Montalembert at Mechlin: A Reprise of 1830

Abstract

He was not an old man in years, but as he stepped down from the railroad carriage to the gritty floor of the platform he looked frail and weary, and his three companions hovered pro tectively around him. He walked slowly and somewhat stooped, as though his back hurt him, which indeed it did. He wore for mal garb—a buttoned coat of quality black broadcloth, a stiff white shirt-front, and an abbreviated black cravat. When he raised his tall hat in greeting to the group of distinguished gen tlemen, clerical and lay, who had come to meet him, he revealed a full head of hair, still dark, curling around his ears and collar, a rather swarthy face and smooth, except for bunches of wrin kles at the outer corners of his eyes, a small nose, a wide mouth, and pouches of soft flesh beneath the jaw line. He shook hands with each of the local dignitaries, except with one, a bishop, whose hand he kissed. He nodded and smiled at the anxious inquiries about the health of his wife and daughter, recently injured in a traffic accident but, now, Dieu merci, he said, more comfortable and on the mend. His manner was amiable without being familiar, and he appeared to accept the deference offered to him with the disinterestedness of one long accustomed to it. The cast of his eyes was even and straightforward, but at a blink they could become wary and tentative, as though they belonged to a man not unacquainted with failure and weakness. Chatting with the welcoming party inevitably about weather and railway timetables, he was led through the station and outside into the bright summer afternoon. He could see the town rising out of a jumble of gabled roofs across a short stretch of meadow, and, three hundred feet above them, the top of the round buttressed tower of the cathedral shimmering in the sunlight. Of course, he