VI

Bianchon did not wish to seem as though he were spying the head

surgeon of the Hotel-Dieu; he went away. As it happened, Desplein

asked him to dine with him that day, not at his own house, but at

a restaurant. At dessert Bianchon skilfully contrived to talk of

the mass, speaking of it as mummery and a farce.

"A farce," said Desplein, "which has cost Christendom more blood

than all Napoleon's battles and all Broussais' leeches. The mass

is  a papal invention, not older than the sixth century, and

based on the Hoc est corpus. What floods of blood were shed to

establish the Fete-Dieu, the Festival of Corpus Christi--the

institution by which Rome established her triumph in the question

of the Real Presence, a schism which rent the Church during three

centuries! The wars of the Count of Toulouse against the

Albigenses were the tail end of that dispute. The Vaudois and the

Albigenses refused to recognize this innovation."

In short, Desplein was delighted to disport himself in his most

atheistical vein; a flow of Voltairean satire, or, to be

accurate, a vile imitation of the Citateur.

"Hallo! where is my worshiper of this morning?" said Bianchon to

himself.

He said nothing; he began to doubt whether he had really seen his

chief at Saint-Sulpice. Desplein would not have troubled himself

to tell Bianchon a lie, they knew each other too well; they had

already exchanged thoughts on quite equally serious subjects, and

discussed systems de natura rerum, probing or dissecting them

with the knife and scalpel of incredulity.

Three months went by. Bianchon did not attempt to follow the

matter up, though it remained stamped on his memory. One day that

year, one of the physicians of the Hotel-Dieu took Desplein by

the arm, as if to question him, in Bianchon's presence.

"What were you doing at Saint-Sulpice, my dear master?" said he.

"I went to see a priest who has a diseased knee-bone, and to whom

the Duchesse d'Angouleme did me the honor to recommend me," said

Desplein.

The questioner took this defeat for an answer; not so Bianchon.

"Oh, he goes to see damaged knees in church!--He went to mass,"

said the young man to himself.