Page:Weird Tales Volume 6 Number 1 (1925-07).djvu/119

ton the bailiff and Master Ambroy the notary, two somber spots among these gaudy silks and figured damasks. Then come the fat majordomos, the pages, the outriders, the stewards. and Dame Barbe, with all her keys dangling at her side on a great keyring of fine silver. On the benches in the rear is the lower service—the butlers and maids, the farmers and their families; and last of all, back by the doors, which they half open and discreetly close again, come the cooks to take a little nip of the mass between two sauces, and bring an odor of the Christmas supper into the bedecked church, which is warm with the light of so many tapers.

Can it be the sight of these little white caps that diverts the reverend father's attention? Is it not rather Garrigou's bell?—that fiendish little bell that tinkles away at the foot of the altar with such infernal haste and seems to say all the time:

"Hurry up! Hurry up! The sooner we've finished, the sooner we shall be at supper."

The fact is that every time this devilish little bell peals out, the chaplain forgets his mass, and his mind wanders to the Christmas supper. Visions rise before him of the cooks running busily hither and thither, the ovens glowing like furnaces, warm vapors rising from under half-lifted lids, and through these vapors two magnificent turkeys, stuffed, crammed, mottled with truffles . . . Or then again, he sees long files of little pages carrying great dishes wrapped in their tempting fumes, and he is about to enter the dining hall with them for them for the feast. What ecstasy! Here stands the immense table, laden and dazzling, with peacocks dressed in their feathers, pheasants spreading their bronzed wings, ruby-colored flagons, pyramids of luscious fruit amid the green foliage, and those wonderful fish that Garrigou spoke of (Garrigou, forsooth!) reclining on a bed of fennel, their pearly scales looking as if they were just from the pond, and a bunch of pungent herbs in their monsterlike nostrils. So vivid is the vision of these marvels that Dom Balaguère actually fancies all these glorious dishes are being served before him, on the very embroideries of the altar-cloth, and two or three times, instead of Dominus vobiscum he catches himself saying the Benedicite. But except for these slight mistakes the worthy man rattled off the service conscientiously, without skipping a line or omitting a genuflection; and all went well to the end of the first mass. For you must know that on Christmas the same officiating priest is obliged to say three masses consecutively.

"And that's one!" said the chaplain to himself with a sigh of relief; then, without losing a second, he motioned to his clerk, or him whom he believed to be his clerk, and—

Ding-a-ling-ling! Ding-a-ling-ling!

The second mass has begun, and with it Dom Balaguère's sin.

"Quick, quick! let us hurry!" says Garrigou's bell in its shrill, devilish voice, and this time the unfortunate priest, possessed by the demon of gluttony, pounces upon the missal and devours its pages with the avidity of his over-excited appetite. He kneels and rises frantically, barely sketches the sign of the cross and the genuflections, and shortens all his gestures in order to get through sooner. He scarcely extends his arms at the Gospel, or strikes his breast at the Confiteor. Between him and the clerk it is hard to tell who mumbles the faster. Verses and responses leap out and jostle each other. The words, half uttered between their teeth—for it would take too long to open their lips every time,—die out into unintelligible murmurs.

"Oremus . . . ps . . . ps . . ."

"Mea culpa . . . pa . . . pa . . ."