The innkeeper respectfully intimated that the church of Saint-Jean-en-Grève was generally considered worth notice. Its vestments, relics, and windows were of merit, and the view from the tower—
“Mort de ma vie!” cried the priest angrily, “do I look like a traveller who trots up belfrys in strange villages at the hour of déjeuner? A plague on Saint-Jean-en-Grève! I said nothing at all of churches; I spoke of déjeuner, my good fellow. What's for déjeuner?”
The innkeeper recounted a series of dishes. Father Hamilton hummed and hawed, reflected, condemned, approved, all with an eagerness beyond description. And when the meal was being dished up, he went frantically to the kitchen and lifted pot-lids, and swung a salad for himself, and confounding the ordinary wine for the vilest piquette ordered a special variety from the cellar. It was a spectacle of gourmandise not without its humour; I was so vastly engaged in watching him that I scarce glanced at the men who had travelled on the outside of the coach since morning.
What was my amazement when I did so to see that the servant or valet (as he turned out to be) was no other than the Swiss, Bernard, who had been in the service of Miss Walkinshaw no later than yesterday morning!
I commented on the fact to Father Hamilton when we sat down to eat.
“Why, yes!” he said, gobbling at his vivers with a voracity I learned not to wonder at later when I knew him more. “The same man. A good man, too, or I'm a Turk. I've envied Miss Walkinshaw this lusty, trusty, secret rogue for a good twelvemonth, and just on the eve of my leaving Dunkerque, by a very providence, the fellow gets drunk and finds himself dismissed. He came to me with a flush and a hiccough last night to ask a recommendation, and overlooking the peccadillo that is not of a nature confined to servants, Master Greig, let me tell thee, I gave him a place in my entourage. Madame will not like it, but no matter! she'll have time to forget it ere I see her again.”
I felt a mild satisfaction to have the Swiss with us just because I had heard him called “Bernard” so often by his late employer.
We rested for some hours after déjeuner, seated under a tree by the brink of the rivulet, and in the good humour of a man satisfied in nature the priest condescended to let me into some of his plans.
We were bound for Paris in the first place. “Zounds!” he cried, “I am all impatience to clap eyes again on Lutetia, the sweet rogue, and eat decent bread and behold a noble gown and hear a right cadenza. And though thou hast lost thy Lyrnessides—la! la! la! I have thee there!—thou canst console thyself with the Haemonian lyre. Paris! oh, lad, I'd give all to have thy years and a winter or two in it. Still, we shall make shift—oh, yes! I warrant thee we shall make shift. We shall be there, at my closest reckoning, on the second day of Holy Week, and my health being so poorly we shall not wait to commence de faire les Pâques an hour after. What's in a soutane, anyhow, that it should be permitted to mortify an honest priest's oesophagus?”
I sighed in spite of myself, for he had made me think of our throwing of Easter eggs on the green at Hazel Den.