y, by the
time the last door was prepared to open, the first would be closed
again! So the 'Powers' gave Roche more string--so good, you know, to see
him interested in something!... It does take an eye to tell salvation
from damnation! For he began to go down now of an afternoon into the
little old town--not smelless, but most quaint--all yellowish-grey, with
rosy-tiled roofs. Once it had been Roman, once a walled city of the
Middle Ages; never would it be modern. The dogs ran muzzled; from a
first-floor a goat, munching green fodder, hung his devilish black beard
above your head; and through the main street the peasant farmers, above
military age, looking old as sun-dried roots, in their dark _pelerines_,
drove their wives and produce in little slow carts. Parched oleanders in
pots one would pass, and old balconies with wilting flowers hanging down
over the stone, and perhaps an umbrella with a little silver handle, set
out to dry. Roche would go in by the back way, where the old town
gossips sat on a bench in the winter sunshine, facing the lonely cross
shining gold on the high hill-top opposite, placed there in days when
there was some meaning in such things; past the little '_Place_' with
the old fountain and the brown plane-trees in front of the Mairie; past
the church, so ancient that it had fortunately been forgotten, and
remained unfinished and beautiful. Did Roche, Breton that he was--half
the love-ladies in Paris, they say--falsely, no doubt--are
Bretonnes--ever enter the church in passing? Some rascal had tried to
burn down its beautiful old door from the inside, and the flames had
left on all that high western wall smears like the fingermarks of hell,
or the background of a Velasquez Crucifixion. Did he ever enter and
stand, knotting his knot which never got knotted, in the dark loveliness
of that grave building, where in the deep silence a dusty-gold little
angel blows on his horn from the top of the canopied pulpit, and a dim
carved Christ of touching beauty looks down on His fellow-men from above
some dry chrysanthemums; and a tall candle burned quiet and lonely here
and there, and the flags of France hung above the altar, that men might
know how God--though resting--was with them and their country? Perhaps!
But, more likely, he passed it, with its great bell riding high and open
among scrolls of ironwork, and--Breton that he was--entered the nearest
cabaret, kept by the woman who would tell you that her so