He asked himself what could be this Order so sumptuously arrayed, in this miserable chapel, in such a district?
Little by little the room filled, choir-boys in red with capes trimmed with rabbit's skin lighted the candelabra, went out, and ushered in a priest, vested in a grand cope, with large flowers, a priest tall and young, who sat down, and in a sonorous tone chanted the first antiphon of vespers.
Suddenly Durtal turned round. In the gallery an harmonium accompanied the responses of voices never to be forgotten. It was not a woman's voice, but one having in it something of a child's voice, sweetened, purified, sharpened, and something of a man's, but less harsh, finer and more sustained, an unsexed voice, filtered through litanies, bolted by prayers, passed through the sieves of adoration and tears.
The priest, still sitting, chanted the first verse of the unchanging psalm, "Dixit Dominus Domino meo."
And Durtal saw in the air, in the gallery, tall white statues, holding black books in their hands, chanting slowly with eyes raised to heaven. A lamp cast its light on one of these figures, which for a second leant forward a little, and he saw under the lifted veil a face attentive and sorrowful, and very pale.
The verses of the vesper psalms were now sung alternately, by the nuns above and by the congregation below. The chapel was almost full; a school of girls in white veils filled one side; little girls of the middle-class, poorly dressed brats who played with their dolls occupied the other. There were a few poor women in sabots, and no men.
The atmosphere became extraordinary. The warmth of the souls thawed the ice of the room; here were not the vespers of the rich, such as were celebrated on Sundays at St. Sulpice, but the vespers of the poor, domestic vespers, in the plain chant of the country side, followed by the faithful with mighty fervour in silent and singular devotion.
Durtal could fancy himself transported beyond the city, to the depths of some village cloister; he felt himself softened, his soul rocked by the monotonous amplitude of these chants, only recognizing the end of the psalms by the return of the doxology, the "Gloria Patri et Filio," which separated them from each other.
He had a real impulse, a dim need of praying to the Unknowable, penetrated to the very marrow by this environment of aspiration, it seemed to him that he thawed a little, and took a far-off part in the united tenderness of these bright spirits. He sought for a prayer, and recalled what St. Paphnutius taught Thais, when he cried, "Thou art not worthy to name the name of God, thou wilt pray only thus: 'Qui plasmasti me miserere mei;' Thou who hast formed me have mercy on me." He stammered out the humble phrase, prayed not out of love or of contrition, but out of disgust with himself, unable to let himself go, regretting that he could not love. Then he thought of saying the Lord's Prayer, but stopped at the notion that this is the hardest of all prayers to pronounce, when the phrases are weighed in the balance. For in it we declare to God that we forgive our neighbours' trespasses. Now how many who use these words forgive others? How many Catholics do not lie when they tell the All-knowing that they hate no one?
He was roused from these reflections by sudden silence; vespers were over. Then the organ played again, and all the voices of the nuns joined, those in the choir below and in the gallery above, singing the old carol "Unto us a child is born."