“I know that you have a pleasant old house in a pleasant old square of the Basse-Ville—why don’t you go and live there?”
“Hein?” muttered he again.
“I liked it much, Monsieur; with the steps ascending to the door, the grey flags in front, the nodding trees behind—real trees, not shrubs—trees dark, high, and of old growth. And the boudoir-oratoire—you should make that room your study; it is so quiet and solemn.”
He eyed me closely; he half-smiled, half-coloured. “Where did you pick up all that? Who told you?” he asked.
“Nobody told me. Did I dream it, Monsieur, do you think?”
“Can I enter into your visions? Can I guess a woman’s waking thoughts, much less her sleeping fantasies?”
“If I dreamt it, I saw in my dream human beings as well as a house. I saw a priest, old, bent, and grey, and a domestic—old, too, and picturesque; and a lady, splendid but strange; her head would scarce reach to my elbow—her magnificence might ransom a duke. She wore a gown bright as lapis-lazuli—a shawl worth a thousand francs: she was decked with ornaments so brilliant, I never saw any with such a beautiful sparkle; but her figure looked as if it had been broken in two and bent double; she seemed also to have outlived the common years of humanity, and to have attained those which are only labour and sorrow. She was become morose—almost malevolent; yet somebody, it appears, cared for her in her infirmities—somebody forgave her trespasses, hoping to have his trespasses forgiven. They lived together, these three people—the mistress, the chaplain, the servant—all old, all feeble, all sheltered under one kind wing.”
He covered with his hand the upper part of his face, but did not conceal his mouth, where I saw hovering an expression I liked.
“I see you have entered into my secrets,” said he, “but how was it done?”
So I told him how—the commission on which I had been sent, the storm which had detained me, the abruptness of the lady, the kindness of the priest.