Dorothea was holding
a torch, the liquid droppings of which fell upon her hands. Cecilia
wore a silver crown, in which glistened the most brilliant of pearls.
Agatha's nude chest was protected by a crystal armour. And the scenes
in the tympanum, the little virgins in the arches, looked as if they had
been there for centuries, behind the glass and jewels of the shrine of
a saint. Agnes herself let trail behind her her court mantle, threaded
with light and embroidered with stars. Her lamb had a fleece of
diamonds, and her palm-branch had become the colour of heaven. The whole
door was resplendent in the purity of intense cold.
Angelique recollected the night she had passed there under the
protection of these saints. She raised her head and smiled upon them.
CHAPTER II
Beaumont is composed of two villages, completely separated and quite
distinct one from the other--Beaumont-l'Eglise, on the hill with its old
Cathedral of the twelfth century, its Bishop's Palace which dates only
from the seventeenth century, its inhabitants, scarcely one thousand in
number, who are crowded together in an almost stifling way in its narrow
streets; and Beaumont-la-Ville, at the foot of the hill, on the banks of
the Ligneul, an ancient suburb, which the success of its manufactories
of lace and fine cambric has enriched and enlarged to such an extent
that it has a population of nearly ten thousand persons, several public
squares, and an elegant sub-prefecture built in the modern style.
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