"In the hope, Monsieur l'Abbé, that we shall also have the pleasure of seeing you again in our solitude, I beg to assure you that I am yours most respectfully,
"F. M. Etienne,
"Guestmaster."
He read and re-read it, at once delighted and terrified. "There is no further doubt; it is irrevocable," he said, and he went at once in haste to St. Severin, having less need of prayer than of going near to Our Lady; of showing himself to her, paying her, as it were, a visit of thankfulness, and expressing his gratitude by his very presence.
He was taken by the charms of that church, its silence, the shadow which fell on the apse, from the height of its palm trees of stone, and he ended by caring for nothing and sinking on a chair, filled with one sole desire, not to enter again on the life of the streets, never to leave his refuge, never to move.
The next day, which was a Sunday, he went to the Benedictine nuns to hear High Mass. A black monk celebrated; he recognized a Benedictine when the priest chanted "Dominous vobiscoum," for the Abbé Gévresin had told him that the Benedictines pronounced Latin like Italian.
Though he was not inclined to like that pronunciation which took away from Latin the sonorous tones of its words, and turned after a fashion the phrases of that tongue into a ring of bells with their clappers muffled or their vases stuffed with tow, he let himself go, taken hold of by the unction, by the humble piety of the monk, who almost trembled with reverence and joy when he kissed the altar, and he had a deep voice, to which, behind the grating, answered the clear high voices of the nuns.
Durtal panted, listening to the fluid pictures of the Early Masters sketch and form and paint themselves on the air; he was affected to his very marrow, as he had formerly been during High Mass at St. Severin. He had lost that emotion now in that church, where the flower of melody had faded for him since he knew the Benedictine plain song, and he now found it again, or rather he took it with him from St. Severin to this chapel.
And for the first time he had a wild desire, a desire so violent that it seemed to melt his heart.
It was at the moment of the Communion. The monk, elevating the Host, uttered the "Domine non sum dignus." Pale, with drawn features, sorrowful eyes, and serious mouth, he seemed to have escaped from a monastery of the Middle Ages, cut out of one of those Flemish pictures where the monks are standing in the background, while, before them, nuns are praying on their knees with joined hands, near the donors, to the child Jesus on whom the Virgin smiles, while lowering her long lashes under her arching brow.
And while he descended the steps and communicated two women, Durtal trembled, and his desires went forth towards the ciborium.