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Durtal, somewhat embarrassed, said nothing. He understood that Chantelouve refused to speak of his relations with Canon Docre. "My dear," said Mme. Chantelouve, addressing her husband, "you have forgotten to turn up your lamp wick. It is smoking. I can smell it from here, even through the closed door." She was most evidently conveying him a dismissal.
I know that when the poisons are sealed by sacrilege, when the operation is performed by a master, Docre or one of the princes of magic at Rome, it is not at all easy nor healthy to attempt to apply an antidote. Though I have heard of a certain abbé at Lyons who, practically alone, is succeeding right now in these difficult cures." "Dr. Johannès!" "You know him!" "No.
Docre contemplated the Christ surmounting the tabernacle, and with arms spread wide apart he spewed forth frightful insults, and, at the end of his forces, muttered the billingsgate of a drunken cabman. One of the choir boys knelt before him with his back toward the altar. A shudder ran around the priest's spine.
Docre made the genuflexions, the full-or half-length inclinations specified by the ritual. The kneeling choir boys sang the Latin responses in a crystalline voice which trilled on the ultimate syllables of the words. "But it's a simple low mass," said Durtal to Mme. Chantelouve. She shook her head.
"In spite of all, I should not be displeased, once in my life to get a good look at Canon Docre," said Durtal. "Not I! He is the incarnation of the Accursed on earth!" cried Carhaix, assisting his friends to put on their overcoats. He lighted his lantern, and while they were descending the stair, as Durtal complained of the cold, Des Hermies burst into a laugh.
The memory of these frightful magisteria kept racing through his head next day, and, while smoking cigarettes beside the fire, Durtal thought of Docre and Johannès fighting across Gévingey's back, smiting and parrying with incantations and exorcisms. "In the Christian symbolism," he said to himself, "the fish is one of the representations of Christ.
He went to a neighbouring wine shop where the dining-room, depopulated at six o'clock, permitted one to ruminate in tranquillity, while eating fairly sanitary food and drinking not too dangerously coloured wines. He was thinking of Mme. Chantelouve, but more of Docre. The mystery of this priest haunted him.
Durtal felt himself shudder. A whirlwind of hysteria shook the room. While the choir boys sprinkled holy water on the pontiff's nakedness, women rushed upon the Eucharist and, grovelling in front of the altar, clawed from the bread humid particles and drank and ate divine ordure. Another woman, curled up over a crucifix, emitted a rending laugh, then cried to Docre, "Father, father!"
He donned his sacerdotal habits, put on his finger the ring which has received the supreme benedictions, then he began to read from a special missal the prayers of the sacrifice. "Almost at once the voyant cried, 'Here are the spirits evoked for the spell. These are they which have carried the venefice, obedient to the command of the master of black magic, Canon Docre!
"Tomorrow night, unless it is inconvenient for you." "Not at all." "Then, au revoir." Their lips met. "And above all, don't think about Canon Docre," she said, turning and shaking her finger at him threateningly as she went out. "Devil take you and your reticence," he said to himself, closing the door after her.
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