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Updated: June 9, 2025
Many a moving tale did the good bishop tell me as we sat in his little house surely the most meagre and ascetic of episcopal palaces, in which there was nothing more sumptuous than his cherry and scarlet soutane and his biretta. We lay the night at an inn that must have been at one time a seigneurial mansion, for it had a noble courtyard.
Banners were flying, shouts rent the air; familiar forms in cassock and biretta waved benedictions from all points of the compass; while the gladness and the sadness of the hour were perpetuated by the aid of instantaneous photography.
Neither the soldier nor the monk would give way, and the pair of them kept their heads covered, the one with his plumed hat, the other with his hood. At that moment the sound of clanking spurs was heard coming along the corridor, and now both the contending parties gave way before the third comer. The man who now entered also wore a plumed biretta on his head, but it was scarlet.
Useless: the story was the same. Third boy, same story. He tucked up his cassock with decision, took his biretta and walking-staff, and said to the three goat-herds: "My lads, all this is matter of miracle. I do not deny its truth God forbid it in a simple man such as I am. But I do certainly ask you to lead me to the scene of your labours." The boys needed no second asking: off they all set.
He walked home, thinking that everything was at last decided, when suddenly, without warning, when he was thinking of something else, his heart misgave him. It was as if he heard a voice saying: "My boy, I don't think you will ever put on the cassock. You will never walk with the biretta on your head." The priest had said that he did not believe he would ever buckle on the policeman's belt.
A child's shrill voice took up the reply, and from time to time a priest sitting in a stall and wearing a biretta got up, muttered something and sat down again, while the three singers continued, their eyes fixed on the big book of plain chant lying open before them on the outstretched wings of a wooden eagle. Then silence ensued and the service went on.
He was a gentle-faced old man, not unlike a very shrewd and wide-awake dormouse; and his white hair stood out in a mass beneath his biretta. But the words he used were unintelligible, though not altogether unfamiliar. "I . . . I don't understand, father," stammered the man. The priest looked at him sharply.
Abbe Mouret, holding the chalice by its stem with his left hand, the fingers of his right resting meanwhile on the burse, then bowed profoundly, but without removing his biretta, to a black wooden crucifix, which hung over the side-board.
"They made the hay in the river meadow, and carried it themselves. They thought it rare sport." The Bishop put on his biretta. "Give them a Play Day, dear Prioress, in honour of my visit. Tell them I asked that they should have it the day after to-morrow. I will then send you my white palfrey, suitably caparisoned.
He imagined that on the strength of my credit he could procure the biretta for himself. As soon as he saw me recognised as a mistress, he paid assiduous court to me, never losing an opportunity of everywhere sounding my praise. One day he said to me: "Madame, every one pities you on account of the vexation and grief which the Marquis de Montespan has caused you.
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