In the state of overwhelming sadness in which he was stagnant, Durtal felt himself open and bleeding to the bottom of his soul; then a voice older and less trembling, which understood the words it said, narrated ingenuously, almost without confusion, to the Just One, "Peccavimus et facti sumus tanquam immundus nos."
And Durtal took up these words, and spelt them over in terror, thinking, "Ah! yes, we have sinned and become like the leprous, O Lord!" And the chant continued, and in His turn, the Most High borrowed that same innocent organ of childhood, to declare to man His pity, and to confirm to him the pardon assured by the coming of the Son.
And the evening had ended by the Benediction in plain chant, in the midst of the silence and prostration of unhappy women.
Durtal remembered how he left the church refreshed, freed from his hauntings, and he had gone away in the drizzling rain, surprised that the way was so short, humming the "Rorate," of which the air had taken possession of him, ending by seeing in it the personal touch of a kindly unknown.
And there were other evenings ... the Octave of the Feast of All Souls at St. Sulpice and at St. Thomas Aquinas, where, after the Vespers of the Dead, they brought out again the old Sequence which has disappeared from the Roman Breviary, the "Lanquentilus in Purgatorio."
This church was the only one in Paris which had retained these pages of the Gallican hymnal, and had them sung by two basses without a choir; but these singers, so poor as a rule, no doubt were fond of this air, for if they did not sing it with art, at least they put a little soul into its delivery.
And this invocation to the Madonna, in which she was adjured to save the souls in Purgatory, was as sorrowful as the souls themselves, and so melancholy, so languid, that the surroundings were forgotten, the ugliness of that sanctuary of which the choir was a theatre scene, surrounded by closed dressing-rooms and garnished with lustres, one might think oneself for a few moments far from Paris, far from that population of devout women and servant girls, which attend that place in the evening.
"Ah! the Church," he said to himself, as he descended the path which led to the great pond, "what a mother of art is she!" and suddenly the noise of a body falling into the water interrupted his reflections.
He looked behind the hedge of reeds and saw nothing but great circles running on the water, and all at once in one of these rings a small dog-like head appeared holding a fish in its mouth; the beast raised itself a little out of the water, showed a thin body covered with fur, and gazed on Durtal quietly with its little black eyes.
Then in a flash it passed the distance which separated it from the bank, and disappeared under the grasses.