In the silence of the great gray old church I labored over the exquisite Gothic detail, all unmindful of the passing time, when all at once I became conscious that a small green door beside the right hand low retable was moving outward. I ceased working and watched it; then the solitary candle before the statue of the Virgin guttered and flared up; then the small door opened wide and forth came an old man in a priest's cassock, with a staff in his hand. The small, green, baize-covered door closed noiselessly; the old man slowly opened the gate before the altar and came down the step toward me. Without a word he walked behind my chair and peered over my shoulder at the drawing I was making of the great Jube.
He tapped the floor with his staff, placed it under his arm, sought his pocket somewhere beneath his cassock, from which he produced a snuff box. From this he took a generous pinch, and a moment later was blowing vigorously that note of satisfaction that only a devotee of the powder can render an effective adjunct of emotion.
"Bien faite, M'sieur," he exclaimed at length, wiping his eyes on a rather suspicious looking handkerchief. "T-r-r-r-r-es bien faite! J'vous fais mes compliments." "Admirable! You have certainly rendered the spirit of our great and wondrous altar screen."
A little later we passed out of the old church through a side door leading into a small green enclosure, now gloomy in the shade of the old stone walls. At one end was a tangle of briar, and here were some old graves, each with a tinsel wreath or two on the iron cross. And presiding over these was the limp figure of a one-legged man on two crutches, who saluted us. We passed along to the end of the inclosure, where lay a chance beam of sunshine like a bar of dusty gold against the rich green grass.
"Oui, M'sieur," said the priest, as if continuing a sentence he was running over in his mind. "Cassé! Pauvre Pierre, un peu cassé, le pauvre bonhomme, but then, he's good for several years yet; cracked he is, but only cracked like a good old basin, and (in the idiom) he'll still hold well his bowl of soup."
He laughed at his wit, became grave, then shook out another laugh.
"See," he added, pointing to the ground all about us strewn with morsels of tile; "the roof cracks, but it still holds," he added, pointing upwards at the old tower of St. Martin's. "And now, M'sieur, I shall take you to my house; tenez, figure to yourself," and he laid a fine, richly veined, strong old hand upon my arm with a charming gesture. "I have been here twenty-five years; I bought all the antique furniture of my predecessor. I said to myself, 'Yes, I shall buy the furniture for five hundred francs, and then, later I shall sell to a wealthy amateur for one thousand francs, perhaps in a year or two.' Twenty-five years ago, and I have it yet. And now it creaks and creaks and snaps in the night. We all creak and creak thus as we grow old; ah, you should hear my wardrobes. 'Elles cassent les dos,' and I lie in my warm bed in the winter nights and listen to my antiques groan and complain. Poor old things, they belonged to the 'Empire' Period; no wonder they groan.
