The Vicar of Tours | Page 7

of his promotion by the
company at Madame de Listomere's,--an old lady with whom he spent
every Wednesday evening.
The vicar rang loudly, as if to let the servant know she was not to keep
him waiting. Then he stood close to the door to avoid, if he could,
getting showered; but the drip from the roof fell precisely on the toes of
his shoes, and the wind blew gusts of rain into his face that were much
like a shower-bath. Having calculated the time necesary for the woman
to leave the kitchen and pull the string of the outer door, he rang again,
this time in a manner that resulted in a very significant peal of the bell.
"They can't be out," he said to himself, not hearing any movement on
the premises.
Again he rang, producing a sound that echoed sharply through the
house and was taken up and repeated by all the echoes of the cathedral,
so that no one could avoid waking up at the remonstrating racket.
Accordingly, in a few moments, he heard, not without some pleasure in
his wrath, the wooden shoes of the servant-woman clacking along the
paved path which led to the outer door. But even then the discomforts
of the gouty old gentleman were not so quickly over as he hoped.
Instead of pulling the string, Marianne was obliged to turn the lock of
the door with its heavy key, and pull back all the bolts.
"Why did you let me ring three times in such weather?" said the vicar.
"But, monsieur, don't you see the door was locked? We have all been in
bed ever so long; it struck a quarter to eleven some time ago.
Mademoiselle must have thought you were in."
"You saw me go out, yourself. Besides, Mademoiselle knows very well
I always go to Madame de Listomere's on Wednesday evening."
"I only did as Mademoiselle told me, monsieur."
These words struck the vicar a blow, which he felt the more because his
late revery had made him completely happy. He said nothing and

followed Marianne towards the kitchen to get his candlestick, which he
supposed had been left there as usual. But instead of entering the
kitchen Marianne went on to his own apartments, and there the vicar
beheld his candlestick on a table close to the door of the red salon, in a
sort of antechamber formed by the landing of the staircase, which the
late canon had inclosed with a glass partition. Mute with amazement,
he entered his bedroom hastily, found no fire, and called to Marianne,
who had not had time to get downstairs.
"You have not lighted the fire!" he said.
"Beg pardon, Monsieur l'abbe, I did," she said; "it must have gone out."
Birotteau looked again at the hearth, and felt convinced that the fire had
been out since morning.
"I must dry my feet," he said. "Make the fire."
Marianne obeyed with the haste of a person who wants to get back to
her night's rest. While looking about him for his slippers, which were
not in the middle of his bedside carpet as usual, the abbe took mental
notes of the state of Marianne's dress, which convinced him that she
had not got out of bed to open the door as she said she had. He then
recollected that for the last two weeks he had been deprived of various
little attentions which for eighteen months had made life sweet to him.
Now, as the nature of narrow minds induces them to study trifles,
Birotteau plunged suddenly into deep meditation on these four
circumstances, imperceptible in their meaning to others, but to him
indicative of four catastrophes. The total loss of his happiness was
evidently foreshadowed in the neglect to place his slipppers, in
Marianne's falsehood about the fire, in the unusual removal of his
candlestick to the table of the antechamber, and in the evident intention
to keep him waiting in the rain.
When the fire was burning on the hearth, and the lamp was lighted, and
Marianne had departed without saying, as usual, "Does Monsieur want
anything more?" the Abbe Birotteau let himself fall gently into the
wide and handsome easy-chair of his late friend; but there was
something mournful in the movement with which he dropped upon it.
The good soul was crushed by a presentiment of coming calamity. His
eyes roved successively to the handsome tall clock, the bureau, curtains,
chairs, carpets, to the stately bed, the basin of holy-water, the crucifix,
to a Virgin by Valentin, a Christ by Lebrun,--in short, to all the

accessories of this cherished room, while his face expressed the anguish
of the tenderest farewell that a lover ever took of his first mistress, or
an old man of his lately planted