“He was indeed,” replied Wallstein, “and he also liked taking a rise out of people.”
The two cronies looked up, and saw, right before their eyes, the very Baron they had been discussing, the man who had been so clever all his life. There he was, painted by Delaunay, amongst a lot of costly pictures, his cunning animal-like face leering out of a glittering frame.
Madame de Bonmont and the Abbé, seated together in the huge chimney corner before the fire, were chatting about the weather and day-dreaming. Madame de Bonmont was thinking how sweet life might be, if only Rara willed it so. She loved him so simply and so ingenuously. All the ancient and modern moralists, all the fathers of the Church, the doctors and theologians, the Abbé Guitrel and Monseigneur Charlot, the Pope and the whole of the Church Council, the archangel Michael with his great trumpet, and Christ come again in His glory to judge both the quick and the dead—all of them put together would never have succeeded in making her believe that it was a sin for her to love Rara. She was thinking that she would not see him at Montil, and that perhaps, at that very moment, he was unfaithful to her. She knew he was almost as familiar with women as he was with the bailiffs; she had seen him at the races with ladies of easy virtue and uncertain age, at whom he had cast leering glances as he handed them the field-glasses or helped them on with their cloaks. The poor dear could not get rid of a whole host of tiresome people, to whom he was bound for reasons she found it impossible to understand, even when he explained them at length. She felt very unhappy and heaved a deep sigh.
The Abbé was thinking of the bishopric of Tourcoing. His rival, the Abbé Lantaigne, was done for. He was going under in the ruin of his seminary, smothered beneath bills of the butcher Lafolie. But there were many rivals in the field. A senior curate from Paris and a curé from Lyons seemed to be the Government favourites; the Nunciature as usual lay low. The Abbé Guitrel heaved a sigh.
Hearing the sigh, Madame de Bonmont, who was very kind-hearted, reproached herself for selfishly thinking of her own affairs. She made an effort to appear interested in the Abbé Guitrel’s concerns, and affectionately inquired whether he would not soon be made a bishop.
“You are a candidate for Tourcoing,” she said. “Would you not dislike living in so small a town?”
The Abbé declared that the care of his flock would be sufficient to occupy him, and that, moreover, the diocese of Tourcoing was one of the oldest and most important in Northern France. “It is the see,” he added, “of the blessed St. Loup, the apostle of Flanders.”
“Indeed?” remarked Madame de Bonmont.
“We must be careful,” went on the Abbé, “not to confound St. Loup, the apostle of Flanders, with St. Loup, Bishop of Lyons, St. Leu or Loup, Bishop of Sens, and St. Loup, Bishop of Troyes. The latter had been married seven years to Pimentola, a sister of the Bishop of Arles, when he left her, to retire in solitude to Lerins and devote himself entirely to works of ascetic piety.”
And Madame de Bonmont was thinking: