Maitre Cornelius | Page 2

with life and
grasping it in all its acts and interests, religion had made itself a sharer
of all virtues, the accomplice of all vices. Religion had passed into

science, into politics, into eloquence, into crimes, into the flesh of the
sick man and the poor man; it mounted thrones; it was everywhere.
These semi-learned observations will serve, perhaps, to vindicate the
truth of this study, certain details of which may frighten the perfected
morals of our age, which are, as everybody knows, a trifle straitlaced.
At the moment when the chanting ceased and the last notes of the organ,
mingling with the vibrations of the loud "A-men" as it issued from the
strong chests of the intoning clergy, sent a murmuring echo through the
distant arches, and the hushed assembly were awaiting the beneficent
words of the archbishop, a burgher, impatient to get home, or fearing
for his purse in the tumult of the crowd when the worshippers dispersed,
slipped quietly away, at the risk of being called a bad Catholic. On
which, a nobleman, leaning against one of the enormous columns that
surround the choir, hastened to take possession of the seat abandoned
by the worthy Tourainean. Having done so, he quickly hid his face
among the plumes of his tall gray cap, kneeling upon the chair with an
air of contrition that even an inquisitor would have trusted.
Observing the new-comer attentively, his immediate neighbors seemed
to recognize him; after which they returned to their prayers with a
certain gesture by which they all expressed the same thought,--a caustic,
jeering thought, a silent slander. Two old women shook their heads,
and gave each other a glance that seemed to dive into futurity.
The chair into which the young man had slipped was close to a chapel
placed between two columns and closed by an iron railing. It was
customary for the chapter to lease at a handsome price to seignorial
families, and even to rich burghers, the right to be present at the
services, themselves and their servants exclusively, in the various
lateral chapels of the long side-aisles of the cathedral. This simony is in
practice to the present day. A woman had her chapel as she now has her
opera-box. The families who hired these privileged places were
required to decorate the altar of the chapel thus conceded to them, and
each made it their pride to adorn their own sumptuously,--a vanity
which the Church did not rebuke. In this particular chapel a lady was
kneeling close to the railing on a handsome rug of red velvet with gold

tassels, precisely opposite to the seat vacated of the burgher. A
silver-gilt lamp, hanging from the vaulted ceiling of the chapel before
an altar magnificently decorated, cast its pale light upon a prayer-book
held by the lady. The book trembled violently in her hand when the
young man approached her.
"A-men!"
To that response, sung in a sweet low voice which was painfully
agitated, though happily lost in the general clamor, she added rapidly in
a whisper:--
"You will ruin me."
The words were said in a tone of innocence which a man of any
delicacy ought to have obeyed; they went to the heart and pierced it.
But the stranger, carried away, no doubt, by one of those paroxysms of
passion which stifle conscience, remained in his chair and raised his
head slightly that he might look into the chapel.
"He sleeps!" he replied, in so low a voice that the words could be heard
by the young woman only, as sound is heard in its echo.
The lady turned pale; her furtive glance left for a moment the vellum
page of the prayer-book and turned to the old man whom the young
man had designated. What terrible complicity was in that glance? When
the young woman had cautiously examined the old seigneur, she drew a
long breath and raised her forehead, adorned with a precious jewel,
toward a picture of the Virgin; that simple movement, that attitude, the
moistened glance, revealed her life with imprudent naivete; had she
been wicked, she would certainly have dissimulated. The personage
who thus alarmed the lovers was a little old man, hunchbacked, nearly
bald, savage in expression, and wearing a long and discolored white
beard cut in a fan-tail. The cross of Saint-Michel glittered on his breast;
his coarse, strong hands, covered with gray hairs, which had been
clasped, had now dropped slightly apart in the slumber to which he had
imprudently yielded. The right hand seemed about to fall upon his
dagger, the hilt of which was in the form of an iron shell. By the

manner in which he had placed the weapon, this hilt was directly under
his hand; if, unfortunately, the hand touched the iron, he would wake,