Compared with the Protestant influences of his birth and experience, the separation of religion from society, the all-absorbing gesture and the mysticism of the Roman church offered a complete escape, an obliteration, of the individual. But, as he dwelt upon this, he realized that, for him, it was an impossibility. He might be a Franciscan, begging his way, in brown bagging and sandals, through a callous world for which he ceaselessly prayed; or one of the heroic Jesuits of the early French occupation of the Mississippi Valley. Yet these, as well, were no more than pictures, designs in a kaleidoscope which, immediately turned, would be destroyed in a fresh pattern. He was brought back to reality by the swinging of the heavy curtain at the door; a segment of day, like a white explosion of powder, was visible, and La Clavel proceeded to the font of holy water. As he joined her she complained:
"You should have held it for me in your palm; what barbarians the Americans and English are." She was, characteristically, dressed as brightly as possible, in a mauve skirt with an elaborately cut flounce swaying about yellow silk stockings, a mantón of white crêpe de Chine embroidered with immense emerald green blossoms; her hair piled about its tall comb was covered with a mantilla falling in scallops across her brilliant cheeks. In the church, that reduced so much, she was startling in her bold color and presence.
A negro, whom Charles recognized as a servant at the St. Louis, followed her with a heavy roll and a small unpainted chair with a caned seat. Before the altar, under the low pointed arches of the transept, he spread out a deep-piled Persian rug--where La Clavel promptly kneeled--and set the chair conveniently for her. Her devotion at an end, the dancer rose and disposed herself comfortably. The constant flutter of a fan with sandal wood sticks stirred the edge of her mantilla. After she had scrutinized the worshippers about them, she turned to Charles, speaking in a guarded voice.
He listened with an intense concentration, in the careful preliminaries of a difficult act of memory, asking her, when it could not be avoided, to repeat facts or names. They were, now, concerned with the New York Junta, involved tables of costs, and La Clavel was palpably annoyed by the unaccustomed necessity of a strict mental effort. She raised her eyebrows, shot an inviting glance at an interested man of middle age, and shut and opened her fan by an irritable twist of the wrist. Watching, weighing, her mood, Charles abruptly brought her recital to an end.