Durtal had already been living at Chartres for three months.
On his return to Paris from La Trappe he had fallen into a fearful state of spiritual anemia. His soul kept its room, rarely rose, lounged on a couch, was torpid with the tepid langour still lulled by the sleepy mutter of mere lip-service, and prayers reeled off as by a worn-out machine of which the spring releases itself, so that it works all alone with no result, and without a touch to start it.
Sometimes, however, in a rebellious mood he managed to check himself, to stop the ill-regulated clockwork of his prayers, and then he would try to examine himself, to get above himself, and to see in a comprehensive glance the puzzling perspective of his nature.
And facing these chambers of the soul, dim with mist, he was struck by a strange association of the Revelations of Saint Theresa and a tale by Edgar Poe.
Those chambers of the inner man were empty and cold, and like the halls of the House of Usher, surrounded by a moat whence the fog rose, forcing its way in at last and cracking the worn shell of wall. Alone and uneasy, he prowled about the ruined cells, with closed doors that refused ever to open again; thus his walks about his own mind were very limited, and the panorama he could see was strangely narrowed, shrunk close and near to him, almost nothing. And he knew full well that the ruins surrounding the central cell, the Master's Room, were bolted and fastened with rivets that could not be unscrewed, and triple bars—inaccessible. So he restricted himself to wandering in the halls and passages.
At Notre Dame de l'Atre he had ventured further; he had gone into the enclosure round about the abode of Christ; he had seen in the distance the frontiers of Mysticism, and, too weak to go on his road, he had fallen; and now this was to be lamented, for, as Saint Theresa truly remarks, "in the spiritual life, if we do not go forward, we go back." He had, in fact, retraced his steps, and lay half paralyzed, no longer even in the vestibule of his mansion, but in the outer court.
Till this time the phenomena described by the matchless Abbess had been exactly repeated. In Durtal, the Chambers of the Soul were deserted as after a long mourning; but in the rooms that had remained open, phantoms of sins confessed, of buried evil-doing, wandered like the sister of the tormented Usher.
Durtal, like Edgar Poe's unhappy sufferer, listened with horror to the rustle of steps on the stairs, the piteous weeping behind the doors.
And yet these ghosts of departed crimes were no more than indefinite shapes; they never consolidated nor took a definite form. The most persistent miscreant of them all, which had tormented him so long, the sin of the flesh, at last was silenced, and left him in peace. La Trappe had rooted up the stock of those debaucheries. The memory of them, indeed, haunted him still, on his most distressing, most ignoble side; but he could see them pass, his heart in his mouth, wondering that he could so long have been the dupe of such foul delusions, no longer understanding the power of those mirages, the illusions of those carnal oases as he met them in the desert of a life shut up in seclusion, in solitude, and in books.
His imagination could still put him on the rack; still, without merit, without a struggle, by the help of divine grace, he had escaped a fall ever since his return from the monastery.
On the other hand, though he had, to some extent, emasculated himself, though he was exempt from his chief torment, he discerned, flourishing within him, another crop of tares, of which the spread had till now been hidden behind the sturdier growth of other vices. In the first instance, he had believed himself to be less enslaved by sin, less utterly vile; and he was nevertheless as closely bound to evil as ever, only the nature and character of the bonds were different, and no longer the same.
Besides that dryness of the heart which made him feel as soon as he entered a church or knelt down in his room, that a cold grip froze his prayers and chilled his soul, he detected the covert attacks, the mute assaults of ridiculous pride.
In vain did he keep watch; he was constantly taken by surprise without having time even to look round him.
It began under the most temperate guise, the most benign reflections.
Supposing, for instance, that he had done his neighbour a service at some inconvenience to himself, or that he had refrained from retaliating on anybody against whom he believed he had a grievance, or for whom he had no liking, a certain self-satisfaction stole, sneaked into his mind, a certain vain-glory, ending in the senseless conclusion that he was superior to many another man; and then, on this feeling of petty vanity, pride was engrafted—the pride of a virtue he had not even struggled to acquire, the arrogance of chastity, so insidious that most of those who indulge it do not even suspect themselves.
