“Can’t her husband manage a boy, then? She thought she might still get Monsieur and Madame Vuillaume to put up with a boy; but they’ll never stomach another girl.”
“I should think not,” said the doctor. “They have both taken to their bed, the news of their daughter’s pregnancy upset them so much. And they sent for a notary, so that their son-in-law should not even inherit their furniture.”
There was a little chaff. The priest alone remained silent, with his eyes cast on the ground. Madame Hédouin asked him if he was unwell. Yes, he felt very tired, he was going to take a little rest. And, after a cordial exchange of good wishes, he went down the Rue Saint-Roch, still accompanied by the doctor. On arriving before the church, the latter abruptly said:
“A bad customer, eh?”
“Who is?” asked the priest in surprise.
“That lady who sells linen. She does not care a pin for either of us. No need for religion, nor for medicine. All the same, when one is always so well, it is no longer interesting.”
And he went on his way, whilst the priest entered the church. Abbé Mauduit intended to go up to his room. But a great agitation, a violent necessity, had forced him to enter the church and kept him there. It seemed to him that God was calling him, with a confused and far-off voice, the orders proceeding from which he was unable to catch. He slowly crossed the church, and was trying to read within himself, to quiet his alarms, when, suddenly, as he passed behind the choir, a superhuman spectacle shook his entire frame.
It was beyond the marble chapel of the Virgin, as white as a lily, beyond the gold and silver plate of the chapel of the Adoration, with its seven golden lamps, its golden candelabra, and its golden altar shining in the tawny shadow of the aureate stained windows; it was in the depths of this mysterious night, past this tabernacle background, a tragical apparition, a simple yet harrowing drama: Christ nailed to the cross, between the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalen, weeping at his feet; and the white statues, which an invisible light coming from above caused to stand out from against the bare wall, seemed to advance and increase in size, making the bleeding humanity of this death, and these tears, the divine symbol of eternal woe.
The priest, thoroughly distracted, fell on his knees. He had whitened that plaster, arranged that mode of lighting, prepared that phenomenon; and, now that the boarding was removed, the architect and the workmen gone, he was the first to be thunderstruck at the sight. From the terrible severity of the Calvary came a breath which overpowered him. He fancied the Almighty passing over him; he bent beneath this breath, filled with misgivings, tortured by the thought that he was perhaps a bad priest.