cupboard. 'Come, look sharp, lad!'

Thereupon Vincent filled the cruets, phials of coarse glass, while she
hastened to take a clean finger-cloth from a drawer. Abbe Mouret,
holding the chalice by its stem with his left hand, the fingers of his
right resting meanwhile on the burse, then bowed profoundly, but without
removing his biretta, to a black wooden crucifix, which hung over the
side-board. The lad bowed too, and, bearing the cruets covered with the
finger-cloth, led the way out of the sacristy, followed by the priest,
who walked on with downcast eyes, absorbed in deep and prayerful
meditation.



II

The empty church was quite white that May morning. The bell-rope near
the confessional hung motionless once more. The little bracket light,
with its stained glass shade, burned like a crimson splotch against the
wall on the right of the tabernacle. Vincent, having set the cruets on
the credence, came back and knelt just below the altar step on the left,
while the priest, after rendering homage to the Holy Sacrament by a
genuflexion, went up to the altar and there spread out the corporal, on
the centre of which he placed the chalice. Then, having opened the
Missal, he came down again. Another bend of the knee followed, and,
after crossing himself and uttering aloud the formula, 'In the name of
the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost,' he raised his joined hands to
his breast, and entered on the great divine drama, with his countenance
blanched by faith and love.