And he was never aware of the end of these assaults till too late, when they had become definite, and he had forgotten himself and succumbed; and he was in despair at finding that he constantly fell into the same snare, telling himself that the little good he could do must be wiped out of the balance of his life by the outrageous extravagance of this vice.
He was frenzied, he reasoned with the old mad arguments, and cried out at his wits' end,—
"La Trappe crushed me! It cured me of sensuality, but only to load me with disorders of which I knew nothing before I submitted to that treatment! It is humble itself, but it puffed up my vanity and increased my pride tenfold—then it set me free, but so weak, so wearied, that I have never since been able to conquer that inanition, never have been fit to enjoy the Mystical Nourishment which I nevertheless must have if I am not to die to God!"
And for the hundredth time he asked himself,—
"Am I happier than I was before I was converted?"
And to be truthful to himself he was bound to answer "Yes." He lived on the whole a Christian life, prayed but badly, but at any rate prayed without ceasing; only—only—Alas! How worm-eaten, how arid were the poor recesses of his soul! He wondered, with anguish, whether they would not end like the Manor in Edgar Poe's tale, by crumbling suddenly, one fatal day, into the dark waters of the pool of sin which was undermining the walls.
Having reached this stage of his round of meditations, he was compelled to throw himself on the Abbé Gévresin, who required him, in spite of his coldness, to take the Communion. Since his return from Notre Dame de l'Atre his friendship with the Abbé had become much closer, altogether intimate.
He knew now the inner man of this priest, who, in the midst of modern surroundings, led a purely mediæval life. Formerly, when he rang at his bell, he had paid no heed to the housekeeper, an old woman, who curtsied to him without a word when she opened the door.
Now he was quite friendly with this singular and loving creature.
Their first conversation had arisen one day when he called to see the Abbé, who was ill. Seated by the bedside, with spectacles on the alert at the tip of her nose, she was kissing, one by one, the pious prints that illustrated a book wrapped in black cloth. She begged him to be seated, and then, closing the volume, and replacing her spectacles, she had joined in the conversation; and he had left the room quite amazed by this woman, who addressed the Abbé as "Father," and spoke quite simply of her intercourse with Jesus and the Saints as if it were a natural thing. She seemed to live in perfect friendship with them, and spoke of them as of companions with whom she chatted without any embarrassment.
Then the countenance of this woman, whom the priest introduced to him as Madame Céleste Bavoil, was, strange to say, the least of it. She was thin and upright, but short. In profile, with her strong Roman nose and set lips, she had the fleshless mask of a dead Cæsar; but, seen in front, the sternness of the features was softened into a familiar peasant's face, and melted into the kindliness of an old nun, quite out of keeping with the solemn strength of her features.
It seemed as though with that clean-cut, imperious nose, small white teeth, and black eyes sparkling with light, busy and inquisitive as those of a mouse, under fine long lashes, the woman ought, notwithstanding her age, to have been handsome; it seemed at least as though the combination of these details would have given the face a stamp of distinction. Not so; the conclusion was false to the premises; the whole betrayed the combined effect of the details.
"This contradiction," thought he, "evidently is the result of other peculiarities which nullify the harmony of the more important features; in the first place the thinness of the cheeks and their hue of old wood dotted here and there with freckles, calm stains of the colour of stale bran; then the flat braids of white hair drawn smooth under a frilled cap, and finally the modest dress, a black dress clumsily made, dragging across the bosom, and showing the lines of her stays stamped in relief on the back.
"And perhaps, in her, it is not so much incongruity of features, as a crying contrast between the dress and the face, the head and the body," thought he.
Altogether, as he summed her up, she was equally suggestive of the chapel and the fields. Thus she had something of the Sister and something of the peasant.
