practically in the hands of laymen. But, actually, the event came to
be a dedication on their part, not unlike those old biblical ones--an
offering in old age of the single precious thing left them; the
grandchild, whose hair would presently fall under the very shears
which, a hundred years before, had turned an earlier, brilliant,
Gaston de Latour into a monk.

Charles Guillard, Bishop of Chartres, a courtly, vivacious prelate,
whose quick eyes seemed to note at a glance the whole assembly, one
and all, while his lips moved silently, arrived at last, and the rite
began with the singing of the Office for the Ninth Hour. It was like
a stream of water crossing unexpectedly a dusty way--Mirabilia
testimonia tua! In psalm and antiphon, inexhaustibly [10] fresh, the
soul seemed to be taking refuge, at that undevout hour, from the
sordid languor and the mean business of men's lives, in contemplation
of the unfaltering vigour of the divine righteousness, which had
still those who sought it, not only watchful in the night but alert
in the drowsy afternoon. Yes! there was the sheep astray, sicut ovis
quae periit--the physical world; with its lusty ministers, at work,
or sleeping for a while amid the stubble, their faces upturned to the
August sun--the world so importunately visible, intruding a little
way, with its floating odours, in that semicircle of heat across the
old over-written pavement at the great open door, upon the mysteries
within. Seen from the incense-laden sanctuary, where the bishop was
assuming one by one the pontifical ornaments, La Beauce, like a many-
coloured carpet spread under the great dome, with the white double
house-front quivering afar through the heat, though it looked as if
you might touch with the hand its distant spaces, was for a moment
the unreal thing. Gaston alone, with all his mystic preoccupations,
by the privilege of youth, seemed to belong to both, and link the