He leaned over the pulpit, and, pausing, looked down at his congregation. Then, all at once, he was aware that he had created a profound impression. Just in front of him, his eyes burning with a strange fire, sat Monsieur Valmond. Parpon, beside him, hung over the back of a seat, his long arms stretched out, his hands applauding in a soundless way. Beneath the sword of Louis the Martyr, the great treasure of the parish, presented to this church by Marie Antoinette, sat Monsieur Garon, his thin fingers pressed to his mouth as if to stop a sound. Presently, out of pure spontaneity, there ran through the church like a soft chorus: “O, say, where goes your love? O gai, vive le roi! He wears a silver sword, Vive Napoleon!” The thing was unprecedented. Who had started it? Afterwards some said it was Parpon, the now chosen comrade--or servant--of Valmond, who, people said, had given himself up to the stranger, body and soul; but no one could swear to that. Shocked, and taken out of his dream, the Cure raised his hand against the song. “Hush, hush, my children!” he said. “Hush, I command you!” It was the sight of the upraised hands, more than the Cure’s voice, which stilled the outburst. Those same hands had sprinkled the holy water in the sacrament of baptism, had blessed man and maid at the altar, had quieted the angry arm lifted to strike, had anointed the brow of the dying, and laid a crucifix on breasts which had ceased to harbour breath and care and love, and all things else. Silence fell. In another moment the Cure finished his sermon, but not till his eyes had again met those of Valmond, and there had passed into his mind a sudden, startling thought. Unconsciously the Cure had declared himself the patron of all that made Pontiac for ever a notable spot in the eyes of three nations: and if he repented of it, no man ever knew. During mass and the sermon Valmond had sat very still, once or twice smiling curiously at thought of how, inactive himself, the gate of destiny was being opened up for him. Yet he had not been all inactive. He had paid much attention to his toilet, selecting, with purpose, the white waistcoat, the long, blue-grey coat cut in a fashion anterior to this time by thirty years or more, and particularly to the arrangement of his hair. He resembled Napoleon--not the later Napoleon, but the Bonaparte, lean, shy, laconic, who fought at Marengo; and this had startled the Cure in his pulpit, and the rest of the little coterie.