A simoniac priest had haunted him for years; his was a lean face with malignant eyes, a rigid skeleton-like body, long hands, white hands, supple hands with square nails, hands of a seller of stuffs, hands of one who blesses, hands of a Jew quickly returned into the cloak with the prize of blood. In what century and country lived he? "To reach some appropriateness of analysis," thought Entragues, while returning to his dwelling, a chasuble on his knees and a great heap of sacerdotal embroideries filling the rest of the carriage, "to instill true life into this simoniac, he should be modern. It would be necessary for me to be able to enter into his church, take a seat some evening and kneel down in his confessional, drinking the wine from his chalice and taking the consecrated wafers from his pyx. Like him I would have to be simoniacal and sacrilegious, Ah! what a test! and like him I would have to feel the irrevocable damnation and daily glorify myself with the opprobrious secret of my lies!" Sixtine came to his rescue: the red robe rid him of the black robe. The hour of the meeting, given the evening before, rang. "Madame has gone out!" "Ah!" That was all. Why even open the mouth again? CHAPTER XXIII THE ADORER III. Fumes of Incense "Il y a un secret, Valérien, que je veux le dire; j' ai pour amant un ange de Dieu, qui, avec une extrême jalousie, veille sur mon corps." Bréviare romain, _Office de sainte Cécile._ "The incense! The incense! "What incense there is in the censers! "What fumes there are in the incense! "That cloud is pagan, Virgin! Fie! to hide yourself in a cloud in order to love. But why? I see the wings of the angel whose whiteness shines under the fragrant cloud. It is with this, with so little, Virgin I fie! that he has intoxicated you to possess you. And you smile at him, I see your eyes whose splendor shines under the fragrant cloud, in the shadow of the white wings. "Thou, the immaculate! And for whom is so much purity sullied? For an angel?" "You fancied it was the Holy Spirit?"--"Yes, the dove pecked my lips and I opened my lips and I gave him the end of my tongue. I speak of the past. It was very pleasant and I have always wanted to begin again." "Ah! Virgin, fie, you lie like a woman. Doves have no such large wings."--"They are the wings of my mantle." "Ah? Virgin! Fie! doves have not light feathers."--"But they have, they have! And besides they are not light, _figliuolo_, they are shot-color." Such aplomb confused Delia Preda. What! a Virgin in whom he had placed his whole confidence, _sub tuum praesidium_! The colloquy was resumed in this fashion: