ce
seemed to burst into blossom in proportion as it approached the sky in
a continual upward flight, as if, relieved at being delivered from the
ancient sacerdotal terror, it was about to lose itself in the bosom of a
God of pardon and of love. It seemed to have a physical sensation which
permeated it, made it light and happy, like a sacred hymn it had just
heard sung, very pure and holy, as it passed into the upper air.

Moreover, the Cathedral was alive. Hundreds of swallows had constructed
their nests under the borders of trefoil, and even in the hollows of the
bell-turrets and the pinnacles, and they were continually brushing their
wings against the flying buttresses and the piers which they inhabited.
There were also the wood-pigeons of the elms in the Bishop's garden, who
held themselves up proudly on the borders of the terraces, going slowly,
as if walking merely to show themselves off. Sometimes, half lost in
the blue sky, looking scarcely larger than a fly, a crow alighted on
the point of a spire to smooth its wings. The old stones themselves were
animated by the quiet working of the roots of a whole flora of plants,
the lichens and the grasses, which pushed themselves through the
openings in the walls. On very stormy days the entire apse seemed to
awake and to grumble under the noise of the rain as it beat against the
leaden tiles of the roof, running off by the gutters of the cornices and
rolling from story to story with the clamour of an overflowing torrent.
Even the terrible winds of October and of March gave to it a soul, a
double voice of anger and of supplication, as they whistled through
its forests of gables and arcades of roseate ornaments and of little
columns. The sun also filled it with life from the changing play of
its rays; from the early morning, which rejuvenated it with a delicate
gaiety, even to the evening, when, under the slightly lengthened-out
shadows, it basked in the unknown.

And it had its interior existence. The ceremonies with which it was ever
vibrating, the constant swinging of its bells, the music of the organ,
and the chanting of the priests, all these were like the pulsation of
its veins. There was always a living murmur in it: half-lost sounds,
like the faint echo of a Low Mass; the rustling of the kneeling
penitents, a slight, scarcely perceptible shivering, nothing but the
devout ardour of a prayer said without words and with closed lips.

Now, as the days grew longer, An