ct was the Chapelle des Anges in St. Sulpice, in which
the paintings were peeling off the walls, and which he was one day to
restore; when, that is, it should please God, for, since the Separation,
the churches belonged solely to God, and no one would undertake the
responsibility of even the most urgent repairs. But old Guinardon
demanded no salary.

"Michael is my patron saint," he said. "And I have a special devotion
for the Holy Angels."

After they had had their game of dominoes, Monsieur Sariette, very thin
and small, and old Guinardon, sturdy as an oak, hirsute as a lion, and
tall as a Saint Christopher, went off chatting away side by side across
the Place Saint Sulpice, heedless of whether the night were fine or
stormy. Monsieur Sariette always went straight home, much to the regret
of the painter, who was a gossip and a nightbird.

The following day, as the clock struck seven, Monsieur Sariette would
take up his place in the library, and resume his cataloguing. As he sat
at his desk, however, he would dart a Medusa-like look at anyone who
entered, fearing lest he should prove to be a book-borrower. It was not
merely the magistrates, politicians, and prelates whom he would have
liked to turn to stone when they came to ask for the loan of a book with
an air of authority bred of their familiarity with the master of the
house. He would have done as much to Monsieur Gaetan, the library's
benefactor, when he wanted some gay or scandalous old volume wherewith
to beguile a wet day in the country. He would have meted out similar
treatment to Madame Rene d'Esparvieu, when she came to look for a book
to read to her sick poor in hospital, and even to Monsieur Rene
d'Esparvieu himself, who generally contented himself with the Civil Code
and a volume of Dalloz. The borrowing of the smallest book seemed like
dragging his heart out. To refuse a volume even to such as had the most
incontestable right to it, Monsieur Sariette would invent countless
far-fetched or clumsy fibs, and did not even shrink from slandering
himself as curator or from casting doubts on his own vigilance by saying
that such and such a book was mislaid or lost, when a moment ago he had
been gloating over that very volume or pressing it to his bosom. And
when ultimately forced to part with a volume he would take it back a
score of times from the borrower before he finally relinquished it.

He was always in agony lest one of the objects confided to his care