The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Cathedral, by Joris-Karl Huysmans

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Title: The Cathedral

Author: Joris-Karl Huysmans

Release Date: February 15, 2005 [EBook #15067]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CATHEDRAL ***

Produced by Suzanne Shell, Cori Samuel and the PG Online Distributed
Proofreading Team.

J.K. Huysmans

THE CATHEDRAL

Translated by Clara Bell

_Publishing History_
First published in France in 1898
First English edition in 1898

THE CATHEDRAL.

CHAPTER I.

At Chartres, as you turn out of the little market-place, which is swept
in all weathers by the surly wind from the flats, a mild air as of a
cellar, made heavy by a soft, almost smothered scent of oil, puffs in
your face on entering the solemn gloom of the sheltering forest.

Durtal knew it well, and the delightful moment when he could take
breath, still half-stunned by the sudden change from a stinging north
wind to a velvety airy caress. At five every morning he left his rooms,
and to reach the covert of that strange forest he had to cross the
square; the same figures were always to be seen at the turnings from the
same streets; nuns with bowed heads, leaning forward, the borders of
their caps blown back and flapping like wings, the wind whirling in
their skirts, which they could hardly hold down; and shrunken women, in
garments they hugged round them, struggling forward with bent shoulders
lashed by the gusts.

Never at that hour had he seen anybody walking boldly upright, without
straining her neck and bowing her head; and these scattered women
gathered by degrees into two long lines, one of them turning to the
left, to vanish under a lighted porch opening to a lower level than the
square; the other going straight on, to be swallowed up in the darkness
by an invisible wall.

Closing the procession came a few belated priests, hurrying on, with one
hand gathering up the gown that ballooned behind them, and with the
other clutching their hats, or snatching at the breviary that was
slipping from under one arm, their faces hidden on their breast, to
plough through the wind with the ba