urtal that the woes repressed in the morning hours were
poured out in the twilight; the faithful did not now come for Her alone,
but for themselves; each one brought a load of sorrows and opened it
before Her. What anguish of soul was poured out on the stones by these
women, leaning prostrate against the railing that protected the pillar
which each kissed as she rose.

And the swarthy image, carved in the early part of the sixteenth
century, had listened, Her face invisible, to the same sighs, the same
complaints, from succeeding generations, had heard the same cries,
echoing down the ages, for ever lamenting the bitterness of life, for
ever expressing the desire, all the same, for length of days!

Durtal looked at Madame Bavoil. She was praying with closed eyes,
kneeling on the stones and sitting on her heels, her arms hanging, her
hands clasped. How happy was she to be able thus to abstract herself.

And he tried to force himself to say a prayer, quite a short one, in the
hope that he might succeed in getting to the end without letting his
mind wander. He began "_Sub tuum_"--"Under Thy protection do we take
refuge; Holy Mother of God, despise not us." What it was really
indispensable that he should obtain from the Father Superior was
permission to take his books with him into the monastery, and to have at
least a few pious toys in his cell. Ah--but how could he explain that
any profane literature was necessary in a convent, that, from an
artist's point of view, it was requisite to refresh one's memory of the
prose of Hugo, of Baudelaire, of Flaubert--"I am at sea again!" said
Durtal suddenly to himself.

He tried to brush away these distractions, and went on: "Despise not the
prayers we put up to Thee in our needs--" And he was off again at a
gallop in his dreams--"Even supposing that no difficulty were made about
this request, the question would still remain as to submitting
manuscripts for revision, obtaining the _imprimatur_; and how would that
be arranged?"

Madame Bavoil interrupted his wanderings by rising from her knees.
Recalled to himself, he hastily finished his prayer--"but deliver us
from all perils, glorious and blessed Virgin; Amen." And he parted from
the housekeeper on the steps of the church, going home much vexed by his
dissipation of mind.

He there found a note from the Editor of the _Review_, which had
published his paper on the Fra Angelico in the Louvre, asking him for
another article.