A cold anger came, steadying his nerves. It was too bad that in some way he could not wreck a vengeance on the corpse for all this—the miserable, rum-steeped hound who had got him into this hellish fix.
They were bearing the body into the church toward the head of the nave. He was at the Subvenite now. “'...Kyrie eleison.”
The boyish treble, hushed yet clear, of young Gauthier Beaulieu, the altar boy, rose from beside him in the responses:
“'Christe eleison”
“Lord, have mercy.... From the gate of hell,”
“Deliver his soul, O Lord.”
Again! That sense of solemnity, that personal implication in the words! It was coincidence, nothing more. No; it was not even that! He was simply twisting the meaning, allowing himself to be played with by a warped imagination. He was not a weak fool, was he, to let this get the better of him? And, besides, he would hurry through with it, and since he would say neither office nor mass it would not take long. It must be hot this summer morning, though he had not noticed it particularly when he had left the presbytère. The church seemed heavy and oppressive. Strange how the pews were all lined with eyes staring at him!
The tread of feet up the aisle died away. The bier was set at the head of the nave, and lighted candles placed around it. There fell a silence, utter and profound.
Why was it now that his lips scarcely moved, that his voice was scarcely audible; why that sudden foreboding, intangible yet present everywhere, at his temerity, at his unhallowed, hideous perversion of sanctity in that he should pray as a priest of God, in the habiliments of one of God's ministers, in God's church—ay, it was a devil's masquerade, for he, if never before, stood branded now, sealing that blasphemous toast, a disciple of hell.
“'Non intres in judicium cum servo tuo, Domine....' Enter not into judgment with Thy servant, O Lord....”