The office began.
It was not chanted but declaimed, now rapid and now slow. The side of the choir which Durtal saw made all the vowels sharp and short letters; the other, on the contrary, altered them all into long letters and seemed to cap all the Os with a circumflex accent. It might be said that one side had the pronunciation of the South, the other that of the North; thus chanted, the office became strange, and ended by rocking like an incantation, and soothing the soul which fell asleep in the rolling of the verses, interrupted by the recurrent doxology like a refrain after the last verse of each of the psalms.
"Ah well, I cannot understand it," thought Durtal, who had his Compline at his fingers' ends, "they are not singing the Roman office at all."
The fact is that one of the psalms was wanting. He caught indeed, at one moment, the hymn of Saint Ambrose, the "Te lucis ante terminum," sung to a simple and rugged tune of the old plain chant, and yet the last stanza was not the same; but he lost himself afresh, and waited for the "Short Lessons" and the "Nunc Dimittis" which never came.
"Yet Compline does not vary like Vespers," he thought, "I must ask Father Etienne the meaning of this to-morrow."
Then his reflections were disturbed by a young white monk, who passed him, genuflected to the altar, and lighted two tapers.
Suddenly all rose, and with a great shout, the "Salve Regina" shook the arches.
Durtal was affected as he listened to this admirable chant, which had nothing in common with that which is bellowed at Paris in the churches. This was at once flexible and ardent, sustained by such suppliant adoration, that it seemed to concentrate in itself alone, the immemorial hope of humanity, and its eternal lamentation.
Chanted without accompaniment, unsustained by the organ, by voices indifferent to themselves and blending in one only, masculine and deep, it rose with quiet boldness, sprang up with irresistible flight towards Our Lady, then made, as it were, a return upon itself, and its confidence was lessened; it advanced more tremblingly, but so different, so humble, that it felt itself forgiven, and dared then in passionate appeals to demand the undeserved pleasures of heaven.
It was the absolute triumph of the neumes, those repetitions of notes on the same syllable, the same word, which the Church invented to paint the excess of that interior joy or sorrow which words cannot render; it was a rush, a going forth of the soul, escaping in the passionate voices, breathed forth by the bodies of the monks as they stood and trembled.