To the left there was another trench excavated athwart the gloom; an
unbroken chain of stars shone forth down the Champs-Elysees from the
Arc-de-Triomphe to the Place de la Concorde, where a new cluster of
Pleiades was flashing; next came the gloomy stretches of the Tuileries
and the Louvre, the blocks of houses on the brink of the water, and
the Hotel-de-Ville away at the extreme end--all these masses of
darkness being parted here and there by bursts of light from some
large square or other; and farther and farther away, amidst the
endless confusion of roofs, appeared scattered gleams, affording faint
glimpses of the hollow of a street below, the corner of some
boulevard, or the brilliantly illuminated meeting-place of several
thoroughfares. On the opposite bank, on the right, the Esplanade alone
could be discerned with any distinctness, its rectangle marked out in
flame, like an Orion of a winter's night bereft of his baldrick. The
long streets of the Saint-Germain district seemed gloomy with their
fringe of infrequent lamps; but the thickly populated quarters beyond
were speckled with a multitude of tiny flames, clustering like
nebulae. Away towards the outskirts, girdling the whole of the
horizon, swarmed street-lamps and lighted windows, filling these
distant parts with a dust, as it were, of those myriads of suns, those
planetary atoms which the naked eye cannot discover. The public
edifices had vanished into the depths of the darkness; not a lamp
marked out their spires and towers. At times you might have imagined
you were gazing on some gigantic festival, some illuminated cyclopean
monument, with staircases, balusters, windows, pediments, and terraces
--a veritable cosmos of stone, whose wondrous architecture was
outlined by the gleaming lights of a myriad lamps. But there was
always a speedy return of the feeling that new constellations were
springing into being, and that the heavens were spreading both above
and below.

Helene, in compliance with the all-embracing sweep of the priest's
hand, cast a lingering look over illumined Paris. Here too she knew
not the names of those seeming stars. She would have liked to ask what
the blaze far below on the left betokened, for she saw it night after
night. There were others also which roused her curiosity, and some of
them she loved, whilst some inspired her with uneasiness or vexation.

"Father," said she, for the first time employing that appellation of
affectio