The parlor with the two dismal front windows beside the entrance was used as a reception-room. Back of that was the priest’s private sitting-room, with two windows looking out on the veranda, and one window commanding the basement entrance of the church, the pleasant green space around it, and the flight of stairs that led up to the street. F. Chevreuse’s arm-chair and writing-table always stood in this window, and behind them was a door leading into a little side-room containing a strong desk where he kept papers and money, and a sofa on which he took an occasional nap.
Up-stairs were two sleeping-rooms; down-stairs, as the hill sloped, the kitchen, dining-room, and the two rooms occupied by Jane, the cook, and Andrew, the priest’s man. There was space enough in the house, and it had the charm of irregularity; but from the street, as we have said, it was a melancholy-looking structure. F. Chevreuse, however, could not have been better pleased with it had it been a palace. Within, all was comfort and love for him; and he probably never looked at the outside. The new church and his people engrossed his thoughts.
Mrs. Chevreuse was not so indifferent. “It would not look well for me to go up on a ladder, and paint the outside walls,” she said to herself, her only confidant in such matters; “but, if it could be turned inside-out for one day, I would quickly have it looking less like an urchin with a soiled face.”
No one could doubt this assertion after having seen the interior of this castle of the rueful countenance. There she could go up on a ladder without shocking any one, and from basement to attic the place was as fresh as a rose. But the nicety was never intrusive. This lady’s house-keeping perspective was admirably arranged, and her point of view the right one. Cleanliness and order dwelt with her, not as tyrants, but as good fairies who were visible only when looked for. If you should chance to think of it, you would observe that everything which should be polished shone like a mirror; that the white was immaculate, the windows clear, and the furniture well-placed. You might recollect that the door was never opened for you by an untidy house-maid, and that no odors from the kitchen ever saluted your nostrils on entering, though a bouquet on the stair-post sometimes breathed a fragrant welcome.
Now, housekeepers know that the observance of all these little details of order and good taste involves a great deal of care and labor; but they sometimes forget that their exquisite ménage loses its principal charm when the care and labor are made manifest. It cannot be denied that the temptation is strong now and then to let Cæsar know by what pains we produce these apparently simple results, which he takes as a matter of course; but, when the temptation is yielded to, the results cease to be entirely pleasing. The unhappy man becomes afraid to walk on our carpets, to touch our door-knobs, to sit in our chairs, eat eggs with our spoons, lay his odious pipe on our best table-cover, or tie the curtains into a knot. The touching confidence with which he was wont to ask that an elaborate dinner might be prepared for him in fifteen minutes vanishes from his face like a rainbow tint that leaves the cloud behind. “A cold lunch will do,” he tells you resignedly, and you detect incipient dyspepsia in his countenance. The free motions that seemed to feel infinite space about them are no more. The anxious hero pulls his toga about him in the most undignified and ungraceful manner, lest it should upset a flower-pot or a chair. In fine, the tormenting gadfly of our neatness stings him up and down his days, till he would fain seek refuge and rest in disorder.
Mother Chevreuse knew all this perfectly, and behaved herself in so heroic a manner that her son never suspected, what was quite true, that the unnecessary steps he caused her might make several miles a day.
One morning after early Mass, toward the last of May, she seated herself in the arm-chair by the window, and watched for the priest to come in from the church. This was a part of her daily programme, and the only time of day she ever occupied what she called his throne. After his breakfast, they did not meet, save incidentally, till supper-time; for, except when they had company, F. Chevreuse dined alone. The mother had perceived that, when they dined together, there had been a struggle between the sense of duty and courtesy which made him wish to entertain her, and the abstraction he naturally felt in the midst of the cares and labors of the day, and, ever on the watch lest she should in any way intrude on his vocation, had herself made this arrangement. The fact that he did not oppose it was a sufficient proof that it was agreeable to him.
This mother was the softer type of her son, as though what you would carve in granite you should first mould in wax. There was the same compact form, telling of health, strength, and activity, the same clear eyes, the same thick gray hair crowning a forehead more wide than high. Their expressions differed as their circumstances did; cheerfulness and good sense were common to both; but, where the priest was authoritative, the woman was dignified.
Presently her face brightened, for the fold of a black robe showed some one standing just inside the chapel door, and the next moment F. Chevreuse appeared, his hands clasped behind him, his face bent thoughtfully downward. Seeing him thus for the first time, you are surprised to find him only medium height. At the altar, he had appeared tall. You might wonder, too, what great beauty his admirers found in him. But scarcely had the doubt formed itself in your mind, before it was triumphantly answered. The priest’s first step was into a shadow, his second into sunlight; and, as that light smote him, he lifted his head quickly, and a smile broke over his face. Wheeling about, he fronted the east. The river-courses had hollowed out a deep ravine between him and the sunrise, and the tide of glory flowed in and filled that from rim to rim, and curled over the green hills like wine-froth over a beaker. He stood gazing, smiling and undazzled, his face illuminated from within as from without. It might be said of F. Chevreuse, as it was of William Blake, that, when the sun rose “he did not see a round, fiery disk somewhat like a guinea, but an innumerable company of the heavenly hosts crying, ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty!’”
The mother watched, but did not interrupt him. She knew well that such moments were fruitful, and that he was storing away in his mind the precious vintage of that spring morning to bring it forth again at some future time fragrant with the bouquet of a spiritual significance. “Glimpses of God,” she called such moods.