after she was in her new home,
before going to mass, Hubertine opened before her the old chest in the
working-room, where she kept the fine gold thread. She held up the
little book, then, placing it in that back part of one of the drawers, said:
"Look! I have put it here. I will not hide it, but leave it where you can
take it if you ever wish to do so. It is best that you should see it, and
remember where it is."
On entering the church that day, Angelique found herself again under
the doorway of Saint Agnes. During the week there had been a partial
thaw, then the cold weather had returned to so intense a degree that the
snow which had half melted on the statues had congealed itself in large
bunches or in icicles. Now, the figures seemed dressed in transparent
robes of ice, with lace trimmings like spun glass. Dorothea was holding
a torch, the liquid droppings of which fell upon her hands. Cecilia wore
a silver crown, in which glistened the most brilliant of pearls. Agatha's
nude chest was protected by a crystal armour. And the scenes in the
tympanum, the little virgins in the arches, looked as if they had been
there for centuries, behind the glass and jewels of the shrine of a saint.
Agnes herself let trail behind her her court mantle, threaded with light
and embroidered with stars. Her lamb had a fleece of diamonds, and
her palm-branch had become the colour of heaven. The whole door was
resplendent in the purity of intense cold.
Angelique recollected the night she had passed there under the
protection of these saints. She raised her head and smiled upon them.
CHAPTER II
Beaumont is composed of two villages, completely separated and quite
distinct one from the other--Beaumont-l'Eglise, on the hill with its old
Cathedral of the twelfth century, its Bishop's Palace which dates only
from the seventeenth century, its inhabitants, scarcely one thousand in
number, who are crowded together in an almost stifling way in its
narrow streets; and Beaumont-la-Ville, at the foot of the hill, on the
banks of the Ligneul, an ancient suburb, which the success of its
manufactories of lace and fine cambric has enriched and enlarged to
such an extent that it has a population of nearly ten thousand persons,
several public squares, and an elegant sub-prefecture built in the
modern style. These two divisions, the northern district and the
southern district, have thus no longer anything in common except in an
administrative way. Although scarcely thirty leagues from Paris, where
one can go by rail in two hours, Beaumont-l'Eglise seems to be still
immured in its old ramparts, of which, however, only three gates
remain. A stationary, peculiar class of people lead there a life similar to
that which their ancestors had led from father to son during the past
five hundred years.
The Cathedral explains everything, has given birth to and preserved
everything. It is the mother, the queen, as it rises in all its majesty in the
centre of, and above, the little collection of low houses, which, like
shivering birds, are sheltered under her wings of stone. One lives there
simply for it, and only by it. There is no movement of business activity,
and the little tradesmen only sell the necessities of life, such as are
absolutely required to feed, to clothe, and to maintain the church and its
clergy; and if occasionally one meets some private individuals, they are
merely the last representatives of a scattered crowd of worshippers. The
church dominates all; each street is one of its veins; the town has no
other breath than its own. On that account, this spirit of another age,
this religious torpor from the past, makes the cloistered city which
surrounds it redolent with a savoury perfume of peace and of faith.
And in all this mystic place, the house of the Huberts, where Angelique
was to live in the future, was the one nearest to the Cathedral, and
which clung to it as if in reality it were a part thereof. The permission
to build there, between two of the great buttresses, must have been
given by some vicar long ago, who was desirous of attaching to himself
the ancestors of this line of embroiderers, as master chasuble-makers
and furnishers for the Cathedral clergy. On the southern side, the
narrow garden was barred by the colossal building; first, the
circumference of the side chapels, whose windows overlooked the
flower-beds, and then the slender, long nave, that the flying buttresses
supported, and afterwards the high roof covered with the sheet lead.
The sun never penetrated to the lower part of this garden, where ivy
and box alone grew luxuriantly; yet the eternal shadow there
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