"Ah!" replied Carhaix, not to be turned from his favourite subject, "and if this were the only abuse! But bells now rust from inactivity. The metal is no longer hammer-hardened and is not vibrant. Formerly these magnificent auxiliaries of the ritual sang without cease. The canonical hours were sounded, Matins and Laudes before daybreak, Prime at dawn, Tierce at nine o'clock, Sexte at noon, Nones at three, and then Vespers and Compline. Now we announce the curate's mass, ring three angeluses, morning, noon, and evening, occasionally a Salute, and on certain days
launch a few peals for prescribed ceremonies. And that's all. It's only in the convents where the bells do not sleep, for these, at least, the night offices are kept up."
"You mustn't talk about that," said his wife, straightening the pillows at his back. "If you keep working yourself up, you will never get well."
"Quite right," he said, resigned, "but what would you have? I shall still be a man with a grievance, whom nothing can pacify," and he smiled at his wife who was bringing him a spoonful of the potion to swallow.
The doorbell rang. Mme. Carhaix went to answer it and a hilarious and red-faced priest entered, crying in a great voice, "It's Jacob's ladder, that stairway! I climbed and climbed and climbed, and I'm all out of breath," and he sank, puffing, into an armchair.
"Well, my friend," he said at last, coming into the bedroom, "I learned from the beadle that you were ill, and I came to see how you were getting on."
Durtal examined him. An irrepressible gaiety exuded from this sanguine, smooth-shaven face, blue from the razor. Carhaix introduced them. They exchanged a look, of distrust on the priest's side, of coldness on Durtal's.
Durtal felt embarrassed and in the way, while the honest pair were effusively and with excessive humility thanking the abbé for coming up to see them. It was evident that for this pair, who were not ignorant of the sacrileges and scandalous self-indulgences of the clergy, an ecclesiastic was a man elect, a man so superior that as soon as he arrived nobody else counted.
Durtal took his leave, and as he went downstairs he thought, "That jubilant priest sickens me. Indeed, a gay priest, physician, or man of letters must have an infamous soul, because they are the ones who see clearly into human misery and console it, or heal it, or depict it. If after that they can act the clown—they are unspeakable! Though I'll admit that thoughtless persons deplore the sadness of the
novel of observation and its resemblance to the life it represents. These people would have it jovial, smart, highly coloured, aiding them, in their base selfishness, to forget the hag-ridden existences of their brothers.