"Yes," he went on to himself, "that is very near the mark; but that is not all, for she is both less dignified and less common, inferior and yet more worthy. Seen from behind she is more like a woman who hires out the chairs in church than like a nun; seen in front she is conspicuously superior to the natives of the soil. Also it may be noted that when she speaks of the saints she is loftier, quite different; she soars up in a flame of the spirit. But all these hypotheses are in vain," he concluded, "for I cannot judge of her from one brief impression, one rapid view. What is quite certain is that, though she is not in the least like the Abbé, she too is in two halves—two persons in one. He, with the innocent gaze, the pure eyes of a girl at her first Communion, has the sometimes bitter mouth of an old man; she is proud of feature and humble of heart; they both, though by different outward signs and acts, achieve the same result, an identical semblance of paternal indulgence and mature goodness."
And Durtal had gone again and again to see them. His reception was always the same; Madame Bavoil greeted him with the invariable formula: "Here is our friend," while the priest's eyes smiled as he grasped his hand. Whenever he saw Madame Bavoil she was praying: over her stove, when she sat mending, while she was dusting the furniture, as she opened the door, she was always telling her rosary, without pause.
The chief delight of this rather silent woman consisted in talking of the Virgin to whom she had vowed worship; on the other hand she could quote by memory long passages from a mystic and somewhat eccentric writer of the end of the sixteenth century: Jeanne Chézard de Matel, the foundress of the Order of the Incarnate Word, an Institution of which the Sisters display a conspicuous costume—a white dress held round the waist by a belt of scarlet leather, a red cloak and a blood-coloured scapulary on which the name of Jesus is embroidered in blue silk, with a crown of thorns, a heart pierced with three nails, and the words Amor Meus.
At first Durtal thought Madame Bavoil slightly crazy, and while she poured out a passage by Jeanne de Matel on Saint Joseph, he looked at the priest—who gave no sign.
"Then Madame Bavoil is a saint?" he asked one morning when they were alone.
"My dear Madame Bavoil is a pillar of prayer," replied the Abbé gravely.
And one afternoon, when Gévresin was away in his turn, Durtal questioned the woman.
She gave him an account of her long pilgrimages across Europe, pilgrimages that she had spent years in making on foot, begging her way by the roadside.
Wherever the Virgin had a sanctuary, thither she went, a bundle of clothing in one hand, an umbrella in the other, an iron Crucifix on her breast, a rosary at her waist. By a reckoning which she had kept from day to day she had thus travelled ten thousand five hundred leagues on foot.
Then old age had come on, and she had "lost her old powers," as she said; Heaven had formerly guided her by inward voices, fixing the dates of these expeditions; but journeying was no longer required of her. She had been sent to live with the Abbé that she might rest; but her manner of life had been laid down for her once for all: her bed a straw mattress on wooden planks; her food such rustic and monastic fare as beseemed her, milk, honey and bread, and at seasons of penance she was to substitute water for milk.
"And you never take any other nourishment?"
"Never." And then she would add,—
"Aha! our friend, you see I am in disgrace up there!" and she would laugh cheerfully at herself and her appearance "If you had but seen me when I came back from Spain, where I went to visit Our Lady of the Pillar at Saragoza! I was a negress. With my large Crucifix on my breast, my gown looking like a nun's—every one asked: 'What can that woman be?' I looked like a charcoal-burner out for a holiday; no white to be seen but my cap, collar and cuffs; all the rest—face, hands and petticoats—quite black."
"But you must have been very dull travelling about alone?"
"Not at all, our friend, the Saints kept me company on the way; they told me at which house I should find a lodging for the night, and I was sure of being well received."
"And you never were refused hospitality?"
"Never. To be sure I did not ask for much; when I was wandering I only begged for a piece of bread and a glass of water, and to rest on a truss of straw in the cow-house."
"And Father Gévresin—how did you first know him?"
"That is quite a long story. Fancy! Heaven, as a punishment, deprived me of the Communion for a year and three months to a day. When I confessed to a priest, I owned to my intercourse with Our Saviour, and the Virgin and the Angels; then he at once treated me as a mad woman, unless he accused me of being possessed by the devil; to conclude, he refused me absolution, and I thought myself happy if he did not slam the little wicket of the confessional roughly in my face at my very first words.
