ain infallible proofs of constancy.
Nevertheless, as the pavement of the Cloister was likely to be dry, and
as the abbe had won three francs ten sous in his rubber with Madame de
Listomere, he bore the rain resignedly from the middle of the place de
l'Archeveche, where it began to come down in earnest. Besides, he was
fondling his chimera,--a desire already twelve years old, the desire of
a priest, a desire formed anew every evening and now, apparently, very
near accomplishment; in short, he had wrapped himself so completely
in the fur cape of a canon that he did not feel the inclemency of
the weather. During the evening several of the company who habitually
gathered at Madame de Listomere's had almost guaranteed to him his
nomination to the office of canon (then vacant in the metropolitan
Chapter of Saint-Gatien), assuring him that no one deserved such
promotion as he, whose rights, long overlooked, were indisputable.

If he had lost the rubber, if he had heard that his rival, the Abbe
Poirel, was named canon, the worthy man would have thought the rain
extremely chilling; he might even have thought ill of life. But it
so chanced that he was in one of those rare moments when happy inward
sensations make a man oblivious of discomfort. In hastening his steps he
obeyed a more mechanical impulse, and truth (so essential in a history
of manners and morals) compels us to say that he was thinking of neither
rain nor gout.

In former days there was in the Cloister, on the side towards the
Grand'Rue, a cluster of houses forming a Close and belonging to the
cathedral, where several of the dignitaries of the Chapter lived. After
the confiscation of ecclesiastical property the town had turned the
passage through this close into a narrow street, called the Rue de
la Psalette, by which pedestrians passed from the Cloister to the
Grand'Rue. The name of this street, proves clearly enough that the
precentor and his pupils and those connected with the choir formerly
lived there. The other side, the left side, of the street is occupied by
a single house, the walls of which are overshadowed by the buttresses of
Saint-Gatien, which have their base in the narrow little garden of the
house, leaving it doubtful whether the cathedral was built before
or after this venerable dwelling. An archaeologist examining the
arabesques, the shape of the windows, the arch of the door, the whole
exterior of the house, now mellow with age, would see at once