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I leave it to my wife to continue this Marivaux conversation about Satanism with you." He said it in the simplest, most debonair fashion to be imagined, but with just the slightest trace of irony. Which Durtal perceived. "It must be quite late," he thought, when the door closed after Chantelouve. He consulted his watch. Nearly eleven. He rose to take leave.
"Hmmm," said Durtal, "I am afraid that a drop of this oil long ago fell on the scalp of poor old Gévingey." "What is interesting about this story is not the outlandishness of these diabolical pharmacopoeia so much as the psychology of the persons who invent and manipulate them. Think.
And Durtal, who had placed himself near them opposite the porch which gave upon the high altar, saw them reflected in the sheet of glass, placed before the shrine of the Blessed Guerric. This sheet had indeed the effect of a mirror, and the white fathers were in the depths of it, lived in prayers under the table, in the very heart of the altar.
Durtal rose and went into his library to find a book, "Traditions tératologiques," by Berger de Xivrey. It contained long extracts from the "Romance of Alexander," which was the delight of the grown-up children of the Middle Ages.
Then Durtal shook himself, and would repulse the assault of these memories. "At any rate I will go and breathe the fresh air, and smoke a cigarette; we will see afterwards." He descended the staircase, whose walls seemed not to keep their place, and danced in the light of his candle, threaded the corridors, blew out his light, placed the candlestick near the auditorium, and rushed out.
That will explain imperfectly how one can become attached to them." "Why, you seem to be an enthusiast yourself." "Oh, I don't know anything about it. I am simply repeating what I have heard Carhaix say. If the subject interests you, he will be only too glad to teach you the symbolism of bells. He is inexhaustible. The man is a monomaniac." "I can understand," said Durtal dreamily.
"One of the distinctive marks of the mystics," answered the abbé, with a smile, "is just their absolute balance, their entire common sense." These conversations cheered Durtal; they planted on him seeds of reflection which sprang up when he was alone; they encouraged him to trust to the advice of this priest, and follow his counsels.
And this I understand, because each element is shown in its true colour; but I should never have dreamed that it was so complicated, never have supposed that there was so much meaning in painters' pictures." "In some painters'!" cried Durtal. "For since the Middle Ages the doctrine of emblematic colouring is extinct.
It consisted simply of a hall, a tiny sitting-room, a minute bedroom, and a large enough bathroom. It was on the fifth floor, facing a sufficiently airy court. Rent, eight hundred francs. It was furnished without luxury. The little sitting-room Durtal had converted into a study, hiding the walls behind black wood bookcases crammed with books.
"In your future cathedral you have forgotten to reserve a nook for Saint Columba, if, indeed, we can find some ascetic plant native, or at any rate common, to Ireland, the land where this Father was born." "The thistle, figurative of mortification and penance and a memento of asceticism, is conspicuous as the badge of Scotland," replied Durtal. "But why Saint Columba?"
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