“Once,” he said with a groan, “it adorned the tomb of Richard Cœur de Lion, King of England and Duke of Normandy. It was the Calvinists, sir, who reduced it to this condition. They had buried it for spite in the earth, under the episcopal seat of Monsignor. See! this is the door by which Monsignor passes to his house. Let us pass on quickly to see the gargoyle windows.”
But Léon hastily took some silver from his pocket and seized Emma’s arm. The beadle stood dumfounded, not able to understand this untimely munificence when there were still so many things for the stranger to see. So calling him back, he cried—
“Sir! sir! The steeple! the steeple!”
“No, thank you!” said Léon.
“You are wrong, sir! It is four hundred and forty feet high, nine less than the great pyramid of Egypt. It is all cast; it—”
Léon was fleeing, for it seemed to him that his love, that for nearly two hours now had become petrified in the church like the stones, would vanish like a vapour through that sort of truncated funnel, of oblong cage, of open chimney that rises so grotesquely from the cathedral like the extravagant attempt of some fantastic brazier.
“But where are we going?” she said.
Making no answer, he walked on with a rapid step; and Madame Bovary was already, dipping her finger in the holy water when behind them they heard a panting breath interrupted by the regular sound of a cane. Léon turned back.
“Sir!”
“What is it?”
And he recognised the beadle, holding under his arms and balancing against his stomach some twenty large sewn volumes. They were works “which treated of the cathedral.”
“Idiot!” growled Léon, rushing out of the church.
A lad was playing about the close.
“Go and get me a cab!”
The child bounded off like a ball by the Rue Quatre-Vents; then they were alone a few minutes, face to face, and a little embarrassed.
“Ah! Léon! Really—I don’t know—if I ought,” she whispered. Then with a more serious air, “Do you know, it is very improper—”
“How so?” replied the clerk. “It is done at Paris.”
And that, as an irresistible argument, decided her.
Still the cab did not come. Léon was afraid she might go back into the church. At last the cab appeared.
“At all events, go out by the north porch,” cried the beadle, who was left alone on the threshold, “so as to see the Resurrection, the Last Judgment, Paradise, King David, and the Condemned in Hell-flames.”
“Where to, sir?” asked the coachman.