he
suggestion, the more clearly to evoke a vision of the dismal Bievre, the
rank, acrid, pungent smell of tan, steeped, as it were, in vinegar, came
up in fumes from this broth of medlar juice brought down by the Eure.

The Bievre, a prisoner now in the sewers of Paris, seemed to have
escaped from its dungeon and to have taken refuge at Chartres that it
might live in the light of day; winding by the Rues de la Foulerie, de
la Tannerie, du Massacre, the quarters invaded by the leather-dressers,
the skinners and tan-peat makers.

But the Parisian environment, so pathetic in its aspect of silent
suffering, was absent from this town; these streets suggested merely a
declining hamlet, a poverty-stricken village. He felt something lacking
in this second Bievre, the fascination of exhaustion, the grace of the
woman of Paris faded and smirched by misery; it lacked the charm
compounded of pity and regret, of a fallen creature.

Such as they were, however, these streets, traced with a sort of
descending twist round the hill on which the cathedral stood exalted,
were the only curious by-ways of Chartres worth wandering through.

Here Durtal often succeeded in getting out of himself, in dreaming over
the distressful weariness of these streams, and in ceasing to meditate
on his own qualms, till he presently was tired of constant excursions in
the same quarter of the town, and then he tramped through it in every
direction, trying to find an interest in the sight of time-worn
spots--the grace of Queen Berthe's tower, of Claude Huve's house and
other buildings that have survived the shock of ages; but the enthusiasm
he threw into the study of these relics, spoilt by the foregone
eulogiums of the guides, could not last, and he then fell back on the
churches.

Although the cathedral crushed everything near it, Saint-Pierre, the
ancient Abbey church of a Benedictine monastery, now used as barracks,
deserved a lingering visit for the sake of its splendid windows, the
dwelling-place of Abbots and Bishops who look down with stern eyes,
holding up their croziers. And these windows, damaged by time, were very
singular. Upright, in each lancet-shaped setting of white glass, rose a
sword-blade bereft of its point; and in these square-tipped blades Saint
Benedict and Saint Maur stood lost in thought, with Apostles and Popes,
Prelates and Saints, standing out in robes of flame against the luminous
whiteness of the borders.

Certainly Chartr