But no sooner were they fairly inside the gates than they broke ranks, and, shaking off their consequential, discreet manner, began to run toward the ball-room, each striving to outstrip his neighbors, beating their asses to make them move faster, hurrying, jostling, and freely exhibiting their greed and their jealousy. They overran the ball-room, almost breaking down the fragile doors, and attempted to ascend the main staircase of the peristyle, or to force their way into the kitchens. But the butler and his officers, being prepared for the assault, and knowing their ways, had carefully barricaded all the issues; they brought forth the fragments destined for the monks, and distributed them as impartially as possible. There were dishes of meat, remnants of pastry, pitchers of wine, and even pieces of glass and porcelain which had been broken during the fête, and which the good monks put together with great care and mended most skilfully, for the adornment of their own sideboards, or to sell to collectors. They quarrelled over the booty with little decency, reviled the servants for not giving them all that they were entitled to, for treating one better than another, for failing in respect for the patron saints of their convents. They even threatened them with the infirmities which those saints were supposed to be especially skilful in curing when the afflicted person had acquired their good-will.
"Bah! what a miserable ham you have given me!" cried one. "You are already deaf in one ear; you can depend upon it that before long you will not be able to hear the thunder with the other."
AFTER THE FÊTE.
"Here's a bottle half empty!" cried another. "No prayers will be said for you under our roof, and you'll never be cured of the stone, if you take that terrible disease."
"Here's a bottle half empty!" cried another. "No prayers will be said for you under our roof, and you'll never be cured of the stone, if you take that terrible disease."
Others plied their trade gayly, with jests that made the distributors laugh, and they showed so much wit and good-nature that the servants secretly slipped the best pieces into their wallets.
At Rome Michel had seen dandified Capuchins, redolent with perfume under their frocks, and displaying their sandals, with poetic gravity, in close proximity to the Holy Father's consecrated slipper. The poverty-stricken Sicilian monks seemed to him very indecent, very laughable, and ever so little cynical, when they swooped down upon the crumbs of that feast like a flock of greedy crows and chattering magpies. He was attracted, however, by the high-spirited and intelligent faces of some of them. It was the Sicilian common people again, in the sack-cloth of the cloister—a noble race which bends beneath the yoke but cannot be broken.
The young artist had returned to the ball-room to look on at this curious spectacle, and he watched its various incidents with the attention of a painter who turns everything to his own profit. He noticed especially one of the monks, whose hood was pulled down to the end of his beard, and who did not beg. He kept apart from the others, and walked about the room as if he were more interested in the place where the fête had been given than in the possible benefit he might derive from it. Michel tried several times to see his features, and to judge therefrom whether the intelligent mind of an artist or the regrets of a man of the world were concealed beneath that monkish garb. He saw him stealthily put aside his hood but once, and then he was impressed by his repulsive ugliness. At the same instant the monk turned his eyes upon him with an expression of malevolent curiosity; and instantly looked away as if he feared to be surprised staring at other people.