The Abbé Mauduit, speaking in a loud voice, had the air of a stage-carpenter directing the placing of some gorgeous scenery.
And he turned round to call out to a workman:
“Move the Virgin on one side; you will be breaking her leg directly.”
The workman called a comrade. Between them they got hold of the Virgin round the small of her back, and carried her to a place of safety, like some tall white girl who had fallen down under a nervous attack.
“Be careful!” repeated the priest, following them through the rubbish, “her dress is already cracked. Wait a while!”
He gave them a hand, seizing Mary round the waist, and then, all covered with plaster, withdrew from the embrace.
“Then,” resumed he, returning to Octave, “just imagine that the two bays of the nave there before us are open, and go and stand in the chapel of the Virgin. Over the altar, and through the chapel of Perpetual Adoration, you will behold the Calvary right at the back. Just fancy the effect: these three enormous figures, this bare and simple drama in this tabernacle recess, beyond the dim, mysterious light of the stained-glass windows, the lamps and the gold candelabra. Eh? I think it will be irresistible!”
He was waxing eloquent, and, proud of his idea, he laughed joyfully.
“The most skeptical will be moved,” observed Octave, to please him.
“That is what I think!” cried he. “I am impatient to see everything in place.”
“I am going to see Monsieur Campardon this evening,” at length said the Abbe Mauduit. “Ask him to wait in for me. I wish to speak to him about an improvement without being disturbed.”
And he bowed with his worldly air. Octave was calmed now. Saint-Roch, with its cool vaults, had unbraced his nerves. He looked curiously at this entrance to a church through a private house, at the doorkeeper’s room, from whence at night time the door was often opened for the cause of the faith, at all that corner of a convent lost amidst the black conglomeration of the neighborhood. Out in the street, he again raised his eyes; the house displayed its bare frontage, with its barred and curtainless windows; but boxes of flowers were fixed by iron supports to the windows of the fourth floor; and, down below, in the thick walls, were narrow shops, which helped to fill the coffers of the clergy—a cobbler’s, a clock-maker’s, an embroiderer’s, and even a wine shop, where the mutes congregated whenever there was a funeral. Octave, who, from his rebuff, was in a mood to renounce the world, regretted the quiet lives which the priests’ servants led up there in those rooms enlivened with verbenas and sweet peas.