s in the morning at the Benedictine chapel
or at Saint Severin, and go to Saint Sulpice for vespers or compline.

Here there was nothing; and yet where were there more promising
conditions for the performance of Gregorian music than at Chartres?

Setting aside a few antiquated basses who could only bark, and whom it
would be necessary to dismiss, there was a whole sheaf of rich young
voices, a school of nearly a hundred boys who could have rolled out in
clear, sweet tones the broad melodies of the old plain-song.

But in this ill-starred cathedral an inept precentor gave out, by way of
liturgical canticles, a perfect menagerie of outlandish tunes, which,
let loose on Sunday, seemed to scamper like marmosets up the pillars and
under the roof. And the artless voices of the choir-boys were drilled to
these musical monkey-tricks. At Chartres it was impossible to attend
High Mass in the cathedral with any decent devotion.

The other services were not much better; indeed, Durtal was reduced to
attending vespers at Notre Dame de la Breche, in the lower town, a
chapel where the priest, a friend of the Abbe Plomb, had introduced the
use of Solesmes, and patiently trained a little choir composed of
faithful working-men and pious boys.

The voices, especially the trebles, were not first-rate; but the priest,
being a skilled musician, had contrived to train and soften them, and
had, in fact, succeeded in getting the Benedictine art accepted in his
church.

Unfortunately it was so ugly, so painfully adorned with images, that
only by shutting his eyes could Durtal endure to remain in Notre Dame de
la Breche.

In the midst of this surge of reflections on his soul, on Paris, on the
Eucharist, on music, on Chartres, Durtal was at last quite bewildered,
not knowing where he was. Now and then, however, he recovered some
tranquillity, and then he was astonished at himself, he could not
understand himself.

"Why regret Paris--why, indeed?" he would ask himself. "Was the life I
led there unlike that I lead here? Were not the churches there--Notre
Dame de Paris, to name but one--just as much to be execrated for
sacrilegious _bravuras_ as Notre Dame de Chartres? On the other hand, I
never went out there to lounge in the tiresome streets; I saw nobody but
the Abbe Gevresin and Madame Bavoil, and I see them still, and oftener,
in this town. I have even gained a friend by the move, a learned and
agreeable companion, in the Abbe Plomb. So