e door and shouted, "Leave the room!" after Jean,
who, mastered once more by his natural timidity, was flying like
a thief down the corridors.

XX

In the court, which was enlivened by a parterre of roses, Jean,
carrying a letter in his hand, was trying to find his bearings
according to the directions given him in a low voice, as if it
were a secret, by the lay-brother who acted as doorkeeper. He
was wandering uncertainly from door to door along the walls of
the old silent buildings when a little boy noticed his plight
and accosted him:

"Do you want to see the Director? He is in his study with mamma.
Go and wait in the parlour."

This was a large hall with bare walls, a noble enough apartment
in its unadorned simplicity, in spite of the mean horsehair chairs
that stood round it. Above the fire-place, instead of a mirror,
was a _Mater dolorosa_ that caught the eye by its dazzling
whiteness. Big marble tears stood arrested in mid-career down
the cheeks, while the features expressed the pious absorption
of the Divine Mother's grief. Jean Servien read the inscription
cut in red letters on the pedestal, which ran thus:

PRESENTED TO THE REVEREND ABBE BORDIER,
IN MEMORY OF
PHILIPPE-GUY DE THIERERCHE,
WHO DIED AT PAU,
NOVEMBER 11, 1867, IN THE SEVENTEENTH
YEAR OF HIS AGE,
BY THE COUNTESS VALENTINE DE THIERERCHE,
NEE DE BRUILLE DE SAINT-AMAND.
_LAUDATE PUERI DOMINUM_

Then he forgot his anxieties, forgot he was there to beg for
employment, shook off the instinctive dread that had seized him
on the threshold of the great silent house. He forgot his fears
and hopes--hopes of being promoted usher! He was absorbed by
this cruel domestic drama revealed to him in the inscription.
A scion of one of the greatest families of France, a pupil of
the Abbe Bordier, attacked by phthisis in the midst of his now
profitless studies and leaving school, not to enjoy life and
taste the glorious pleasures only those contemn who have drained
them to the dregs, but to die at a southern town in the arms of
his mother whose overwhelming, but still self-conscious grief
was symbolized by this pompous memorial of her sorrow. He could
feel, he could see it all. The three Latin words that represent
the stricken mother saying: "Children, praise ye the Lord who
hath taken away my child," astonished him by their austere piety,
while at the same time he admired the aris