Explore "The Right of Way, Volume 6" by Gilbert Parker on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Chaudiere had made -- and lost -- a reputation. The Passion Play in the valley had become known to a whole country -- to the Cure's and the Seigneur's unavailing regret. They had meant to revive the great story for their own people and the Indians -- a homely, beautiful object-lesson, in an Eden -- like innocence and quiet and repose; but behold the world had invaded them! The vanity of the Notary had undone them. He had written to the great papers of the province, telling of the advent of the play, and pilgrimages had been organised, and excursions had been made to the spot, where a simple people had achieved a crude but noble picture of the life and death of the Hero of Christendom. The Cure viewed with consternation the invasion of their quiet.
It was no longer his own Chaudiere; and when, on a Sunday, his dear people were jostled from the church to make room for strangers, his gentle eloquence seemed to forsake him, he spoke haltingly, and his intoning of the Mass lacked the old soothing simplicity.