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The rooms were all en suite, and I had given her one opening into mine, telling her we would never shut the door save when she wished it. I saw her gazing earnestly at her brother's portrait and all the precious little objects consecrated to his memory, which I had arranged by my benitier and crucifix, but I did not expect her firs exclamation, when our woman had left us: 'Ah!
She noticed that Belasez ignored the existence of her private oratory, made no reverence to the gilded Virgin which stood on a bracket in her wardrobe, and passed the benitier without vouchsafing the least attention to the holy water. Manifestly, Jews did not believe in gilded images and holy water. But then, in what did they believe? Had they any faith in any thing?
From rods on the ceiling hung curtains which completely enclosed it at night, but which were drawn back and looped up during the day, when the bed was used as a divan. At night a small oil lamp with a floating wick was hung within the curtains, and near the bed was a bénitier.
About thirty years ago, there was the skeleton of a hand hanging up as an offering in a Breton church near Quimperle, and the tradition was, that it was the hand of a rich Cagot who had dared to take holy water out of the usual benitier, some time at the beginning of the reign of Louis the Sixteenth; which an old soldier witnessing, he lay in wait, and the next time the offender approached the benitier he cut off his hand, and hung it up, dripping with blood, as an offering to the patron saint of the church.
Sacrilegious to state, he fixed his head-quarters in the oratory, and there, in presence of benitier, candle, and crucifix, solemnised the mysteries of his art. Each girl was summoned in turn to pass through his hands; emerging from them with head as smooth as a shell, intersected by faultless white lines, and wreathed about with Grecian plaits that shone as if lacquered.
He touched the earth, moistened with the evening dew, with the ends of his fingers, signed himself as if he had been at the benitier in church, and retook alone ever alone the road to Paris. Epilogue.
They represent scenes from the Apocalypse, and, though having suffered somewhat from the depredations of the Revolution, still exhibit evidences of rare qualities of workmanship in their design and colouring. The bénitier of verd-antico marble supported by figures of lions is a Byzantine work of the eastern empire, given to the cathedral by King René.
It was occasionally surrounded by sculpture, which invariably represented an oak-branch with a dove above it. When they were once in, they might not go to the holy water used by others. They had a benitier of their own; nor were they allowed to share in the consecrated bread when that was handed round to the believers of the pure race. The Cagots stood afar off, near the door.
Above the commode were the photographs of the family, arranged in two lines, with an antique china benitier between. On the corners of the commode a bust of Pascal faced another of Beranger one grave, the other smiling. It was, indeed, a fair and pleasant home. "How much do you think we pay here?" Gervaise would ask of each new visitor. And when too high an estimate was given she was charmed.
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