The Vicomte’s mouth twitched again, but he closed his eyes obediently, and as a kind fortune had placed the marker in the opening pages of La Princesse de Babylone, the reader’s feelings went unlacerated, and his hearer’s attention wandered off into slumber about what time the fair Formosante was beginning her lengthy conversation with the phœnix.

But long after his regular breathing showed that Louis had fallen asleep, the priest sat and looked at him. If only he could have helped him! The deepest and tenderest pity filled him for that careless nature, so wilful and so engaging. And what crisis had faced him now that he should have attempted to speak of it? Could it have any connection with Gilbert and his inexplicable constraint? They would neither of them tell him, because they were neither of them dependent on him, as he might have made them had he been himself less strong. But there had been times when the consciousness of that abstention, far from being sustaining, was beyond words bitter to him, and even to-night it had power to pierce him with a tiny pang. Things might have been so different. . . .

The candles flickered gently, and the little feetless, beakless birds of the coat of arms caught a passing semblance of life other than heraldic. To the priest those bearings were now more familiar than the golden cinquefoils of the name which had once been his. . . . He might almost be a Chantemerle himself by absorption. . . . And suddenly he saw himself, an ageing man, effaced from the memory of his world, more than a little tired with two-and-twenty years of monotonous labour among a people religious indeed, but better served, perhaps, by a priest of their own class, the schoolmaster of two boys who had forgotten his teaching, the friend of two young men who would bring him any troubles but those he most desired to hear, on the verge of being taken away even from what work he had been able to accomplish either for them or for his flock—an ageing man, with nothing done, nothing to show. . . .

Yes, the Allwise had indeed taught him his own impotence, even in this lower sphere into which He had thrown him. And yet he was content. He sat there by the bedside, and thought with indescribable horror of those long years when he could not say that. He thought of the times without number when he went through his round of duties, visiting, reading the offices, teaching the two boys, even saying Mass, longing all the while to get away into some solitude where he could throw himself into that conflict which was the outcome of rebellion against his self-imposed sacrifice—a conflict which was all the fiercer because the citadel of his will was never really shaken. Every time, at the end, he made the sacrifice anew; every time he found relief, though it was but the relief of physical exhaustion; every time he was tempted to think that the offering was not accepted, because he was left so long in what he now knew to have been the night of dereliction. How deeply he had learnt during those years the truth of what had been said to him when, clothed in all the first enthusiasm of renunciation, he thought that he had already plumbed the deeps of self-immolation: “You have but entered on the way of sacrifice; I doubt if you will reach your Calvary for many years.”

All that strife was over now—had grown weaker and less frequent with time. God had closed that lesson-book; the scholar had learnt content. He was even resigned that the little which was left him, the confidence of the two young men for whom he had come to care so much, should fail him. And he thanked God for the grace to feel this . . . and came out of his reverie.

Louis was undoubtedly fast asleep now. The priest got up, replaced the Princess of Babylon on the console, and blowing out one candle took up the other. He stood for a moment by the bed, shading the light with one hand, and looking down at the young man lying sunk among its many pillows, but certainly thinking less at that moment of his physical than of his spiritual needs. Then with a little sigh he roused himself, and, making the sign of the cross over the sleeper’s head, turned and went quietly out of the room.

CHAPTER XXVII
HOUSEKEEPING OF THE VICOMTE AND THE CURÉ

Gilbert slept late next morning. When he at last came downstairs he could not find the Marquise, and as he was looking for her he met the Curé emerging from the library. He greeted him, and asked where she was.

“Upstairs, I believe,” said the priest. “Do you want her, or were you looking for me?”

“Both, I think,” answered Château-Foix with a smile. “I will wait till she comes down. I want to finish last night’s talk. By the way, how is Louis?”