“I shall make it as earnest as your composers with allow, sir,” the musician replied, with a slightly mocking smile.
“My composers!” exclaimed the priest, laughing. “I repudiate them. Was it one of my composers who wrote the music of the Stabat Mater, and set his voices pirouetting and waltzing through the woes of the Queen of sorrows? The world accuses Rossini of showing in that his contempt for Christianity. I would not say so much. I believe he thought of nothing but the rhythm and the vowel-sounds.”
“And was it one of my composers,” the Jew retorted, “who set the Kyrie Eleison I heard on passing your church last Sunday to an air as gay as any dance tune? If the words had been in English instead of Latin, it would have sounded blasphemous.”
F. Chevreuse made a gesture of resignation. “What can I do if the musicians are not so pious as the painters, if they will put the sound in the statue, and the sense in the pedestal? My only refuge is the Gregorian, which nobody but saints will tolerate. I am not a composer.”
The call was at an end, and the visitors went.
As soon as they were in the street, Miss Carthusen observed: “I notice that F. Chevreuse adopts Paracelsus’ method of cure: he anoints with fine ointment, not the wound, but the sword that made the wound.”
She had been annoyed at the little attention paid to herself in contrast with the honor shown the priest’s mother, and wished to find out if Mr. Schöninger kept any resentment toward Mme. Chevreuse. He felt her inquisitive, unscrupulous eyes searching his face in sidelong glances.
“The priest was very courteous to me,” he replied calmly. “And I should think that madame might be a very agreeable person to those she likes.”
The young woman instantly launched into a glowing eulogy of the priest’s mother, till her listener bit his lips. He was not quite ready to be altogether charmed with the lady.
“And, à propos of medicine,” said Miss Carthusen lightly, “it has been revealed to me to-day who the first homœopathist was.”