he black possession which would allow him neither to
work, nor to read, nor to pray; so overwhelming that he knew not whither
to turn nor what to do.

After spending dark and futile days in lounging round his library,
taking down a volume and shutting it up again, opening another of which
he failed to master a single page, he tried to escape from the weariness
of the hours by taking walks, and he determined finally to study the
town of Chartres.

He found a number of blind alleys and break-neck steeps, such as the
road down the knoll of St. Nicolas, which tumbles from the top of the
town to the bottom in a precipitous flight of steps; and then the
Boulevard des Filles-Dieu, so lonely with its walks planted with trees,
was worthy of his notice. Starting from the Place Drouaise, he came to a
little bridge where the waters meet of the two branches of the Eure; to
the right, above the eddying current and the buildings on the shore, he
could see the pile of the old town shouldering up the cathedral; to the
left, all along the quay, and looking out on the tall poplars that
fanned the water-mills, were saw-mills and timber-yards, the washing
places where laundresses knelt on straw in troughs, and the water foamed
before them in widening inky circles splashed into white bubbles by the
dip of a bird's wing.

This arm of the river diverted into the moat of the old ramparts,
encircled Chartres, bordered on one side by the trees of the alleys, and
on the other by cottages with terraced gardens down to the level of the
stream, the two banks joined by foot-bridges of planks or cast iron
arches.

Near where the Porte Guillaume uplifted its crenelated towers like
raised pies, there were houses that looked as if they had been gutted,
displaying, as in the vanished _cagnards_ or vaults of the Hotel Dieu at
Paris, cellars open on the level of the water, paved basements in whose
depths of prison twilight stone steps could be seen; and on going out
through the Porte Guillaume across a little humpbacked bridge, under the
archway still showing the groove in which the portcullis had worked
which was let down of yore to defend this side of the town, he came upon
yet another arm of the river washing the feet of more houses, playing at
hide and seek in the courts, musing between walls; and at once he was
haunted by the recollection of another river just like this, with its
decoction of walnut hulls frothed with bubbles; and to contribute to t