Abbe Gabriel did not notice a covered way from the house to the
church; he went back to the road which led to the front portal, a
species of porch with a sloping roof that faced the village. It was
reached by a series of disjointed stone steps, at the side of which lay
a ravine washed out by the mountain torrents and covered with noble
elms planted by Sully the Protestant. This church, one of the poorest
in France where there are so many poor churches, was like one of those
enormous barns with projecting doors covered by roofs supported on
brick or wooden pillars. Built, like the parsonage, of cobblestones and
mortar, flanked by a face of solid rock, and roofed by the commonest
round tiles, this church was decorated on the outside with the richest
creations of sculpture, rich in light and shade and lavishly massed
and colored by Nature, who understands such art as well as any Michael
Angelo. Ivy clasped the walls with its nervous tendrils, showing stems
amid its foliage like the veins in a lay figure. This mantle, flung by
Time to cover the wounds he made, was starred by autumn flowers drooping
from the crevices, which also gave shelter to numerous singing birds.
The rose-window above the projecting porch was adorned with blue
campanula, like the first page of an illuminated missal. The side
which communicated with the parsonage, toward the north, was not less
decorated; the wall was gray and red with moss and lichen; but the other
side and the apse, around which lay the cemetery, was covered with a
wealth of varied blooms. A few trees, among others an almond-tree--one
of the emblems of hope--had taken root in the broken wall; two enormous
pines standing close against the apsis served as lightning-rods. The
cemetery, enclosed by a low, half-ruined wall, had for ornament an iron
cross, mounted on a pedestal and hung with box, blessed at Easter,--one
of those affecting Christian thoughts forgotten in cities. The village
rector is the only priest who, in these days, thinks to go among his
dead and say to them each Easter morn, "Thou shalt live again!" Here and
there a few rotten wooden crosses stood up from the grassy mounds.

The interior of the church harmonized perfectly with the poetic tangle
of the humble exterior, the luxury and art of which was bestowed by
Time, for once in a way charitable. Within, the eye first went to the
roof, lined with chestnut, to which age had given the richest tints of
the oldest woods of Eu