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But when he beheld the wealthy manufacturer Madeleine going to low mass at seven o'clock, he perceived in him a possible candidate, and resolved to outdo him; he took a Jesuit confessor, and went to high mass and to vespers. Ambition was at that time, in the direct acceptation of the word, a race to the steeple.
In France and in England, it is obligatory also to attend vespers on the Sundays. Not so, however, in Spain, where, in the evenings, scarcely a person is to be seen in the churches.
"It is most wonderful," he said one evening to Fra Giulio, as they talked together in the cloister after vespers; "I solemnly declare that it hath happened to me to ask him a question of which I, verily, knew not the answer; and he, keeping in quiet thought for some moments, hath so lucidly responded that his words have carried with them the conviction that he had made a discovery which I knew not."
Vespers were said at three o'clock, after baptisms and more confessions; and Anthony was astonished at the number of folk who could answer the priest. After vespers he made a short sermon, and told the people something of what he had seen in the South, of the martyrdoms at Tyburn, and of the constancy of the confessors. "'Be thou faithful unto death," he said.
Ah! said I in the days of my enthusiastic youth, shall I not hear the tolling for the second vespers of the republic, and our priests, dressed in white tunics, singing after the Doric fashion the returning hymn: Change o Dieu, notre servitude, comme le vent du desert en un souffle rafraichissan! . . . . . But I have despaired of republicans, and no longer know either religion or priests.
"'Ah! said he; 'God has punished me for not going to vespers at Church. "And he began to excuse himself as best he could, saying, that the wine had muddled his understanding, and getting into his own bed he kept repeating to his good wife, that for his best cow he would not have had this sin upon his conscience.
Thus is preserved the memory of early Christian times, when the Christians brought wine and oil and bread for their worship; and the best having been selected for sacred use, portions were taken from the remainder in memory of those who sent or brought them, after the rest was used to refresh the congregation during a pause in the all-night service between vespers and matins.
The very next day, while the division was marching out of the town, the General went to the convent to be present at vespers. He found an empty church. The townsfolk, devout though they were, had all gone down to the quay to watch the embarkation of the troops. He felt glad to be the only man there.
Hennepin laments the failure of wine, which prevented him from saying mass; but every morning and evening he summoned the men to his cabin, to listen to prayers and preaching, and on Sundays and fete days they chanted vespers.
Eustace was the pleasantest place on earth for both the cronies after Vespers had been sung in their parishes on Sunday afternoons, and the three miles covered from the Presbytery of Ste. Agatha to the Presbytery of St. Eustace.
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