Project Gutenberg's The Priest's Tale - Pere Etienne, by Robert Keable

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Title: The Priest's Tale - Pere Etienne
From "The New Decameron", Volume III.

Author: Robert Keable

Release Date: August 31, 2007 [EBook #22478]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PRIEST'S TALE - PERE ETIENNE ***

Produced by David Widger

THE PRIEST'S TALE--PERE ETIENNE

From "The New Decameron"--Volume III.

By Robert Keable

PERE ETIENNE came aboard at Dares-Salaam and did not at once make
friends. It was our own fault, however. He neither obtruded nor effaced
himself, but rather went quietly on his own way with that recollection
which the clerical system of the Catholic Church encourages. We
few first-class passengers had already settled down into the usual
regularities of shipboard life, from the morning constitutional in
pyjamas on the boat deck, to the Bridge four after dinner in the
smoke-room, and, besides, it was plain that Pere Etienne was not likely
to have much in common with any of us. So we were polite at a distance,
like Englishmen everywhere. Even I, who, by virtue of my cloth, might
have been supposed to make advances, was shy of beginning. I was young
in those days, and for one thing spelt Rome always with a big capital.

But from the first there was something which attracted me to the priest,
the more so as it was hard to define. In his appearance there was
nothing to suggest interest. His age was round about fifty; his hair
brown, though in his beard a white hair or two was to be observed. In
his short black coat and trousers he looked neither mediaeval nor
a traveller, and his luggage was neither romantically minute nor
interestingly large. He was booked from Dar-es-Salaam to Bombay, and
the purser professed neither to know whence he came nor whither he went
beyond those two fixed points.

Yet I was attracted. I have no wish to bore you, so that I shall not
dwell upon the point, but in my opinion it was interesting. There are
some people who carry an atmosphere with them as they go their own
individual way about the world, and there are others who can instantly
perceive it. I a