to breathe the melancholy that weighed on this
naked sanctuary.

He was in a building of the end of the eighteenth century; in the
middle, raised on eight steps, stood an altar of wax-polished wood in
the shape of a tomb; above it was a shrine covered with a curtain of
white brocade and surmounted by a picture of the Annunciation, a washy
painting mounted in a gilt frame. To the right and left were two
medallions in relief, on one side Saint Joseph and on the other Saint
Theresa, and above the picture, close to the ceiling, were the arms of
the Carmelites, also in relief: a shield with a cross and stars beneath
a marquis's coronet, from which an arm emerges wielding a sword. This
was held up by fat little angels, the swollen infants of the sculptors
of that period, and floating in the air was a scroll bearing the motto
of the order: "_Zelo, zelatus sum, pro Domino Deo Exercituum_."

Finally, to the right of the altar, the iron grating of the nunnery was
seen in an arch in the wall; and on the steps of the altar, inside the
railing for the communicants, an annoying statue was emerging from under
a gilt canopy--the Infant Christ holding a globe in one hand, and
raising the other as if to command attention; a statue of painted
plaster as of some precocious mountebank, with homage offered in this
deserted chapel, of two pots of hydrangea and a floating wick in a
crimson glass.

"How cold and dismal is such _rococo_!" thought Durtal. He knelt down on
a chair, and by degrees his impressions underwent a change. This holy
place, saturated with prayer, seemed to let its ice melt and grow balmy.
It was as though visions percolated through the gate of the cloister and
shed warm puffs of air in the place. A sense of warmth of soul stole
over him, of being at home in this solitude.

The only astonishing thing was to hear, in such remote seclusion, the
whistling of trains and the rumbling of engines.

Durtal went out before Madame Bavoil had finished the rosary. Standing
in the doorway, he saw, just opposite, the cathedral in profile, but
with only one spire, the old belfry being hidden by the new. Under a
cloudy sky it stood massively solid, green and grey, with its roof of
oxidized copper, and the pumice-stone hue of the tower.

"It is stupendous!" said Durtal to himself, recalling the various
aspects it could assume according to the season and the hour, as the
colour of its complexion varied. "The whole effect under a clear