"I believe I should have died of grief if the Lord had not at last had pity on me. One Saturday, when I was in Paris, He sent me to Notre Dame des Victoires, where the Father was in the confessional. He listened to me, he put me through long and severe tests, and then he granted me Communion. I often went to him again as a penitent, and then the niece who kept house for him retired into a convent, and I took her place; and I have been his housekeeper near on ten years now—"
She told her story with many breaks. Since she had ceased to wander about the country, she followed the pilgrimages in Paris in honour of the Blessed Virgin, and she had a list of the most popular sanctuaries: Notre-Dame des Victoires, Notre-Dame de Paris; Our Lady of Good Hope at Saint-Séverin, of Ever-present Help at L'Abbaye au Bois, of Peace at the convent in the Rue Picpus, of the Sick at the church of Saint-Laurent, of Happy Deliverance—a black Virgin from the church of Saint-Etienne des Grès—in the care of the Sisters of Saint-Thomas de Villeneuve, Rue de Sèvres; and outside Paris the shrines in the suburbs: Our Lady of Miracles at Saint-Maur, of the Angels at Bondy, of the Virtues at Aubervilliers, of Good Keeping at Long Pont, and those of Notre-Dame at Spire, at Pontoise, &c.
On another occasion, as he seemed suspicious of the severity of the rule imposed on her by Christ, she replied,—
"Remember, our friend, what happened to an illustrious handmaid of the Lord, Maria d'Agreda; being very ill, she yielded to the wishes of her daughters in the faith and sucked a mouthful of chicken, but she was forthwith reproved by Jesus, who said to her: 'I will not have my Spouses dainty.'
"Well, and I should run the risk of a similar reproof, if I attempted to touch a morsel of meat or to drink a drop of coffee or wine."
"And yet," said Durtal to himself as he came away, "it is quite evident that the woman is not mad. She has nothing the matter with her, either hysterical or mental: she is fragile and very thin, but she is scarcely nervous, and in spite of the laconic character of her meals she is in very good health, indeed is never ailing; nay more, she is a woman of good sense and an admirable manager. Up by daybreak, after Communion she soaps and washes all the linen herself, makes the sheets and shirts, mends the Abbé's gowns, and lives with amazing economy, while taking care that her master wants for nothing. Such a sagacious apprehension of the conduct of life has no connection with lunacy or delirium."
He knew too that she would never take any wages. It is true that in the sight of a world which gives its whole mind to legalized larceny this woman's disinterestedness might be enough to prove her insanity; but Durtal, in contradiction to received ideas, did not think that a contempt for money was necessarily allied with madness, and the more he thought of it the more was he convinced that she was a saint, and not a strait-laced saint, but indulgent and cheerful.
What he could positively assert was that she was very good to him; ever since his return from La Trappe she had helped him in every way, encouraging his spirits when she saw him depressed, and going, in spite of his protesting, to look over his wardrobe when she suspected that there might be sutures to operate upon, and buttons to replace.
This intimacy had become even closer since their life in common, all three together, on the occasion of Durtal's accompanying them, at their entreaty, to La Salette. And then suddenly their affectionate familiarity was endangered, for the Abbé Gévresin left Paris.
The Bishop of Chartres died, and his successor was one of Gévresin's oldest friends. On the very day when the Abbé Le Tilloy des Mofflaines was promoted to the episcopal throne, he begged Gévresin to accompany him to Chartres. There was an anxious struggle in the old priest's mind. He was ailing, weary, good for nothing, and at the bottom of his heart longed only never to move; but on the other hand he had not the courage to refuse his poor support to Monseigneur des Mofflaines. He tried to mollify the prelate by his advanced age, but the Bishop would not listen; all he would concede was that, instead of being appointed Vicar-general, the Abbé should be no more than a Canon. Still Gévresin mildly shook his head. Finally the prelate had his way, appealing to his friend's charity, and declaring that he ought to accept the post, in the last resort as a mortification and penance.
