III

THREE BRETON SILHOUETTES

When night had fairly fallen, Gasselin came into the hall and asked his master respectfully if he had further need of him.

“You can go out, or go to bed, after prayers,” replied the baron, waking up, “unless Madame or my sister—­”

The two ladies here made a sign of consent.  Gasselin then knelt down, seeing that his masters rose to kneel upon their chairs; Mariotte also knelt before her stool.  Mademoiselle du Guenic then said the prayer aloud.  After it was over, some one rapped at the door on the lane.  Gasselin went to open it.

“I dare say it is Monsieur le cure; he usually comes first,” said Mariotte.

Every one now recognized the rector’s foot on the resounding steps of the portico.  He bowed respectfully to the three occupants of the room, and addressed them in phrases of that unctuous civility which priests are accustomed to use.  To the rather absent-minded greeting of the mistress of the house, he replied by an ecclesiastically inquisitive look.

“Are you anxious or ill, Madame la baronne?” he asked.

“Thank you, no,” she replied.

Monsieur Grimont, a man of fifty, of middle height, lost in his cassock, from which issued two stout shoes with silver buckles, exhibited above his hands a plump visage, and a generally white skin though yellow in spots.  His hands were dimpled.  His abbatial face had something of the Dutch burgomaster in the placidity of its complexion and its flesh tones, and of the Breton peasant in the straight black hair and the vivacity of the brown eyes, which preserved, nevertheless, a priestly decorum.  His gaiety, that of a man whose conscience was calm and pure, admitted a joke.  His manner had nothing uneasy or dogged about it, like that of many poor rectors whose existence or whose power is contested by their parishioners, and who instead of being, as Napoleon sublimely said, the moral leaders of the population and the natural justices of peace, are treated as enemies.  Observing Monsieur Grimont as he marched through Guerande, the most irreligious of travellers would have recognized the sovereign of that Catholic town; but this same sovereign lowered his spiritual superiority before the feudal supremacy of the du Guenics.  In their salon he was as a chaplain in his seigneur’s house.  In church, when he gave the benediction, his hand was always first stretched out toward the chapel belonging to the Guenics, where their mailed hand and their device were carved upon the key-stone of the arch.

“I thought that Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel had already arrived,” said the rector, sitting down, and taking the hand of the baroness to kiss it.  “She is getting unpunctual.  Can it be that the fashion of dissipation is contagious?  I see that Monsieur le chevalier is again at Les Touches this evening.”

“Don’t say anything about those visits before Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel,” cried the old maid, eagerly.