Horace Bianchon returned to Paris; before departing, he came to bid farewell to the dying woman and thank her for her munificence.  Slowly he approached, perceiving from the faces of the priests that the wounds of the soul had been the determining cause of those of the body.  He took Madame Graslin’s hand, laid it on the bed and felt the pulse.  The deep silence, that of a summer night in a country solitude, gave additional solemnity to the scene.  The great salon, seen through the double doors, was lighted up for the little company of persons who were praying there; all were on their knees except the two priests who were seated and reading their brevaries.  On either side of the grand state bed were the prelate in his violet robes, the rector, and the two physicians.

“She is agitated almost unto death,” said Horace Bianchon, who, like all men of great talent, sometimes used speech as grand as the occasion that called it forth.

The archbishop rose as if some inward impulse drove him; he called to Monsieur Bonnet, and together they crossed the room, passed through the salon, and went out upon the terrace, where they walked up and down for some moments.  When they returned, after discussing this case of ecclesiastical discipline, Roubaud met them.

XXI

CONFESSION AT THE GATES OF THE TOMB

At ten o’clock in the morning the archbishop, wearing his pontifical robes, came into Madame Graslin’s chamber.  The prelate, as well as the rector, had such confidence in this woman that they gave her no advice or instructions as to the limits within which she ought to make her confession.

Veronique now saw an assemblage of clergy from all the neighboring districts.  Monseigneur was assisted by four vicars.  The magnificent vessels she had bestowed upon her dear parish church were brought to the house and gave splendor to the ceremony.  Eight choristers in their white and red surplices stood in two rows from the bed to the door of the salon, each holding one of the large bronze-gilt candelabra which Veronique had ordered from Paris.  The cross and the church banner were held on either side of the bed by white-haired sacristans.  Thanks to the devotion of her servants, a wooden altar brought from the sacristy had been erected close to the door of the salon, and so prepared and decorated that Monseigneur could say mass upon it.

Madame Graslin was deeply touched by these attentions, which the Church, as a general thing, grants only to royal personages.  The folding doors between the salon and the dining-room were open, and she could see a vista of the ground-floor rooms filled with the village population.  Her friends had thought of everything; the salon was occupied exclusively by themselves and the servants of the household.  In the front rank and grouped before the door of the bedroom were her nearest friends, those on whose discretion reliance could be placed.  MM.  Grossetete, de Grandville, Roubaud, Gerard, Clousier, Ruffin, took the first places.  They had arranged among themselves that they should rise and stand in a group, thus preventing the words of the repentant woman from being heard in the farther rooms; but their tears and sobs would, in any case, have drowned her voice.