And when his departure was decided on, it became the Abbé's turn to circumvent Durtal and persuade him to leave Paris and come to settle near him at Chartres.
Although he was deeply grieved at this move, which he had done his utmost to hinder, Durtal was refractory, and refused to bury himself in a country town.
"But why, our friend," said Madame Bavoil, "I wonder why you are so obstinately bent on remaining here; you live in perfect solitude at home with your books. You can do the same if you come with us."
And when, his arguments exhausted, after a vehement diatribe against provincial life, Durtal ended by saying,—
"Then at Paris there are the quays, Saint Séverin, Notre Dame; there are delightful convents—"
"You would find equally good things at Chartres," answered the Abbé. "You will have one of the finest cathedrals in the world, monasteries such as you love, and as for books, your library is so well furnished that I can hardly think that you can add to it by wandering along the quays. Besides, as you know even better than I, no work of the class you seek is ever to be disinterred from the boxes of second-hand books. Their titles figure only in the catalogues of sales, and there is nothing to hinder their being sent to you at Chartres."
"I do not deny it—but there are other things on the quays besides old books; there are curiosities to be seen, and the Seine—a landscape—"
"Well, if you are homesick for that particular walk, you have only to take a train, and spend a whole afternoon lounging by the parapet over the river; it is easy to get from Chartres to Paris; there are express trains morning and evening which make the journey in less than two hours."
"And besides," cried Madame Bavoil, "what does all that matter? The great thing is that you leave a town just like any other town, to inhabit the very home of the Virgin. Just think! Notre Dame de Sous-Terre is the most ancient chapel to Mary in all France; think! you will live near Her, with Her, and She will load you with mercies!"
"And after all," the Abbé went on, "this exile cannot interfere with any of your schemes in art. You talk of writing the Lives of Saints; will you not work at them far better in the silence of the country than in the uproar of Paris?"
"The country—the provinces! The mere idea overpowers me," exclaimed Durtal. "If you could but imagine the impression it suggests to me, the sort of atmosphere, the kind of smell it presents to my brain. You know the huge cupboards you find in old houses, with double doors, and lined within with blue paper that is always damp. Well, at the mere name of the provinces I feel as if one of these were opened in my face, and I got a full blast of the stuffiness that comes out of it!—And to put the finishing touch to the vision by combining taste and smell, I have only to bite one of the biscuits they make nowadays of Lord knows what, reeking the moment you taste them, of fish glue and plaster that has been rained upon, I have only to eat that cold, insipid paste and sniff at a musty closet, and at once the lugubrious picture rises before me of some Godforsaken place!—Your Chartres will no doubt smell like that—Pah!"
"Oh, oh!" cried Madame Bavoil. "But you cannot know much about it, since you have never been to the place."
"Let him be!" said the Abbé, laughing. "He will get over his prejudices." And he went on,—
"Just explain this inconsistency: here is a Parisian who likes his city so little that he seeks out the most deserted nook to live in, the quietest, the least frequented, the spot that is most like a provincial retreat. He has a horror of the Boulevards, of public promenades, and of theatres; he buries himself in a hole, and stops his ears that he may not hear the noises around him; but, when he has a chance of improving on this scheme of existence, of ripening in real silence far from the crowd, when he can invert the conditions of life, and, instead of being a provincial Parisian, can become a Parisian of the provinces, he shies and kicks!"
"It is a fact," Durtal admitted when he was alone, "a positive fact that the capital is unprofitable to me. I never see anybody now, and shall be reduced to still more utter solitude when these friends are gone. I shall, for all purposes, be quite as well off at Chartres; I can study at my ease amid peaceful surroundings, within reach of a cathedral of far greater interest than Notre Dame de Paris. And besides—besides—there is another question of which the Abbé Gévresin says nothing, but which disturbs me greatly. If I remain here, alone, I shall have to find a new confessor, to wander through the churches, just as I wander through work-a-day life in search of dining-places and tables d'hôte. No, no; I have had enough at last of this day-by-day diet, spiritual and material! I have found a boarding-house for my soul where it is content, and it may stay there!
