would have been so easy to build a less magnificent
and less hideous church, and not to lodge the Redeemer in a monument of
sin! Think of the throng of good souls who so long ago dragged their
load of stones, praying as they went! It would never have occurred to
them to turn their love to account and make it serve their craving for
display, their hunger for lucre."

An arm was laid on his, and Durtal recognized the Abbe Gevresin, who
had come up while he stood dreaming in front of the cathedral.

"I am going on at once, they are waiting for me," said the priest. "I
only took advantage of our meeting to tell you that I had a letter this
morning from the Abbe Plomb."

"Indeed! And where is he?"

"At Solesmes; but he comes home the day after to-morrow. Our friend
seems greatly taken with the Benedictine life."

And the Abbe smiled, while Durtal, a little startled, watched him turn
the corner by the new belfry.

CHAPTER X.

One morning Durtal went out to seek the Abbe Plomb. He could not find
him in his own house, nor in the cathedral; but at last, directed by the
beadle, he made his way to the house at the corner of the Rue de
l'Acacia, where the choir-school was lodged.

He went in by a gate that stood half open, into a yard littered with
broken pails and other rubbish. The house, beyond this courtyard, was
suffering from the cutaneous disease that affects plaster, eaten with
leprosy and spotted with blisters, with zig-zag rifts from top to
bottom, and a crackled surface like the glaze of an old jar. The dead
stock of a vine stretched its gnarled black arms along the wall.

Durtal, looking in at a window, saw a dormitory with rows of white beds,
and he was amused, for never had he seen beds so tiny.

A lad was in the room, whom he called, by tapping on the pane, and asked
whether the Abbe Plomb were still about the place. The boy nodded an
affirmative, and showed Durtal into a waiting-room.

This room was like the office of an exceedingly inferior and pious
hotel. The furniture consisted of a mahogany table of a sort of salmon
pink colour, on which stood a pot-stand bereft of flowers; arm-chairs
with circular backs fit for a gatekeeper's room, a chimney-piece adorned
with statues of saints much fly-bitten, and a chimney board covered with
paper representing the Vision of Lourdes. On the walls hung a black
board with rows of numbered keys; opposite, a chromo-lithograph of
Christ, displaying, with an am