Weissenburg peasants thought Jean.
Then he saw florid women from Alsheim and Heiligenstein pass, chattering, but not showing any trace of Alsatian dress.
Among them was a woman from the Münster valley, recognisable by her cap of dark stuff, bound round her head like the handkerchief of the southerners, and decorated in front with a red rosette. Two minutes slipped by. A step was heard through the fog, and a priest appeared—an old, heavy man, who wiped his face as he walked. Two children, very alert, doubtless the belated children of one of the women who had already gone by, overtook him, greeting him in Alsatian with the words, "Praised be Jesus Christ, M. le curé!"
"For ever and ever!" answered the priest.
He did not know them; he only spoke to them to answer the old and beautiful form of greeting. Jean, seated near a pine-tree and half hidden, heard an old man overtake the priest at the bend of the road and say, "Praised be Jesus Christ!"
How many times must that greeting have echoed through the vaults of the forest!
Jean looked before him as one in a dream, who sees only vague figures without attaching any meaning to them.
He stayed like that a short time. Then a murmur, almost imperceptible, so faint as to pass almost unheard, weaker than the twitter of a bird, was borne up on the fog: "Hail, Mary, full of grace; blessed art thou among women!" Another murmur followed, and finished with "Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us!" and an involuntary agitation, a mysterious certainty, preceded the appearance of two women.
They were both tall. The elder was an old spinster of Alsheim, whose face was the colour of the fog, and who lived in the shadow of the church, which she decorated on feast-days. She looked weary, but she smiled as she recited the rosary. The younger walked on the right, at the edge of the path, even with the slope, her proud head raised. Her fair hair was like a beautiful piece of pine bark, her body, robust and perfectly proportioned, stood out completely from the pale screen of cloudy mist which filled the bend of the road.
Jean did not move, nevertheless the younger woman saw him, and turned her head towards him. Odile smiled, and without interrupting her prayer, her eyes, turned towards the summit of the mountain, said: