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They went into the forecourt, and saw the Abbé Gévresin making his way to the gardens; they joined him, and the old priest asked them to go with him to the kitchen garden, where, to oblige his housekeeper, he was to inspect the seeds she had sown. "Aye, and I too promised long ago to look at the vegetables," exclaimed Durtal.
May we not apply to her what Durtal says of our Lady: "She seems to have come under the semblance of every race known to the middle ages; black as an African, tawny as a Mongolian;" "she unveils herself to the children of the soil ... these beings with their rough-hewn feelings, their shapeless ideas, hardly able to express themselves"? The more we study the visions and apparitions with which saints have been favoured and the revelations which have been vouchsafed to them, the more evident is it that they are spoken to in their own language, appealed to through their own imagery.
No doubt they have been deliberately divested of reflection that they may not by the insolent joyousness of stones on fire insult the melancholy sorrow of this church which rises in the squalid haunts of a quarter inhabited by beggars and thieves. Then these thoughts assailed Durtal.
Durtal told him of the awful night of his arrival at La Trappe, and of the feeling of being spied upon which had awakened him the day before. "We have long known these manifestations, they are without imminent danger; do not therefore let them trouble you. At the same time, if they continue you will let me know, and we will not neglect attending to them."
"The fact is," said Durtal, who thought over again the contradictory declarations of the monks, confessing that they led at once the most attractive and the most atrocious life; "the fact is that the good God deceives them. They attain here below Paradise, while they seek hell there.
Durtal followed to the cathedral. When he reached the little square, the procession, caught by a gale of wind, was struggling and clinging to the banners, which bellied like the sails of a ship, carrying on the men who clutched the poles. At last, more or less easily, all the people were swallowed up in the basilica. The Te Deum was pouring out in a torrent from the organ.
"Do you find it a bit raw?" "No, it's tart if you sip it, but sweet if you take a good mouthful," answered Durtal. "Wife, serve the potatoes. Don't wait for me. I delayed so long getting my business done that it's time for the angelus. Don't bother about me. Go on eating. I shall catch up with you when I get back."
"Could he insinuate into a victim the idea to drink, regularly, in graduated doses, a toxin which he would designate, and which would simulate the phases of a malady?" asked Durtal. "Nothing simpler. 'Open window burglars' that the physicians of the present day are, they recognize perfectly the ability of a more skilful man to pull off such jobs.
The bell-ringer lighted a little briar pipe, while Des Hermies and Durtal each rolled a cigarette. "Pretty comfortable place," remarked Durtal, just to be saying something. It was a vast room, vaulted, with walls of rough stone, and lighted by a semi-circular window just under the ceiling.
There is no difficulty there. "Then the cost is moderate. As far as I remember the railway fare is about fifteen francs, add two or three francs for lunch, and six or seven for the carriage ..." And as Durtal was silent, the abbé went on: "Well?"
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