"This moment, Monsieur;" and she flew away to the kitchens.

The Chevalier took this temporary absence as an opportunity to look
about him. Only one table was occupied. This occupant was a priest
who was gravely dining off black bread and milk served in a wooden
bowl. But for the extreme pallor of his skin, which doubtless had its
origin in the constant mortification of the flesh, he would have been a
singularly handsome man. His features were elegantly designed, but it
was evident that melancholy had recast them in a serious mold. His
face was clean-shaven, and his hair clipped, close to the skull. There
was something eminently noble in the loftiness of the forehead, and at
the same time there was something subtly cruel in the turn of the
nether lip, as though the spirit and the flesh were constantly at war.
He was young, possibly not older than the Chevalier, who was thirty.

The priest, as if feeling the Chevalier's scrutiny, raised his eyes.
As their glances met, casually in the way of gratifying a natural
curiosity, both men experienced a mental disturbance which was at once
strange and annoying. Those large, penetrating grey eyes; each seemed
to be looking into his own as in a mirror.

The Chevalier was first to disembarrass himself. "A tolerably shrewd
night, Monsieur," he said with a friendly gesture.

"It is the frost in the air, my son," the priest responded in a mellow
barytone. "May Saint Ignatius listen kindly to the poor. Ah, this
gulf you call Paris, I like it not."

"You are but recently arrived?" asked the Chevalier politely.