“No, to be perfectly honest.”
And then she surprised him.
“Do not worry your conscience. When I go to church, it is not because I am this or that, but because I know there is a God, and that life is a mystery, and that one should kneel down and feel things and try to understand. I am not a religious woman, as the priests would have it, nor am I a Catholic. Religious women are often not good women—as I understand goodness.”
“You are full of surprises,” he said.
She gave him a shrewd little smile.
“I went to a good school, Paul. Do you think that because I live in a village I have been brought up in a convent? We French are very practical; we think a great deal. But I am not a little fool who imagines that she understands everything. One must have a religion, and it is none the worse if you make it yourself. Never to do mean things, and never to grow hard. And to remember—always—that one’s orchard and garden are miracles, and that life did not happen by chance.”
Brent had put on his cap. He took it off again.
“You get to the heart of things,” he said.
Directly ahead of them, and half closing the east end of the Place de l’Eglise, were the ruins of the Hôtel de Paris. The hotel stood at the corner where the Rue d’Eschelle ran steeply down to the river, a big white place, its angles and cornice of faced ashlar, its great central chimney-stack still standing up red and raw. On the other side of the street the Hospice towered up like a ragged grey cliff that looked ready to fall.
Manon walked towards the Hôtel de Paris. The ruins had a particular significance for her, for the hotel had belonged to Monsieur Louis Blanc, vulgarly known as Bibi. Manon had had cause to regard Monsieur Louis Blanc with peculiar distrust and aversion. He had been her rival, and he had desired also to be her lover; the intrigue would have suited both his body and his business.