because he felt pitiful, yet in spite of his anger con-
sumed with pity. And as once, seven years ago, his
own father had walked slowly home, his head bowed
in contrition while Mireio limped along at his side
all battered and bloody but uncomplaining, so now
Christophe slowly walked towards home, and at his
side painfully limped old Mireio. And it seemed to
him that in some strange way there was kinship
between the bitch and the cripple; between all
afflicted and suffering things, were they dumb or
articulate, beasts or men —that their suffering con-
stituted a union. Stooping down he fondled Mireio's
head, walking even more slowly to ease her lameness,
while something within him started to weep because
of the beauty he perceived around him; a beauty of
mountains, of sea, and of sky blending into one vast
and fulfilling blueness, but a beauty that was shot
through and through with pain —the pain of the
hunchback, goaded, enraged, hot with brandy and
the shame of his ugly affliction; the pain of Mireio,
helpless and dumb, weak with age and long years of
neglect and scant feeding.
'Oh, I do not wish to feel pity!' muttered Christophe.
Presently they came to the ancient church, and
Christophe went into its cool, quiet shadows. Mireio
lay very still while he knelt before the shrine of the
warrior-bishop. Christophe stared up at the aged
saint who is carved out of wood and has time-blurred
features; and he thought of Mathilde who seemed
almost as old, but who wore a white cap instead of a
hat from which the gold-leaf was gradually peeling.
Then he thought of Saint Loup's grateful nightingale
that had come with the darkness to sing in his garden:
Traise God in His Golden Saints,' it had sung —
his mother had often told him the legend. Saint Loup
had restored its life to the bird, so Saint Loup must
have known what it felt like to pity.
K 145