She did not answer immediately, then, “Yesterday I saw how much you desire me,” she said.  “But why, why, want to go so far?”

He made a gesture, indicating vague annoyance.

“How funny you are!” she went on.  “I was re-reading one of your books today, and I noticed this phrase, ’The only women you can continue to love are those you lose.’  Now admit that you were right when you wrote that.”

“It all depends.  I wasn’t in love then.”

She shrugged her shoulders.  “Well,” she said, “I must tell my husband you are here.”

Durtal remained silent, wondering what role Chantelouve actually played in this triangle.

Chantelouve returned with his wife.  He was in his dressing-gown and had a pen in his mouth.  He took it out and put it on the table, and after assuring Durtal that his health was completely restored, he complained of overwhelming labours.  “I have had to quit giving dinners and receptions,” he said, “I can’t even go visiting.  I am in harness every day at my desk.”

And when Durtal asked him the nature of these labours, he confessed to a whole series of unsigned volumes on the lives of the saints, to be turned out by the gross by a Tours firm for exportation.

“Yes,” said his wife, laughing, “and these are sadly neglected saints whose biographies he is preparing.”

And as Durtal looked at him inquiringly, Chantelouve, also laughing, said, “It was their persons that were sadly neglected.  The subjects are chosen for me, and it does seem as if the publisher enjoyed making me eulogize frowziness.  I have to describe Blessed Saints most of whom were deplorably unkempt:  Labre, who was so lousy and ill-smelling as to disgust the beasts in the stables; Saint Cunegonde who ’through humility’ neglected her body; Saint Oportune who never used water and who washed her bed only with her tears; Saint Silvia who never removed the grime from her face; Saint Radegonde who never changed her hair shirt and who slept on a cinder pile; and how many others, around whose heads I must draw a golden halo!”

“There are worse than those,” said Durtal.  “Read the life of Marie Alacoque.  You will see that she, to mortify herself, licked up with her tongue the dejections of one sick person and sucked an abscess from the toe of another.”

“I know, but I must admit that I am less touched than revolted by these tales.”

“I prefer Saint Lucius the martyr,” said Mme. Chantelouve.  “His body was so transparent that he could see through his chest the vileness of his heart.  His kind of ‘vileness’ at least we can stand.  But I must admit that this utter disregard of cleanliness makes me suspicious of the monasteries and renders your beloved Middle Ages odious to me.”