The happy thought had come to her of watching her betrothed, as he himself had, that same morning, watched Rampal from the wine-shop window.
The curé smiled again and good-humoredly took down the keys of the little staircase that leads to the upper chapel and thence to the bell-tower.
He left the house, followed by Livette.
At the foot of the great bare wall of the church, so high and cold,—a veritable rampart with its battlements sharply defined against the blue of the sky,—the good curé opened the small door.
They ascended the stairs.
When they reached the upper chapel, which is just above the choir of the church, as we know, the curé said:
“I will remain here, little one, to offer up a prayer to the holy women; you can go on alone.”
But Livette, without replying, knelt devoutly beside the curé for an instant, before the relics.
The relics were there, behind the ropes coiled about the capstan, by means of which they were lowered into the church, as the little jug from which the lips of the faithful drank so eagerly was lowered into the miraculous well below;—there they were, on the edge of the opening through which they were launched into space.
Through this window-like opening into the body of the church Livette could see the chairs systematically arranged below, and, higher up, the galleries, the pulpit, and the pictures—all well-nigh hidden in the dark shadow, intersected by two rays of light that darted in, like arrows, through the narrow loopholes.