"Yes," said Peter. "Or else it means that there are only two realities, and that the excellent person who keeps this establishment regards both in a detached way, and conceives it her business to cater for each. Let's go on."
They turned the corner, and presently found themselves outside the famous carven door of the church. "Have you ever been round?" asked Peter.
"No," said Langton; "let's go in."
They passed through the door into the old church, which, in contrast to that at Le Havre, was bathed in the daylight that streamed through many clear windows. Together they wandered round it, saying little. They inspected an eighteenth-century statue of St. Roch, who was pulling up his robe to expose a wound and looking upwards at the same time seraphically—or, at least, after the manner that the artist of that age had regarded as seraphic. A number of white ribbons and some wax figures of feet and hands and other parts of the body were tied to him. They stood before a wonderful coloured alabaster reredos of the fourteenth century, in which shepherds and kings and beasts came to worship at the manger. They had a little conversation as to the architectural periods of the nave, choir, and transepts, and Langton was enthusiastic over a noble pillar and arch. Beyond they gazed in silence at a statue of Our Lady Immaculate in modern coloured plaster, so arranged that the daylight fell through an unseen opening upon her. Among the objects in front were a pair of Renaissance candlesticks of great beauty. A French officer came up and arranged and lit a votive candle as they watched, and then went back to stand in silence by a pillar. The church door banged and two peasants came in, one obviously from the market, with a huge basket of carrots and cabbages and some long, thin French loaves. She deposited this just inside the door, took holy water, clattered up towards the high altar, dropped a curtsy, and made her way to an altar of the Sacred Heart, at which she knelt. Peter sighed. "Come on," he said; "let's get out."
Langton marched on before him, and held the door back as they stepped into the street. "Well, philosopher," he demanded, "what do you make of that?"
Peter smiled. "What do you?" he said.
"Well," said Langton, "it leaves me unmoved, except when I'm annoyed by the way their wretched images spoil the church, but it is plain that they like it. I should say one of your two realities is there. But I find it hard to forgive the bad art."
"Do you?" said Peter, "I don't. It reminds me of those appalling enlargements of family groups that you see, for example, in any Yorkshire cottage. They are unutterably hideous, but they stand for a real thing that is honest and beautiful—the love of home and family. And by the same token, when the photographs got exchanged, as they do in Mayfair, for modern French pictures of nude women, or some incredible Futurist extravagance, that love has usually flown out of the window."
"Humph!" said Langton—"not always. Besides, why can't a family group be made artistically, and so keep both art and love? I should think we ought to aim at that."
"I suppose we ought," said Peter, "but in our age the two don't seem to go together. Goodness alone knows why. Why, hullo!" he broke off.