CHAPTER XIII.

HONFLEUR--NEW AND OLD.


The stillness of the park trees, as we passed beneath them, was like
the silence that comes after a blessing. The sun, flooding the
landscape with a deluge of light, lost something of its effulgence, by
contrast with the fulness of the priest's rich nature. This fair world
of beauty that lay the other side of the terrace wall, beneath which
our luncheon was spread, was fair and lovely still--but how unimportant
the landscape seemed compared to the varied scenery of the cure's
soul-lit character! Of all kinds of nature, human nature is assuredly
the best; it is at least the most perdurably interesting. When we tire
of it, when we weary of our fellow-man and turn the blase cheek on the
fresh pillow of mother-earth, how quickly is the pillow deserted once
the mental frame is rested or renewed! The history of all human
relations has the same ending--we all of us only fall out of love with
man to fall as swiftly in again.

The remainder of the afternoon passed with the rapidity common to all
phases of enchantment.

How could one eat seriously, with vulgar, gluttonous hunger, of a feast
spread on the parapet of a terrace-wall? The white foam of napkins, the
mosaic of the _patties_, the white breasts of chicken, the salads in