riction with Gabriel had caused to germinate in their
minds, stunted by the traditional atmosphere, a growth of ideas, like
the microscopic mosses the winter rains had formed on the granite
buttresses of the church. Hitherto they had lived resigned to the
life that surrounded them, moving like somnambulists on the undecided
boundary which separates soul from instinct, but the unexpected
presence of that fugitive from social battles was the impulse that
launched them into full thought, walking tentatively and with no other
light than that of their master.

"You," went on Gabriel, "do not suffer from the slavery of work like
those who live among modern factories. The Church does not require
great exertions from you, and the service of God does not destroy you
from over-fatigue, though it kills you with hunger. There exists a
monstrous inequality between the salaries of those down below who sit
in the choir and sing and what you earn, who lend to worship all the
strength of your arms. You will not die of fatigue, it is true; many a
workman in the towns would laugh at the lightness of your duties; but
you languish from poverty. I see in this cloister the same anaemic
children that I saw in workmen's slums, I see what you eat and what
you are paid. The Church pays its servants as in the days of faith;
she believes that we still live in the times when whole towns would
throw themselves into the work with the hope of gaining heaven, and
would help to raise cathedrals without any more positive recompense
than the workman's stew and the blessing of the bishop; and all this
while, you, beings of flesh who require nourishment, deceive your
stomachs and those of your wives and children with potatoes and bread,
while down below those wooden images are covered with pearls and gold
in senseless profusion, and without its ever occurring to you to ask
yourselves why the idols who have no wants should be so rich, while
you are unable to satisfy your own and live in misery."

The listeners looked at each other in astonishment, as though these
words were an illuminating flash. They were doubtful for a moment as
though frightened, and then the faith of conviction illuminated their
faces.

"It is true," said the bell-ringer in a gloomy tone.

"It is true," repeated the shoemaker, throwing into his words all
the bitterness of his grinding life of poverty, with a constantly
increasing family, and with no other help but his inadequate work.