He heaved a sigh of relief when camera and note-book were
finally packed up and stowed away, and hurriedly beckoned Dennistoun to
the western door of the church, under the tower. It was time to ring
the Angelus. A few pulls at the reluctant rope, and the great bell
Bertrande, high in the tower, began to speak, and swung her voice up
among the pines and down to the valleys, loud with mountain-streams,
calling the dwellers on those lonely hills to remember and repeat the
salutation of the angel to her whom he called Blessed among women. With
that a profound quiet seemed to fall for the first time that day upon
the little town, and Dennistoun and the sacristan went out of the
church. On the doorstep they fell into conversation. “Monsieur seemed to interest himself in the old choir-books in the
sacristy.”

“Undoubtedly. I was going to ask you if there were a library in the
town.”

“No, monsieur; perhaps there used to be one belonging to the Chapter,
but it is now such a small place—” Here came a strange pause of
irresolution, as it seemed; then, with a sort of plunge, he went on:
“But if monsieur is _amateur des vieux livres_, I have at home
something that might interest him. It is not a hundred yards.”

At once all Dennistoun’s cherished dreams of finding priceless
manuscripts in untrodden corners of France flashed up, to die down
again the next moment. It was probably a stupid missal of Plantin’s
printing, about 1580. Where was the likelihood that a place so near
Toulouse would not have been ransacked long ago by collectors? However,
it would be foolish not to go; he would reproach himself for ever after
if he refused. So they set off. On the way the curious irresolution and
sudden determination of the sacristan recurred to Dennistoun, and he
wondered in a shamefaced way whether he was being decoyed into some
purlieu to be made away with as a supposed rich Englishman. He
contrived, therefore, to begin talking with his guide, and to drag in,
in a rather clumsy fashion, the fact that he expected two friends to
join him early the next morning. To his surprise, the announcement
seemed to relieve the sacristan at once of some of the anxiety that
oppressed him. “That is well,” he said quite brightly—“that is very well. Monsieur
will travel in company with his friends; they will be always near him. It is a good thing to travel thus in company—sometimes.”

The last word appeared to be added as an afterthought and to bring with
it a relapse into gloom for the poor little man. They were soon at the house, which was one rather larger than its
neighbours, stone-built, with a shield carved over the door, the shield
of Alberic de Mauléon, a collateral descendant, Dennistoun tells me, of
Bishop John de Mauléon. This Alberic was a Canon of Comminges from 1680
to 1701. The upper windows of the mansion were boarded up, and the
whole place bore, as does the rest of Comminges, the aspect of decaying
age. Arrived on his doorstep, the sacristan paused a moment. “Perhaps,” he said, “perhaps, after all, monsieur has not the time?”

“Not at all—lots of time—nothing to do till tomorrow. Let us see what
it is you have got.”

The door was opened at this point, and a face looked out, a face far
younger than the sacristan’s, but bearing something of the same
distressing look: only here it seemed to be the mark, not so much of
fear for personal safety as of acute anxiety on behalf of another. Plainly, the owner of the face was the sacristan’s daughter; and, but
for the expression I have described, she was a handsome girl enough. She brightened up considerably on seeing her father accompanied by an
able-bodied stranger. A few remarks passed between father and daughter,
of which Dennistoun only caught these words, said by the sacristan, “He
was laughing in the church,” words which were answered only by a look
of terror from the girl. But in another minute they were in the sitting-room of the house, a
small, high chamber with a stone floor, full of moving shadows cast by
a wood-fire that flickered on a great hearth. Something of the
character of an oratory was imparted to it by a tall crucifix, which
reached almost to the ceiling on one side; the figure was painted of
the natural colours, the cross was black. Under this stood a chest of
some age and solidity, and when a lamp had been brought, and chairs
set, the sacristan went to this chest, and produced therefrom, with
growing excitement and nervousness, as Dennistoun thought, a large
book, wrapped in a white cloth, on which cloth a cross was rudely
embroidered in red thread. Even before the wrapping had been removed,
Dennistoun began to be interested by the size and shape of the volume. “Too large for a missal,” he thought, “and not the shape of an
antiphoner; perhaps it may be something good, after all.” The next
moment the book was open, and Dennistoun felt that he had at last lit
upon something better than good. Before him lay a large folio, bound,
perhaps, late in the seventeenth century, with the arms of Canon
Alberic de Mauléon stamped in gold on the sides. There may have been a
hundred and fifty leaves of paper in the book, and on almost every one
of them was fastened a leaf from an illuminated manuscript. Such a
collection Dennistoun had hardly dreamed of in his wildest moments. Here were ten leaves from a copy of Genesis, illustrated with pictures,
which could not be later than A.D. 700. Further on was a complete set
of pictures from a Psalter, of English execution, of the very finest
kind that the thirteenth century could produce; and, perhaps best of
all, there were twenty leaves of uncial writing in Latin, which, as a
few words seen here and there told him at once, must belong to some
very early unknown patristic treatise. Could it possibly be a fragment
of the copy of Papias “On the Words of Our Lord”, which was known to
have existed as late as the twelfth century at Nîmes? [1] In any case,
his mind was made up; that book must return to Cambridge with him, even
if he had to draw the whole of his balance from the bank and stay at
St. Bertrand till the money came. He glanced up at the sacristan to see
if his face yielded any hint that the book was for sale. The sacristan
was pale, and his lips were working. [1] We now know that these leaves did contain a considerable fragment
 of that work, if not of that actual copy of it. “If monsieur will turn on to the end,” he said. So monsieur turned on, meeting new treasures at every rise of a leaf;
and at the end of the book he came upon two sheets of paper, of much
more recent date than anything he had yet seen, which puzzled him
considerably. They must be contemporary, he decided, with the
unprincipled Canon Alberic, who had doubtless plundered the Chapter
library of St Bertrand to form this priceless scrap-book. On the first
of the paper sheets was a plan, carefully drawn and instantly
recognizable by a person who knew the ground, of the south aisle and
cloisters of St Bertrand’s.