-a poor, timid, helpless pair--fell heir to
the premises. Their children had it after them; but, whether in those
hands or these, the house had its habits and continued in them; and to
this day the neighbors, as has already been said, rightly explain its
close-sealed, uninhabited look by the all-sufficient statement that the
inmates "is quadroons."

CHAPTER XV.

KYRIE ELEISON.

The second Saturday afternoon following was hot and calm. The lamp
burning before the tabernacle in Pere Jerome's little church might have
hung with as motionless a flame in the window behind. The lilies of St.
Joseph's wand, shining in one of the half opened panes, were not more
completely at rest than the leaves on tree and vine without, suspended
in the slumbering air. Almost as still, down under the organ-gallery,
with a single band of light falling athwart his box from a small door
which stood ajar, sat the little priest, behind the lattice of the
confessional, silently wiping away the sweat that beaded on his brow and
rolled down his face. At distant intervals the shadow of some one
entering softly through the door would obscure, for a moment, the band
of light, and an aged crone, or a little boy, or some gentle presence
that the listening confessor had known only by the voice for many years,
would kneel a few moments beside his waiting ear, in prayer for blessing
and in review of those slips and errors which prove us all akin.

The day had been long and fatiguing. First, early mass; a hasty meal;
then a business call upon the archbishop in the interest of some
projected charity; then back to his cottage, and so to the banking-house
of "Vignevielle," in the Rue Toulouse. There all was open, bright, and
re-assured, its master virtually, though not actually, present. The
search was over and the seekers gone, personally wiser than they would
tell, and officially reporting that (to the best of their knowledge and
belief, based on evidence, and especially on the assurances of an
unexceptionable eye-witness, to wit, Monsieur Vignevielle, banker)
Capitaine Lemaitre was dead and buried. At noon there had been a wedding
in the little church. Its scenes lingered before Pere Jerome's vision
now--the kneeling pair: the bridegroom, rich in all the excellences of
man, strength and kindness slumbering interlocked in every part and
feature; the bride, a saintly weariness on her pale face, her awesome
eyes lifted in adoration upon the image of t