“If I dreamt it, I saw in my dream human beings as well as a house. I saw a priest, old, bent, and grey, and a domestic⁠—old, too, and picturesque; and a lady, splendid but strange; her head would scarce reach to my elbow⁠—her magnificence might ransom a duke. She wore a gown bright as lapis-lazuli⁠—a shawl worth a thousand francs: she was decked with ornaments so brilliant, I never saw any with such a beautiful sparkle; but her figure looked as if it had been broken in two and bent double; she seemed also to have outlived the common years of humanity, and to have attained those which are only labour and sorrow. She was become morose⁠—almost malevolent; yet somebody , it appears, cared for her in her infirmities⁠—somebody forgave her trespasses, hoping to have his trespasses forgiven. They lived together, these three people⁠—the mistress, the chaplain, the servant⁠—all old, all feeble, all sheltered under one kind wing.”

He covered with his hand the upper part of his face, but did not conceal his mouth, where I saw hovering an expression I liked.

“I see you have entered into my secrets,” said he, “but how was it done?”

So I told him how⁠—the commission on which I had been sent, the storm which had detained me, the abruptness of the lady, the kindness of the priest.

“As I sat waiting for the rain to cease, Père Silas whiled away the time with a story,” I said.

“A story! What story? Père Silas is no romancist.”

“Shall I tell Monsieur the tale?”

“Yes: begin at the beginning. Let me hear some of Miss Lucy’s French⁠—her best or her worst⁠—I don’t much care which: let us have a good poignée of barbarisms, and a bounteous dose of the insular accent.”