Pierre. The market-women in
white-winged caps, who had been sitting at the receipt of custom since
morning surrounded by heaps of glowing fruit and flowers, were now
vociferously gathering up their fragments, their waifs and strays and
remnants, to go home. The men were harnessing their horses, filling
their carts. It was all a clamorous, sunny, odd sort of picture amidst
the quaint and ancient buildings. Then they went into the church, into
the gloom and silence out of the stir. The doctor made the young ones a
sign to hush. There were women on their knees, and on the steps of the
altar a priest of dignified aspect, and a file of acolytes, awfully
ugly, the very refuse of the species--all but one, who was a saint for
beauty of countenance and devoutness of mien. Harry glanced at him and
his companions as if they were beings of a strange and mysterious race;
and the numerous votive offerings to "Our Lady of La Salette" and
elsewhere he eyed askance with the expression of a very sound Protestant
indeed. The lovely luxuriant architecture, the foliated carvings, were
dim in the evening light. A young sculptor, who was engaged in the work
of restoring some of these rich carvings, came down from his perch while
the strangers stood to admire them.
That night by nine o'clock Bessie Fairfax was in the _dortoir_ at Madame
Fournier's--a chamber of six windows and twenty beds, narrow, hard,
white, and, except her own and one other, empty.
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