If he slept, it only brought to him an unbelievable ecstasy, an unbearable pain.
When he went out into the streets now it was only with the thought that he would find them—with an overwhelming conviction of his impending meeting with them. It seemed to him that every step he took was bringing him nearer to them, that he would meet them face to face around every corner that he turned—and this knowledge palsied his flesh with excitement, joy, and terror.
The two priests had finished eating, and provided with small cups of black coffee and small glasses of green Chartreuse, they had settled back against the wall to enjoy in relaxed comfort the peace that passeth understanding. Both of the priests were Franciscans, they were on their way to Rome for the Holy Year, and apparently they had come well bestowed. Beside their table a frosty silver bucket, over the rim of which floated the gold necks of two empty champagne bottles, gave evidence of a meal from which nothing had been lacking. A waiter brought a box of Coronas and offered them prayerfully. The priests selected their cigars with an appeased and drowsy air: they bit the ends and grunted slightly at the flame the waiter offered them; then collapsing slowly against the cushioned wall, they meditated the ceiling in silence for several minutes through a blue, fragrant mist of dreamful ease.
It was a fine evening towards the end of May, and the two priests were in the best place to observe it. They had the first table on the right as you entered the café, and at this season of the year there was no door: the front was open. Just outside, the priests could see all the gaily painted little chairs and tables of the terrace, which was empty, and just beyond, the sidewalk and the Avenue de la Victoire, the chief thoroughfare of Nice. The street itself was quiet: from time to time a motor car flashed past or an old nag with clopping hooves, pulling a dilapidated-looking victoria and urged on by a driver hunting for a fare. The trees along the street were in their full green leaf now and the air was sweet with the smell of the trees, the fragrance of earth and gardens and of unknown flowers. From time to time people came by with the strolling movement which a fine evening of this sort always seems to induce; and sometimes there would be young couples, lovers with arms around each other’s waists, the women walking with a movement
