“He is very popular ... too popular, perhaps ...” the Countess admitted. “I remember on one occasion in the Blue Jesus, witnessing the Duchess of Quaranta and Madame Ferdinand Fishbacher, fight like wild cats as to which should gain his ear—(any girl might envy Father Geordie his ear)—at Confession next. The odds seemed fairly equal, until the Duchess gave the Fishbacher-woman, such a violent push—(well down from behind, in the crick of the joints)—that she overturned The Confessional Box, with Father Picpus within: and when we scared ladies, standing by, had succeeded in dragging him out, he was too shaken, naturally as you can gather, to absolve anyone else that day.”
“He has been the object of so many unseemly incidents, that one can scarcely recall them all,” Father Nostradamus exclaimed, stooping to pick up a dropped pocket-handkerchief with “remembrance” knots tied to three of the corners.
“Alas.... Court life is not uplifting,” the Countess said again, contemplating her muff of self-made lace, with a half-vexed forehead. What that muff contained was a constant problem for conjecture; but it was believed by more than one of the maids-in-waiting to harbour “goody” books and martyrs’ bones.
“By generous deeds and Brotherly love,” Father Nostradamus exclaimed, “we should endeavour to rise above it!”
With the deftness of a virtuoso, the Countess seized, and crushed with her muff, a pale-winged passing gnat.
“Before Life,” she murmured, “that saddest thing of all, was thrust upon us, I believe I was an angel....”
Father Nostradamus passed a musing hand across his brow.
“It may be,” he replied, “and it very well may be,” he went on, “that our ante-nativity was a little more brilliant, a little more h—m ...; and there is nothing unorthodox in thinking so.”
“O what did I do then to lose my wings?? What did I ever say to Them?! Father, Father. How did I annoy God? Why did He put me here?”
“My dear child, you ask me things I do not know; but it may be you were the instrument appointed above to lead back to Him our neighbour yonder,” Father Nostradamus answered, pointing with his breviary in the direction of St Helena.