Those who
elected to enjoy spiritual things left the _cour_ and their morning
promenade after about an hour of promenading, while the materially minded
remained to finish the promenade; or if one declined the promenade
entirely (as frequently occurred owing to the fact that weather
conditions on Sunday were invariably more indescribable than usual) a
_planton_ mounted to The Enormous Room and shouted, "_La Messe!_" several
times; whereat the devotees lined up and were carefully conducted to the
scene of spiritual operations.
The priest was changed every week. His assistant (whom I had the
indescribable pleasure of seeing only upon Sundays) was always the same.
It was his function to pick the priest up when he fell down after
tripping upon his robe, to hand him things before he wanted them, to ring
a huge bell, to interrupt the peculiarly divine portions of the service
with a squeaking of his shoes, to gaze about from time to time upon the
worshippers for purposes of intimidation, and finally--most important of
all--to blow out the two big candles at the very earliest opportunity, in
the interests (doubtless) of economy. As he was a short, fattish,
ancient, strangely soggy creature and as his longish black suit was
somewhat too big for him, he executed a series of profound efforts in
extinguishing the candles.
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