e altar, then mounted the steps and
began to say mass. Durtal saw then that he had nothing on beneath his
sacrificial habit. His black socks and his flesh bulging over the
garters, attached high up on his legs, were plainly visible. The
chasuble had the shape of an ordinary chasuble but was of the dark red
colour of dried blood, and in the middle, in a triangle around which was
an embroidered border of colchicum, savin, sorrel, and spurge, was the
figure of a black billy-goat presenting his horns.

Docre made the genuflexions, the full-or half-length inclinations
specified by the ritual. The kneeling choir boys sang the Latin
responses in a crystalline voice which trilled on the ultimate syllables
of the words.

"But it's a simple low mass," said Durtal to Mme. Chantelouve.

She shook her head. Indeed, at that moment the choir boys passed behind
the altar and one of them brought back copper chafing-dishes, the other,
censers, which they distributed to the congregation. All the women
enveloped themselves in the smoke. Some held their heads right over the
chafing-dishes and inhaled deeply, then, fainting, unlaced themselves,
heaving raucous sighs.

The sacrifice ceased. The priest descended the steps backward, knelt on
the last one, and in a sharp, tripidant voice cried:

"Master of Slanders, Dispenser of the benefits of crime, Administrator
of sumptuous sins and great vices, Satan, thee we adore, reasonable God,
just God!

"Superadmirable legate of false trances, thou receivest our beseeching
tears; thou savest the honour of families by aborting wombs impregnated
in the forgetfulness of the good orgasm; thou dost suggest to the mother
the hastening of untimely birth, and thine obstetrics spares the
still-born children the anguish of maturity, the contamination of
original sin.

"Mainstay of the despairing Poor, Cordial of the Vanquished, it is thou
who endowest them with hypocrisy, ingratitude, and stiff-neckedness,
that they may defend themselves against the children of God, the Rich.

"Suzerain of Resentment, Accountant of Humiliations, Treasurer of old
Hatreds, thou alone dost fertilize the brain of man whom injustice has
crushed; thou breathest into him the idea of meditated vengeance, sure
misdeeds; thou incitest him to murder; thou givest him the abundant joy
of accomplished reprisals and permittest him to taste the intoxicating
draught of the tears of which he is the cause.

"Hope of Virility, Anguish o