"And there is yet another argument. I can live more inexpensively at Chartres, and, without spending more than I spend here, I can settle myself once for all, dine with my feet on my own fender, and be waited on!"
So he had ended by deciding to follow his two friends, and had secured fairly spacious rooms facing the Cathedral; and then he, who had always lived cramped in tiny apartments, at last understood the provincial comfort of vast spaces and books ranged against the walls, with ample elbow-room.
Madame Bavoil had found him a servant, familiar and voluble indeed, but a good and pious woman. And he had begun his new existence lost in constant amazement at that wonderful Cathedral, the only one he had never before seen, probably because it was so near Paris, and, like all Parisians, he never took the trouble to set out on any but longer journeys. The town itself seemed to him devoid of interest, having but one secluded walk, a little embankment where, below the suburbs and near the old Guillaume Gate, washerwomen sang while they soaped the linen in a stream that blossomed, as they rubbed, with flecks of iridescent bubbles.
Hence he determined to walk out only very early in the morning or in the evening; then he could dream alone in the town, which by the afternoon was already half dead.
The Abbé and his housekeeper were lodged in the episcopal palace, under the shadow of the Cathedral apse. They occupied a first floor, with nothing over it, above some empty stables; a row of cold, tiled rooms which the Bishop had had redecorated.
Some time after their arrival at Chartres the Abbé had replied to Durtal, who had remarked that he was anxious,—
"Yes, I am certainly going through a difficult time; I have had to live down certain prejudices—but indeed I was prepared for them. And that was another reason why I did not wish to leave Paris. But the Blessed Virgin is good! Everything is coming right—"
And when Durtal persisted,—
"As you may suppose," said the priest, "the appointment of a Canon from another diocese was not looked upon with indifferent eyes by the clergy of Chartres. Such suspicions with regard to an unknown priest brought by a new Bishop are not after all unnatural; it is inevitably feared that he may play the part of a ruler without a robe; each one is on his guard, and they sift his least word and pick over his least action."
"And then," said Durtal, "is it not another mouth to feed out of the wretched pittance allowed by the State?"
"So far as that goes, no. I draw no stipend, and damage no man's interest; in fact I would not accept it. The only pecuniary advantage I derive from being about the Bishop's person is that I have no rent to pay, since I am lodged for nothing in the episcopal building.
"I could not in any case have drawn a stipend, for the allowance granted to Canons by the Government has ceased to be given, since a measure was passed, on March 22nd, 1885, decreeing the suppression of such emoluments as the incumbents died off. Hence only those who held such benefices before the passing of the law now draw on the funds devoted to the maintenance of the Church; and they are dying off one by one, so that the time is fast approaching when there will not be a single Canon left who is salaried by the State. In some dioceses these lapsed benefices are compensated for by the revenues from some religious foundation, or, as you may call it, a prebend. But there are none at Chartres. The Chapter has at the utmost the use of a varying income which it divides among those who have no benefice, giving them, good years with bad, a sum of about three hundred francs each, and that is all."
"And the Canons have no perquisites?"
"None whatever."
"Then I wonder how they live."
"If they have no private fortune they live more penuriously than the poorest labourers in Chartres. Most of them simply vegetate; some perform Mass for Sisterhoods, or are convent chaplains, but that brings in very little, two hundred or two hundred and fifty francs perhaps. Another holds the post of secretary to the diocese, by which he gets rooms and as much, perhaps, as six hundred francs. Yet another conducts the services of the holy week known as the Voice of Our Lady of Chartres, and acts as precentor; and some find employment as the Bishop's officials. Each one, in short, has a struggle to earn his food and lodging."
"What exactly is a Canon; what are his functions, and the origin of his office?"
