The ceremony proved a triumphal one. A constellation of candles glittered around the reliquary which was blessed and censed. There were orisons and addresses, and canticles chanted amid the mighty strains of the organ. Several ladies were taken ill, one of Mademoiselle Rouzaire's little girls had to be led away, so oppressive became the atmosphere. But the delirium of the congregation reached a climax when Father Théodose, having ascended the pulpit, recited the Saint's miracles: one hundred and twenty-eight lost objects duly found; fifty doubtful commercial transactions brought to a good issue; thirty tradespeople saved from bankruptcy by the sudden sale of old goods stored away in their shops; ninety-three sick people, paralytic, consumptive, affected with cancer or with gout, restored to health; twenty-six young girls married although they were portionless; thirty married women becoming the mothers of boys or girls, according to their choice; three hundred clerks placed in good offices with the salaries they desired; six inheritances acquired suddenly and against all hopes; seventy-seven pupils, girls and boys, successful at their examinations, although their teachers had foretold the contrary; and all sorts of other favours and graces, conversions, illicit unions transformed into lawful ones, unbelievers dying converted, lawsuits gained, unsaleable lands suddenly disposed of, houses let after remaining tenantless for ten years! And ardent covetousness convulsed the throng at each fresh announcement of a miracle, till at last a clamour of satisfied passion greeted the enumeration of each favour, which Father Théodose announced from the pulpit in a thundering voice. It all ended in an attack of veritable dementia, the whole congregation rising and howling, stretching forth convulsive hands as if to catch one or another of those great lottery prizes that rained down from heaven.
Angered and disgusted, Marc was unable to remain there any longer. He had seen Father Crabot await a benevolent smile from Monseigneur Bergerot, then hold with him a friendly conversation, which everybody remarked. Meantime Abbé Quandieu was smiling also, though a twitch of pain lurked round his lips. The sacrifice was consummated. The victory of the Brothers and the monks, the triumph of the Catholicism of idolatry, servitude, and annihilation would prove complete. The young man felt stifled in that atmosphere, so he left the chapel to seek the sunshine and the pure air.
But St. Antony of Padua pursued him even across the square outside. Groups of female devotees were chattering together, even as the women gamblers had chattered in the old days while loitering near the doors of the lottery offices.
'As for me,' said one very fat and doleful woman, 'I never have any luck; I never win at any game. And perhaps that's why St. Antony does not listen to me. I gave forty sous on three occasions, once for my goat which was ailing, but all the same it died; the next time for a ring I lost, and which I never found; and then, the third time, for some potatoes which were rotting, but it was no good, I couldn't find a buyer for them. Ah! I am really unlucky and no mistake!'
'You are too patient, my dear,' a little dark wizened old woman answered. 'As for me, when St. Antony won't lend ear, I make him listen.'
'But how, my dear?'
'Oh! I punish him. For instance, there was that little house of mine which I couldn't let because people complain that it's too damp and that children get ill and die there. Well, I gave three francs, and then I waited. Nothing, not a sign of a tenant! I gave three francs a second time, and still there was no result. That made me cross and I hustled the statuette of the Saint which stands on the chest of drawers in my bedroom. As he still did nothing for me, I turned his face to the wall to let him reflect. He spent a week like that, but still nothing came of it, for it did not humiliate him sufficiently. I had to think of something else; I felt quite furious, and I ended by tying him to a cord and lowering him into my well, head downwards. Ah! my dear, he then understood that I was bound to have the last word with him; for he hadn't been in the well two hours when some people called and I let them my little house.'
'But you pulled him out of the well?'
'Oh! at once. I set him on the drawers again, after wiping him quite clean and apologising to him.... We are not on bad terms together on account of that affair, oh! dear no; only, do you see, when one has paid one's money, one ought to be energetic.'