be unable to get away from home or
that she might wilfully stay away.

"High time it was over and done with," he said, for this Saint Vitus'
dance went on not without certain diminution of force, which disturbed
him. In fact he feared, after the febrile agitation of his nights, to
reveal himself as a sorry paladin when the time came. "But why bother?"
he rejoined, as he started toward Carhaix's, where he was to dine with
the astrologer Gevingey and Des Hermies.

"I shall be rid of my obsession awhile," he murmured, groping along in
the darkness of the tower.

Des Hermies, hearing him come up the stair, opened the door, casting a
shaft of light into the spiral. Durtal, reaching the landing, saw his
friend in shirt sleeves and enveloped in an apron.

"I am, as you see, in the heat of composition," and upon a stew-pan
boiling on the stove Des Hermies cast that brief and sure look which a
mechanic gives his machine, then he consulted, as if it were a
manometer, his watch, hanging to a nail. "Look," he said, raising the
pot lid.

Durtal bent over and through a cloud of vapour he saw a coiled napkin
rising and falling with the little billows. "Where is the leg of
mutton?"

"It, my friend, is sewn into that cloth so tightly that the air cannot
enter. It is cooking in this pretty, singing sauce, into which I have
thrown a handful of hay, some pods of garlic and slices of carrot and
onion, some grated nutmeg, and laurel and thyme. You will have many
compliments to make me if Gevingey doesn't keep us waiting too long,
because a _gigot a l'Anglaise_ won't stand being cooked to shreds."

Carhaix's wife looked in.

"Come in," she said. "My husband is here."

Durtal found him dusting the books. They shook hands. Durtal, at random,
looked over some of the dusted books lying on the table.

"Are these," he asked, "technical works about metals and bell-founding
or are they about the liturgy of bells?"

"They are not about founding, though there is sometimes reference to the
founders, the 'sainterers' as they were called in the good old days. You
will discover here and there some details about alloys of red copper and
fine tin. You will even find, I believe, that the art of the 'sainterer'
has been in decline for three centuries, probably due to the fact that
the faithful no longer melt down their ornaments of precious metals,
thus modifying the alloy. Or is it because the founders no longer invoke
Saint Anthony the Eremite