ce I
became conscious that a small green door beside the right hand low
_retable_ was moving outward. I ceased working and watched it; then the
solitary candle before the statue of the Virgin guttered and flared up;
then the small door opened wide and forth came an old man in a priest's
cassock, with a staff in his hand. The small, green, baize-covered door
closed noiselessly; the old man slowly opened the gate before the
altar and came down the step toward me. Without a word he walked behind
my chair and peered over my shoulder at the drawing I was making of the
great _Jube_.

He tapped the floor with his staff, placed it under his arm, sought his
pocket somewhere beneath his cassock, from which he produced a snuff
box. From this he took a generous pinch, and a moment later was blowing
vigorously that note of satisfaction that only a devotee of the powder
can render an effective adjunct of emotion.

"Bien faite, M'sieur," he exclaimed at length, wiping his eyes on a
rather suspicious looking handkerchief. "T-r-r-r-r-es bien faite! J'vous
fais mes compliments." "Admirable! You have certainly rendered the
spirit of our great and wondrous altar screen."

A little later we passed out of the old church through a side door
leading into a small green enclosure, now gloomy in the shade of the old
stone walls. At one end was a tangle of briar, and here were some old
graves, each with a tinsel wreath or two on the iron cross. And
presiding over these was the limp figure of a one-legged man on two
crutches, who saluted us. We passed along to the end of the inclosure,
where lay a chance beam of sunshine like a bar of dusty gold against the
rich green grass.

"Oui, M'sieur," said the priest, as if continuing a sentence he was
running over in his mind. "Casse! Pauvre Pierre, un peu casse, le pauvre
bonhomme, but then, he's good for several years yet; cracked he is, but
only cracked like a good old basin, and (in the idiom) he'll still hold
well his bowl of soup."

He laughed at his wit, became grave, then shook out another laugh.

"See," he added, pointing to the ground all about us strewn with morsels
of tile; "the roof cracks, but it still holds," he added, pointing
upwards at the old tower of St. Martin's. "And now, M'sieur, I shall
take you to my house; _tenez_, figure to yourself," and he laid a fine,
richly veined, strong old hand upon my arm with a charming gesture. "I
have been here twenty-five years; I bought all the