rust from inactivity. The
metal is no longer hammer-hardened and is not vibrant. Formerly these
magnificent auxiliaries of the ritual sang without cease. The canonical
hours were sounded, Matins and Laudes before daybreak, Prime at dawn,
Tierce at nine o'clock, Sexte at noon, Nones at three, and then Vespers
and Compline. Now we announce the curate's mass, ring three angeluses,
morning, noon, and evening, occasionally a Salute, and on certain days
launch a few peals for prescribed ceremonies. And that's all. It's only
in the convents where the bells do not sleep, for these, at least, the
night offices are kept up."

"You mustn't talk about that," said his wife, straightening the pillows
at his back. "If you keep working yourself up, you will never get well."

"Quite right," he said, resigned, "but what would you have? I shall
still be a man with a grievance, whom nothing can pacify," and he smiled
at his wife who was bringing him a spoonful of the potion to swallow.

The doorbell rang. Mme. Carhaix went to answer it and a hilarious and
red-faced priest entered, crying in a great voice, "It's Jacob's ladder,
that stairway! I climbed and climbed and climbed, and I'm all out of
breath," and he sank, puffing, into an armchair.

"Well, my friend," he said at last, coming into the bedroom, "I learned
from the beadle that you were ill, and I came to see how you were
getting on."

Durtal examined him. An irrepressible gaiety exuded from this sanguine,
smooth-shaven face, blue from the razor. Carhaix introduced them. They
exchanged a look, of distrust on the priest's side, of coldness on
Durtal's.

Durtal felt embarrassed and in the way, while the honest pair were
effusively and with excessive humility thanking the abbe for coming up
to see them. It was evident that for this pair, who were not ignorant of
the sacrileges and scandalous self-indulgences of the clergy, an
ecclesiastic was a man elect, a man so superior that as soon as he
arrived nobody else counted.

Durtal took his leave, and as he went downstairs he thought, "That
jubilant priest sickens me. Indeed, a gay priest, physician, or man of
letters must have an infamous soul, because they are the ones who see
clearly into human misery and console it, or heal it, or depict it. If
after that they can act the clown--they are unspeakable! Though I'll
admit that thoughtless persons deplore the sadness of the novel of
observation and its resemblance to the life it rep