"Then I wish she had done it a little better," said Godfrey. "Oh! listen, there's a rap!"
A rap there was certainly, on the hot iron of the stove, a resonant, ringing rap. The Pasteur advanced and made an examination, and while he was doing so there came another. What is more, in a most inexplicable fashion his blue spectacles flew from his nose. Very solemnly he found and replaced them and then, with the utmost dignity, addressing himself to the stove, he cursed and exorcised that article of domestic furniture in his best mediæval Latin. Apparently the effort was successful, for there were no more manifestations.
"Listen, my boy. You do not part from me this day. Presently we go to church, and you sit under me where I can keep my eye on you. If you make one movement towards the door, I descend from the desk or the pulpit, and take you back there with me."
"I don't want to move," said Godfrey.
"No, but there are others who may want to move you. Then after church we dine, and after dinner we take a nice walk through the woods arm in arm. Yes, perhaps we go as far as Lucerne and pay a little visit there, since this afternoon I have arranged that there is no service."
So Godfrey went to church and sat under the cold, blue glare of the Pasteur's spectacles, listening to a really eloquent sermon, for his preaching was excellent. He took his text from the story of Saul and the witch of Endor, and after dwelling on it and its moral, opened up the whole problem of the hidden influences which may, and probably do, affect the human soul. He gave a short but learned account of the history of demonology throughout the ages, which evidently he had at his fingers' ends. He distinguished between good and evil spirits, and while not denying the lawfulness of such research, pointed out the peril that the seeker ran, since in his quest for the good he might find the evil. Finally, he demonstrated that there was a sure refuge from all such demoniacal attacks, which those who suffered from them had but to seek.
Madame dozed during this sermon. Juliette wondered what had sent her father down that road, and the little congregation, those of them who understood, thought it a pleasant change from his usual discourse upon their sins, since they at least had never practised demonology. But to Godfrey, to whom, indeed, it was addressed, it brought much comfort, for in the Pasteur and his pure and beautiful doctrine, he saw a rock on which he might stand secure, defying Madame Riennes and Eleanor, and all the hosts of hell behind them.