In the
greenish half-light of its calm freshness, the two towers let fall
only the sound of their chimes. But the entire house kept the quivering
therefrom, sealed as it was to these old stones, melted into them and
supported by them. It trembled at the least of the ceremonies; at the
High Mass, the rumbling of the organ, the voices of the choristers, even
the oppressed sighs of the worshippers, murmured through each one of
its rooms, lulled it as if with a holy breath from the Invisible, and
at times through the half-cool walls seemed to come the vapours from the
burning incense.
For five years Angelique lived and grew there, as if in a cloister, far
away from the world. She only went out to attend the seven-o'clock Mass
on Sunday mornings, as Hubertine had obtained permission for her to
study at home, fearing that, if sent to school, she might not always
have the best of associates. This old dwelling, so shut in, with its
garden of a dead quiet, was her world. She occupied as her chamber a
little whitewashed room under the roof; she went down in the morning to
her breakfast in the kitchen, she went up again to the working-room in
the second story to her embroidery. And these places, with the turning
stone stairway of the turret, were the only corners in which she passed
her time; for she never went into the Huberts' apartments, and only
crossed the parlour on the first floor, and they were the two rooms
which had been rejuvenated and modernised.
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