heard the unhappy curator's alarming
reports, used to answer drily:

"These books have been mislaid, they are not lost; look carefully,
Monsieur Sariette, look carefully and you will find them."

And he murmured behind the old man's back:

"Poor old Sariette is in a bad way."

"I think," replied Abbe Patouille, "that his brain is going."

CHAPTER V

WHEREIN EVERYTHING SEEMS STRANGE BECAUSE EVERYTHING IS
LOGICAL

The Chapel of the Holy Angels, which lies on the right hand as you enter
the Church of St. Sulpice, was hidden behind a scaffolding of planks.
Abbe Patouille, Monsieur Gaetan, Monsieur Maurice, his nephew, and
Monsieur Sariette, entered in single file through the low door cut in
the wooden hoarding, and found old Guinardon on the top of his ladder
standing in front of the Heliodorus. The old artist, surrounded by all
sorts of tools and materials, was putting a white paste in the crack
which cut in two the High Priest Onias. Zephyrine, Paul Baudry's
favourite model, Zephyrine, who had lent her golden hair and polished
shoulders to so many Magdalens, Marguerites, sylphs, and mermaids, and
who, it is said, was beloved of the Emperor Napoleon III, was standing
at the foot of the ladder with tangled locks, cadaverous cheeks, and dim
eyes, older than old Guinardon, whose life she had shared for more than
half a century. She had brought the painter's lunch in a basket.

Although the slanting rays fell grey and cold through the leaded and
iron-barred window, Delacroix's colouring shone resplendent, and the
roses on the cheeks of men and angels dimmed with their glorious beauty
the rubicund countenance of old Guinardon, which stood out in relief
against one of the temple's columns. These frescoes of the Chapel of the
Holy Angels, though derided and insulted when they first appeared, have
now become part of the classic tradition, and are united in immortality
with the masterpieces of Rubens and Tintoretto.

Old Guinardon, bearded and long-haired, looked like Father Time effacing
the works of man's genius. Gaetan, in alarm, called out to him:

"Carefully, Monsieur Guinardon, carefully. Do not scrape too much."

The painter reassured him.

"Fear nothing, Monsieur Gaetan. I do not paint in that style. My art is
a higher one. I work after the manner of Cimabue, Giotto, and Beato
Angelico, not in the style of Delacroix. This surface here is too
heavily charged with contrast and opposition to gi