'The old story, those who find difficulty in believing in the divinity of our Lord will swallow infallibility, transubstantiation, and the rest of it—all the miracles, and the entire hierarchy of the saints, male and female, if they may be gratified by music, candles, incense, gold vestments, and ceremonial display. … It is not love of God, it is love of the senses.'
'Ou fait la guerre avec de la musique, des panaches, des drapeaux, des harnais d'or, un deploiement de ceremonie.'
'What's that?'
'That is from the Tentation de Saint Antoine. It comes in the dialogue between Death and Lust. They make war with music, with banners, with plumes, with golden trappings, and ceremonial display.'
'What's that got to do with what we were saying?'
'Only that you accidentally made use of nearly the same words as Flaubert. "Ceremonial display" is not so good as deploiement de ceremonie, but—-'
'Mildred.'
'Well.'
She wore a little subdued look, and he did not detect the malice that it superficially veiled. She did not wish him to see that she was playing with him, but she wished to fret him with some slight suspicion that she was. She was at the same time conscious of his goodness, and her own baseness; she even longed to throw herself into his arms, and thank him for having come to Paris; she knew that it was in her interest that he had come, but an instinct stronger than her will forced her to continue improvising the words of her part, and it was her pleasure to provide it with suitable gesture, expression of face, and inflection of voice. She could hear the fiddles in the ball- room, and wished the wall away, and the company ranged behind a curtain. And, as these desires crossed her mind, she pitied poor Harold with his one idea, 'how he may serve me.' When she came to the word me her heart softened towards him, but the temptation to discuss her conversion with him was imperative, and she watched him, guessing easily how his idea of Catholicism turned in his narrow brain, and she knew that turn it as he pleased, that he would get no nearer to any understanding of it or of her. Religion was a fixed principle in his life; it was there as his head, neck, and arms were there; and it played a very definite part in his life; his religion was not a doll that could be dressed to suit the humours of the day, but an unchanging principle that ruled, that was obeyed, and that visited all fallings away with remorse. So this opportunity to play with her brother's religious consciousness was to be gainsayed no more than an opportunity to persuade a lover into exhibition of passion. And she remembered how Harold and Alfred used to sit over the dining- room fire shaking their heads over the serious scandal that had been caused in the parish by the new Vicar, who had introduced the dangerous innovation of preaching in his surplice. She had laughed and sneered at her brother's hesitations and scruples about accepting the surplice for the black robe, and now she wondered if he would ask her if she considered it a matter of no importance if the priests put on vestments to say Mass, or if there were wine and water in the cruets.
She had, as she had told her brother, embraced Catholicism in a time of suffering and depression, when she had fancied herself very near to suicide, when she didn't know what else was going to become of her. Her painting had failed, and she had gone to Barbizon a wreck of abandoned hopes. She had gone there because at that moment it was necessary to create some interest in her life. And Barbizon had succeeded in a way—she had liked Morton, and it was not her fault if he had failed to understand her, that was one of the reasons why she had left Barbizon, and her distress of mind on leaving was the result of indiscretions which she did not like to remember. True it was that she had not actually been his mistress, but she had gone further than she had intended to go, and she had felt that she must leave Barbizon at once. For her chastity was her one safeguard, if she were to lose that, she had always felt, and never more strongly than after the Barbizon episode, that there would be no safety for her. She knew that her safety lay in her chastity, others might do without chastity, and come out all right in the end, but she could not: an instinct told her so.