which the Abbe Gevresin
says nothing, but which disturbs me greatly. If I remain here, alone, I
shall have to find a new confessor, to wander through the churches, just
as I wander through work-a-day life in search of dining-places and
tables d'hote. No, no; I have had enough at last of this day-by-day
diet, spiritual and material! I have found a boarding-house for my soul
where it is content, and it may stay there!

"And there is yet another argument. I can live more inexpensively at
Chartres, and, without spending more than I spend here, I can settle
myself once for all, dine with my feet on my own fender, and be waited
on!"

So he had ended by deciding to follow his two friends, and had secured
fairly spacious rooms facing the Cathedral; and then he, who had always
lived cramped in tiny apartments, at last understood the provincial
comfort of vast spaces and books ranged against the walls, with ample
elbow-room.

Madame Bavoil had found him a servant, familiar and voluble indeed, but
a good and pious woman. And he had begun his new existence lost in
constant amazement at that wonderful Cathedral, the only one he had
never before seen, probably because it was so near Paris, and, like all
Parisians, he never took the trouble to set out on any but longer
journeys. The town itself seemed to him devoid of interest, having but
one secluded walk, a little embankment where, below the suburbs and near
the old Guillaume Gate, washerwomen sang while they soaped the linen in
a stream that blossomed, as they rubbed, with flecks of iridescent
bubbles.

Hence he determined to walk out only very early in the morning or in the
evening; then he could dream alone in the town, which by the afternoon
was already half dead.

The Abbe and his housekeeper were lodged in the episcopal palace, under
the shadow of the Cathedral apse. They occupied a first floor, with
nothing over it, above some empty stables; a row of cold, tiled rooms
which the Bishop had had redecorated.

Some time after their arrival at Chartres the Abbe had replied to
Durtal, who had remarked that he was anxious,--

"Yes, I am certainly going through a difficult time; I have had to live
down certain prejudices--but indeed I was prepared for them. And that
was another reason why I did not wish to leave Paris. But the Blessed
Virgin is good! Everything is coming right--"

And when Durtal persisted,--

"As you may suppose," said the priest, "the appointment of a C