me state as the last workman had left them. What struck
you first of all were the ten pillars of the nave and the four pillars of
the choir, those magnificent columns of Pyrenean marble, each of a single
block, which had been covered with a casing of planks in order to protect
them from damage. The bases and capitals were still in the rough,
awaiting the sculptors. And these isolated columns, thus cased in wood,
had a mournful aspect indeed. Moreover, a dismal sensation filled you at
sight of the whole gaping enclosure, where grass had sprung up all over
the ravaged, bumpy soil of the aisles and the nave, a thick cemetery
grass, through which the women of the neighbourhood had ended by making
paths. They came in to spread out their washing there. And even now a
collection of poor people's washing--thick sheets, shirts in shreds, and
babies' swaddling clothes--was fast drying in the last rays of the sun,
which glided in through the broad, empty bays.

Slowly, without speaking, Pierre and Doctor Chassaigne walked round the
inside of the church. The ten chapels of the aisles formed a species of
compartments full of rubbish and remnants. The ground of the choir had
been cemented, doubtless to protect the crypt below against
infiltrations; but unfortunately the vaults must be sinking; there was a
hollow there which the storm of the previous night had transformed into a
little lake. However, it was these portions of the transept and the apse
which had the least suffered. Not a stone had moved; the great central
rose windows above the triforium seemed to be awaiting their coloured
glass, while some thick planks, forgotten atop of the walls of the apse,
might have made anyone think that the workmen would begin covering it the
next day. But, when Pierre and the doctor had retraced their steps, and
went out to look at the facade, the lamentable woefulness of the young
ruin was displayed to their gaze. On this side, indeed, the works had not
been carried forward to anything like the same extent: the porch with its
three portals alone was built, and fifteen years of abandonment had
sufficed for the winter weather to eat into the sculptures, the small
columns and the archivaults, with a really singular destructive effect,
as though the stones, deeply penetrated, destroyed, had melted away
beneath tears. The heart grieved at the sight of the decay which had
attacked the work before it was even finished. Not yet to be, and
nevertheless