"The origin? It is lost in the night of ages. It is supposed that Colleges of Canons existed in the time of Pépin le Bref; it is at any rate certain that during his reign Saint Chrodegang, Bishop of Metz, assembled the clerks of his cathedral and obliged them to live together, in a house in common, as though it were a convent, under a rule of which Charlemagne makes mention in his Capitularies.—A Canon's functions? They consist in the solemn celebration of the Canonical services, and the direction of all processions. As a matter of conscience every Canon is required in the first place to reside in the town where the church is situated to whose service he is attached; then to be present at the Canonical hours when Mass is said; finally to sit on the meetings of the Chapter on certain fixed days. But to tell the truth, their part has almost fallen into desuetude. The Council of Trent speaks of them as the 'Senatus Ecclesiæ,' the Senate of the Church, and they then formed the necessary Council of the Bishop. In these days the prelates do not even consult them.
"They only exercise a small part of their lost prerogatives when the See is vacant. At that time the Chapter acts in the place of the Bishop, and even then its rights are greatly restricted. As it has not Episcopal Orders, it can exercise none of the powers inherent in them. It cannot consequently ordain or confirm."
"And if the See remains long vacant?"
"Then the Chapter requests the Bishop of a neighbouring diocese to ordain its seminarists, and confirm the children it presents to him. In short, as you see, a Canon is not a very important gentleman.
"I am not speaking, of course, of Honorary Canons, or Titular Canons. They have no duties to fulfil; they merely enjoy an honorary title which allows them to wear the Canon's hood, by permission of their own Bishop when, as frequently happens, they belong to another diocese.
"The Chapter of this Cathedral of Chartres is said to have been founded in the sixth century by Saint Lubin. It then consisted of seventy-two Canons, and the number was added to, for when the Revolution broke out it amounted to seventy-six, and included seventeen dignitaries: the Dean, the sub-Dean, the Precentor, the sub-Precentor, the chief Archdeacon of Chartres, the Archdeacons of Beauce-en-Dunois, of Dreux, of Le Pincerais, of Vendôme, and of Blois; the gatekeeper, the Chancellor, the Provosts of Normandy, of Mézangey, of Ingré, and of Auvers; and the Chancel Warden. These priests, most of them men of family and wealth, were a nursery ground of Bishops; they owned all the houses round the Cathedral and lived independently in their cloister, devoting themselves to history, theology, and the Canon law—they are now indeed fallen!"
The Abbé was silent, shaking his head. Then he went on,—
"To return to my subject—I was naturally somewhat hurt by the coldness I met with on my arrival at Chartres. As I told you, I had to allay many apprehensions. But I think I have succeeded. And I thank God, too, for having given me a valuable supporter in the person of a subordinate priest of the Cathedral, who has done me invaluable service with my colleagues—the Abbé Plomb; do you know him?"
"No."
"He is a highly intelligent priest, very learned, a passionate mystic, thoroughly acquainted with the Cathedral, of which he has examined every corner."
"Ah ha! I am interested in that priest! Perhaps he is one of those I have already noticed. What is he like?"
"Short, young, pale, slightly marked with the small-pox, with spectacles that you may recognize by this peculiarity: the arch which rests on the nose is shaped like a loop, or, if you choose to say so, like a horseman's legs astride in the saddle."
"That man!"—and Durtal, left to himself, thought about the priest whom he had repeatedly seen in the church or the square.
"Certainly," said he to himself, "there is always the risk of a mistake when we judge of people by appearances; but how startling is the truth of that commonplace remark when applied to the clergy! This Abbé Plomb looks like a scared sacristan; he goes about gaping at invisible crows, and he seems so ill at ease, so loutish, so awkward—and this is our learned man and devoted mystic, in love with his Cathedral! Certainly it is not safe to judge of an Abbé from appearances. Now that it is to be my fate to live in this clerical world, I must begin by throwing prejudice overboard, and wait till I know all the priests of the diocese, before allowing myself to form an opinion of them."