Sunday was a day of cheerful indolence, devoted to attending
the services in the Chapel, which was filled with the scent of
incense all day long. At Vespers, while the clear, boyish voices
intoned the long-drawn canticles, Jean would be gazing at some
woman's face half seen in the dusk of the galleries where the
pupils' mothers and sisters knelt during the office, their haughty
air contradicting the humble attitude. At the sound of the _Ave
maris stella_, the lowly bookbinder's son would lift his eyes
to these ladies of high degree, the plainest of whom feels herself
a jewel of price and cherishes a natural and unaffected pride of
birth. The chants and incense, the flowers and sacred images,
whatever troubles the imagination and stimulates to prayer, all
these things united to enervate his spirit and deliver him a
trembling victim to the glamour of these patrician dames.
But it was Gabrielle he worshipped in them, Gabrielle to whom
he offered up his prayers, his supplications. All that element
in religion which gives to love the fascination of forbidden
fruit appealed powerfully to his imagination. Unbeliever though
he was, he loved the Magdalen's God and savoured the creed that
has bestowed on lovers one amorous bliss the more--the bliss
of losing their immortal souls.