that
it had always been a part of the magnificent edifice with which it is
blended.

An antiquary (had there been one at Tours,--one of the least literary
towns in all France) would even discover, where the narrow street enters
the Cloister, several vestiges of an old arcade, which formerly made a
portico to these ecclesiastical dwellings, and was, no doubt, harmonious
in style with the general character of the architecture.

The house of which we speak, standing on the north side of the
cathedral, was always in the shadow thrown by that vast edifice, on
which time had cast its dingy mantle, marked its furrows, and shed
its chill humidity, its lichen, mosses, and rank herbs. The darkened
dwelling was wrapped in silence, broken only by the bells, by the
chanting of the offices heard through the windows of the church, by the
call of the jackdaws nesting in the belfries. The region is a desert
of stones, a solitude with a character of its own, an arid spot, which
could only be inhabited by beings who had either attained to absolute
nullity, or were gifted with some abnormal strength of soul. The house
in question had always been occupied by abbes, and it belonged to an old
maid named Mademoiselle Gamard. Though the property had been bought
from the national domain under the Reign of Terror by the father of
Mademoiselle Gamard, no one objected under the Restoration to the old
maid's retaining it, because she took priests to board and was very
devout; it may be that religious persons gave her credit for the
intention of leaving the property to the Chapter.

The Abbe Birotteau was making his way to this house, where he had lived
for the last two years. His apartment had been (as was now the canonry)
an object of envy and his "hoc erat in votis" for a dozen years. To be
Mademoiselle Gamard's boarder and to become a canon were the two great
desires of his life; in fact they do present accurately the ambition of
a priest, who, considering himself on the highroad to eternity, can wish
for nothing in this world but good lodging, good food, clean garments,
shoes with silver buckles, a sufficiency of things for the needs of the
animal, and a canonry to satisfy self-love, that inexpressible sentiment
which follows us, they say, into the presence of God,--for there are
grades among the saints. But the covetous desire for the apartment which
the Abbe Birotteau was now inhabiting (a very harmless desire in
the eyes of worldly people