estate to his daughter, Lucy, on the condition that she marries Mathurin, Marquis Pierre de l'Esperance's son, within six months.
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