too many difficulties over the business. One who will be satisfied with confession, and will let us off with the rest of it all.”
The young fellow returned with a complaisant old ecclesiastic, who accommodated himself to the state of affairs. As soon as he had gone into the dying man’s room, Madame Forestier came out of it, and sat down with Duroy in the one adjoining.
“It has quite upset him,” said she. “When I spoke to him about a priest his face assumed a frightful expression as if he had felt the breath—the breath of—you know. He understood that it was all over at last, and that his hours were numbered.” She was very pale as she continued, “I shall never forget the expression of his face. He certainly saw death face to face at that moment. He saw him.”
They could hear the priest, who spoke in somewhat loud tones, being slightly deaf, and who was saying, “No, no; you are not so bad as all that. You are ill, but in no danger. And the proof is that I have called in as a friend as a neighbor.”
They could not make out Forestier’s reply, but the old man went on, “No, I will not ask you to communicate. We will talk of that when you are better. If you wish to profit by my visit—to confess, for instance—I ask nothing better. I am a shepherd, you know, and seize on every occasion to bring a lamb back to the fold.”
A long silence followed. Forestier must have been speaking in a faint voice. Then all at once the priest uttered in a different tone, the tone of one officiating at the altar. “The mercy of God is infinite. Repeat the Comfiteor, my son. You have perhaps forgotten it; I will help you. Repeat after me: ‘Comfiteor Deo omnipotenti—Beata Maria semper virgini.’ ”
He paused from time to time to allow the dying man to catch him up. Then he said, “And now confess.”