“What is it?”
“Lately—for a special reason—I have longed for little else, night and day, but that there might be Mass said once in the chapel here, for . . . for one who was much connected with Mirabel.”
Her deep earnestness and hardly contained emotion affected M. Chassin. He was a little puzzled, too. Did she mean Mlle Magny? If so, why did she not say so? More likely, perhaps, that she was thinking of some relative of her own. Perhaps she was the widow of a steward or something of the kind, for she was far too superior to have been an ordinary servant. However, practical as usual, he saw that the point was not for whose soul—if she meant that—the Mass was to be said, but whether it could be said at all.
“Have you the necessaries still in the chapel?” he asked thoughtfully.
“I believe so,” answered the Duchesse. “I could look . . . I know where they would be hidden. A priest coming like this seems . . .” She broke off wistfully. “But there would be a certain amount of risk to you, Father, and so I hardly like suggesting it. Nothing but my very real need would make me. I . . . I have heard news that would make it just now the greatest comfort I could look for in this world.”
“My daughter,” said the Abbé, rising, “as a priest, nothing could give me greater joy, in these times, than to hear that you desire such a thing. But, as a plotter, I think that I must get on a little further with my task before I undertake the additional risk—not much, perhaps, but still to be considered when I am charged with a mission not my own. An argument, no doubt,” he added with a sort of twinkle, “against the union of the secular and the sacred characters in one individual. However, I will think over the best way to fulfil your edifying desire, if I can. I should begin at once, I think, by starting work earlier than I have hitherto done, that no suspicion might be excited on the morning itself, for it would have, would it not, to be a very early Mass? And you wish, I gather, a Mass of requiem?”
Valentine bowed her head. She was almost too much stirred to thank him, and looked up with eyes full of tears.
M. Chassin was moved to give her his blessing, and on that departed once more to his wheelbarrow and his hoe.
(2)
Valentine thought of little else but the priest’s half promise all the rest of the day. Very early next morning she went and searched in the chapel for the gem-studded chalice and ciborium, hidden away with all the more valuable vestments early in 1792, and hidden so securely that if they had been looked for in the August pillage they had never been found. That day being a cleaning day she thought it better not to invite the remarks of her femmes de journée by having the gardener into her room at all. Moreover at first she thought he had not arrived; till it occurred to her to look out from an upper window at the back of the château. The result of her observations was that she took out a bowl of coffee at noon to the grotto of Latona, and, going in, told him the reason.