e Abbe's in a dreadful hurry: I can't follow him at all," said the
aged dowager, shaking her head-dress with bewilderment. Master Arnoton,
his great steel spectacles on his nose, searched in his prayer-book
where the deuce the words could be. But, after all, that gallant host,
which itself was thinking only of the feast, was far from being vexed
because the Mass rode post; and when Balaguere, with beaming
countenance, turned toward the assembly crying with all his might, _Ite
missa est_, with a single voice they returned, _Deo gratias_, so
joyously, so fervently, that one might have thought them already at
table responding to the first toast of the night.

III.

Five minutes later the crowd of seigneurs was seated in the grand
dining-hall, the chaplain in the midst of them. The chateau, illuminated
from top to bottom, echoed with songs, cries, laughter, uproar, and the
venerable Dom Balaguere planted his fork in the wing of a wood-hen,
drowning the remorse of his sin under floods of wine of the Pope and the
sweet juices of the meats.

So much did he eat and drink, that the poor holy man died in the night
of a terrible attack of sickness, without having even time to repent.
Then near the morning he arrived in heaven with all the savor of the
feast still about him and I leave you to imagine how he was received:

"Retire from my sight, evil Christian!" said the Sovereign Judge, "thy
fault is dark enough to efface a whole life of virtue. Ah, thou hast
robbed me of a Mass to-night. Thou shalt pay me back three hundred in
its place, and thou shalt not enter into Paradise unless thou shalt have
celebrated in thy proper chapel these three hundred Christmas Masses in
the presence of all those who have sinned by thy fault and with thee."

This, then, is the true legend of Dom Balaguere as they tell it in the
land of olives. To-day the chateau of Trinquelague is no more, but the
chapel still stands erect on the summit of Mont Ventoux, in a grove of
green oaks. The wind beats its disjointed portal; the grass creeps
across its threshold; the birds have built in the angles of the altar
and in the embrasures of the high windows, whence the colored panes have
long ago vanished. But it appears that every year at Christmas, a
supernatural light runs about these ruins, and that, in going to Mass or
feast, the peasants see the chapel illuminated by invisible candles
which burn brightly even through the wind and snow.

You may laugh