The Equinox (Volume I, Number IX)

THE EQUINOX St. Genevieve is always represented with a medal on her neck, that which St. Germain d’Auxerre gave her, and holding a taper, which the devil tries to extinguish, but which is pro- tected from the breath of the unclean spirit by a miraculous little tabernacle. After the lady devotees came the clergy; then finally appeared the venerable Archbishop of Paris, mitred with a white mitre, wearing a cope which was supported on each side by his two vicars; the prelate, leaning on his cross, walked slowly, and blessed to right and left the crowd which knelt about his path. Eliphas saw the Archbishop for the first time, and noticed the features of his countenance. They expressed kindliness and gentleness; but one might observe the expression of a great fatigue, and even of a nervous suffer- ing painfully dissimulated. The procession descended to the foot of the church, tra- versing the nave, went up again by the aisle at the left of the door, and came to the station of the tomb of St. Geneviéve; then it returned by the right-hand aisle, chanting the litanies as it went. A group of the faithful followed the procession, and walked immediately behind the Archbishop. Eliphas mingled in this group, in order more easily to get through the crowd which was about to reform, so that he might regain the door of the church. He was lost in reverie, softened by this pious solemnity. The head of the procession had already returned to the choir, the Archbishop was arriving at the railing of the nave: there the passage was too narrow for three people to walk in file; the Archbishop was in front, and the two grand-vicars behind him, always holding the edges of his cope, which was 168