“I come but now from the priory, where I chanced to go to-day. This morning the girl Eloise, a lay sister, she that was accustomed to ride hither from the priory with Laure, confessed to many rides and love-passages between herself and Yvain the young squire, while Bertrand Flammecœur followed Laure.”
Madame drew a sharp breath, and the Bishop continued: “The girl is now under heavy penance; yet is she a silly thing, and in my heart I find no great blame for her.”
“Then there hath been no word—no news—of Laure? Left she no token in her cell?”
“Nothing, Eleanore, nothing.”
“Ah, St. Nazaire! St. Nazaire! how did we that cruel thing? How took we away from a young girl all her freedom, all her youth, all her love of life? Know I not enough of the woe of loneliness, that I should have sent her forth into that living death? Alas! alas! I am all to blame.”
“Not wholly thou, madame. Perhaps the Church also,” said the Bishop, softly.
Eleanore looked at him in something of amazement. It was the first time that he had ever suggested any criticism of the Church. But after these words had escaped him, the Bishop paused for a little and fixed upon Eleanore a look that she read aright. It told her many things that she had guessed before, many unuttered things that had drawn her closely to St. Nazaire; but it told her also that these things must never be discussed between them; that never again would the man be guilty of so heretical an utterance as that which he had just voiced.
After this he began to speak again, still in the same tone of sympathy, but with a subtle difference in the general tenor of his views. He told her, in a manner eloquent with simplicity, of his talk with Laure on the eve of her consecration. He reminded Eleanore that Laure had entered of her own free will upon the life of a nun. He recalled the girl’s contentment throughout the period of her novitiate; and finally, seeing that he had succeeded in obliterating some of the self-reproach in this woman to whom he was so sincerely attached, he began to prepare her for the blow that he was about to deal, to tell her what words could not soften, to inflict a wound that time could not heal, but which, according to the law of the Roman Catholic Church, he was bound to administer.
Eleanore listened to his plausibly logical phrases with close attention. She sat there before him, elbow on knee, her head resting on her hand, her eyes wandering over the armor-strewn walls. The Bishop talked around his subject, circling ever a little nearer to its climax; but he was still far from the end when madame, suddenly straightening up and looking full into his eyes, interrupted him to ask baldly: “Monseigneur, hast thou never, in thy heart, known the yearning for a woman’s love?”
“Many a time and oft, madame, I have felt love—a deeply reverent love—for woman; and I have rejoiced therein, and given thanks to God,” was the careful reply.