Only the seamen and the priests went about unconcerned, untroubled, tranquil, the one knowing his sea and the other his God.  There was something reassuring in the serenity of the black cassocks as they went hither and thither, offering physical and spiritual assistance.  They inspired the timid and the fearful, many of whom still believed that the world had its falling-off place.  And seasickness overcame many.

With some incertitude the Vicomte d’Halluys watched the Jesuits.  After all, he mused, it was something to be a priest, if only to possess this calm.  He himself had no liking for this voyage, since the woman he loved was on the way to Spain.  Whenever Brother Jacques passed under the ship’s lanterns, the vicomte stared keenly.  What was there in this handsome priest that stirred his antagonism?  For the present there seemed to be no solution.  Eh, well, all this was a strange whim of fate.  Fortune had as many faces as Notre Dame has gargoyles.  To bring the Comte d’Herouville, himself, and the Chevalier du Cevennes together on a voyage of hazard!  He looked around to discover the whereabouts of the count.  He saw him leaning against a mast, his face calm, his manner easy.

“There is danger in that calm; I must walk with care.  My faith! but the Chevalier will have his hands full one of these days.”

Mass was celebrated, and a strange, rude picture was presented to those eyes accustomed to the interior of lofty cathedrals:  the smoky lanterns, the squat ceiling, the tawdry woodwork, the kneeling figures involuntarily jostling one another to the rolling of the ship, the resonant voice of Father Chaumonot, the frequent glitter of a breast-plate, a sword-hilt, or a helmet.

The Chevalier knelt, not because he was in sympathy with Chaumonot’s Latin, but because he desired not to be conspicuous.  God was not in his heart save in a shadowy way; rather an infinite weariness, a sense of drifting blindly, a knowledge of a vague and futile grasping at the end of things.  And winding in and out of all he heard was that mysterious voice asking:  “Whither bound?” Aye, whither bound, indeed!  Visions of golden days flitted across his mind’s eye, snatches of his youth; the pomp and glory of court as he first saw it; the gallant epoch of the Fronde; the warm sunshine of forgotten summers; and the woman he loved! . . .  The Chevalier was conscious of a pain of stupendous weight bearing down upon his eyes.  Waves of dizziness, accompanied by flashes of fire, passed to and fro through his aching head.  His tongue was thick and his lips were cracked with fever.  It seemed but a moment gone that he had been shaking with the cold.  He found himself fighting what he supposed to be an attack of seasickness, but this was not the malady which was seizing him in its pitiless grasp.