“I feel certain,” replied Monseigneur, “that the arm went beyond, or,
at any rate, part of the arm.”
M. Lantaigne concluded from this that the church of Saint-Exupère was
profaned. He quoted precedents and described the proceedings after
the dastardly assassination of the Archbishop of Paris, in the church
of Saint-Étienne-du-Mont. He travelled up the ages, passed through the
Revolution, when the churches were transformed into armouries, referred
to Thomas Becket and the impious Heliodorus.
“What scholarship! What sound doctrine!” said Monseigneur.
He rose and stretched out his hand for the priest to kiss.
“It is a priceless service that you have rendered me, Monsieur
Lantaigne; be assured that I have a great esteem for your scholarship
and accept my pastoral benediction. Farewell.”
And M. Lantaigne, dismissed, perceived that he had not been able to say
a single word about the important business on which he had come. But,
with the echoes of his own words all round him, full of his learning
and his application of it, and much flattered, he descended the grand
staircase still turning over in his own mind the matter of the suicide
of Saint-Exupère and the urgent need for the purification of the parish
church. Outside he was still thinking of it.
As he was descending the winding street of the Tintelleries, he met the
curé of Saint-Exupère, the venerable M. Laprune, who, standing in front
of cooper Lenfant’s shop, was examining the corks.
His wine had been turning sour, and this deterioration he attributed to
the defective way in which his bottles were corked.
“It is deplorable,” he murmured, “deplorable!”
“And your suicide?” demanded Abbé Lantaigne.
At this question the worthy curé of Saint-Exupère opened his full,
round eyes and asked in astonishment:
“What suicide?”
“The man who hanged himself in Saint-Exupère, the miserable suicide
whom you found this morning in the porch of your church.”
M. Laprune, terrified, wondering from what he had just heard, whether
he or M. Lantaigne had gone mad, replied that he had found no one
hanged.
“What!” replied M. Lantaigne, surprised in his turn, “wasn’t a man
found this morning hanged in the porch of a door on the epistle side!”
In sign of denial, the vicar twice revolved on his shoulders a face
whereon shone the sacred truth.
Abbé Lantaigne now looked like a man taken with giddiness:
“But it was the Cardinal-Archbishop who has just told me himself that
you found a man hanged in your church!”
“Oh!” replied M. Laprune, suddenly reassured, “Monseigneur wanted to
amuse himself. He loves a jest. He is a capital hand at it, and knows
how to keep within the bounds of seemliness. He has so much wit!”
But Abbé Lantaigne, raising heavenwards his fiery, sombre glance,
exclaimed:
“The Archbishop has deceived me! This man will, then, never speak the
truth, save when on the steps of the altar, taking the consecrated host
in his hands, he pronounces the words: _Domine, non sum dignus_!”