But she did not come. He sat down on a chair, and his eyes fell upon a blue stained window representing boatmen carrying baskets. He looked at it long, attentively, and he counted the scales of the fishes and the buttonholes of the doublets, while his thoughts wandered off towards Emma.
The beadle, standing aloof, was inwardly angry at this individual who took the liberty of admiring the cathedral by himself. He seemed to him to be conducting himself in a monstrous fashion, to be robbing him in a sort, and almost committing sacrilege.
But a rustle of silk on the flags, the tip of a bonnet, a lined cloak—it was she! Léon rose and ran to meet her.
Emma was pale. She walked fast.
“Read!” she said, holding out a paper to him. “Oh, no!”
And she abruptly withdrew her hand to enter the chapel of the Virgin, where, kneeling on a chair, she began to pray.
The young man was irritated at this bigot fancy; then he nevertheless experienced a certain charm in seeing her, in the middle of a rendezvous, thus lost in her devotions, like an Andalusian marchioness; then he grew bored, for she seemed never coming to an end.
Emma prayed, or rather strove to pray, hoping that some sudden resolution might descend to her from heaven; and to draw down divine aid she filled full her eyes with the splendours of the tabernacle. She breathed in the perfumes of the full-blown flowers in the large vases, and listened to the stillness of the church, that only heightened the tumult of her heart.
She rose, and they were about to leave, when the beadle came forward, hurriedly saying—