ating
in it was cut into the thick unlighted wall, which was seamed with
fissures. Suddenly, further away, a ray of light shot out of a show
window, and, doubtless attracted by the sound of the cab wheels, a man
wearing the black apron of a wineshop keeper lounged through the shop
door and spat on the threshold.

"This is the place," said Mme. Chantelouve.

She rang. The grating opened. She raised her veil. A shaft of lantern
light struck her full in the face, the door opened noiselessly, and they
penetrated into a garden.

"Good evening, madame."

"Good evening, Marie. In the chapel?"

"Yes. Does madame wish me to guide her?"

"No, thanks."

The woman with the lantern scrutinized Durtal. He perceived, beneath a
hood, wisps of grey hair falling in disorder over a wrinkled old face,
but she did not give him time to examine her and returned to a tent
beside the wall serving her as a lodge.

He followed Hyacinthe, who traversed the dark lanes, between rows of
palms, to the entrance of a building. She opened the doors as if she
were quite at home, and her heels clicked resolutely on the flagstones.

"Be careful," she said, going through a vestibule. "There are three
steps."

They came out into a court and stopped before an old house. She rang. A
little man advanced, hiding his features, and greeted her in an
affected, sing-song voice. She passed, saluting him, and Durtal brushed
a fly-blown face, the eyes liquid, gummy, the cheeks plastered with
cosmetics, the lips painted.

"I have stumbled into a lair of sodomists.--You didn't tell me that I
was to be thrown into such company," he said to Hyacinthe, overtaking
her at the turning of a corridor lighted by a lamp.

"Did you expect to meet saints here?"

She shrugged her shoulders and opened a door. They were in a chapel
with a low ceiling crossed by beams gaudily painted with coal-tar
pigment. The windows were hidden by great curtains. The walls were
cracked and dingy. Durtal recoiled after a few steps. Gusts of humid,
mouldy air and of that indescribable new-stove acridity poured out of
the registers to mingle with an irritating odour of alkali, resin, and
burnt herbs. He was choking, his temples throbbing.

He advanced groping, attempting to accustom his eyes to the
half-darkness. The chapel was vaguely lighted by sanctuary lamps
suspended from chandeliers of gilded bronze with pink glass pendants.
Hyacinthe made him a sign to sit down, then she went ove