Sublime exultation! There were voices pure and high, ecstatic women’s voices, blended with the deep sonorous tones of the men, thousands of voices so powerful that they drowned the organ in spite of the bellowing of its pipes. The shrill notes of the choir-boys and the powerful rhythm of the basses inspired pretty thoughts of the combination of childhood and strength in this delightful concert of human voices blended in an outpouring of love.
“Te Deum laudamus!”
In the midst of this cathedral, black with kneeling men and women, the chant burst forth like a light which gleams suddenly in the night, and the silence was broken as by a peal of thunder. The voices rose with the clouds of incense which threw diaphanous, bluish veils over the quaint marvels of the architecture. All was richness, perfume, light and melody.
At the moment at which this symphony of love and gratitude rolled toward the altar, Don Juan, too polite not to express his thanks and too witty not to appreciate a jest, responded by a frightful laugh, and straightened up in his reliquary. But, the devil having given him a hint of the danger he ran of being taken for an ordinary man, for a saint, a Boniface or a Pantaléon, he interrupted this harmony of love by a shriek in which the thousand voices of hell joined. Earth lauded, heaven condemned. The church trembled on its ancient foundations.
“Te Deum laudamus!” sang the crowd.
“Go to the devil, brute beasts that you are! ‘Carajos demonios!’ Beasts! what idiots you are with your God!”
And a torrent of curses rolled forth like a stream of burning lava at an eruption of Vesuvius.
“‘Deus sabaoth! sabaoth’!” cried the Christians.
Then the living arm was thrust out of the reliquary and waved threateningly over the assembly with a gesture full of despair and irony.
“The saint is blessing us!” said the credulous old women, the children and the young maids.