ioned Durtal. "What
do you hope for if you have no faith in the coming of Christ?"

"I hope for nothing at all."

"I pity you. Really, you believe in no future amelioration?"

"I believe, alas, that a dotard Heaven maunders over an exhausted
Earth."

The bell-ringer raised his hands and sadly shook his head.

When they had left Gevingey, Des Hermies, after walking in silence for
some time, said, "You are not astonished that all the events spoken of
tonight happened at Lyons." And as Durtal looked at him inquiringly, he
continued, "You see I am well acquainted with Lyons. People's brains
there are as foggy as the streets when the morning mists roll up from
the Rhone. That city looks magnificent to travellers who like the long
avenues, wide boulevards, green grass, and penitentiary architecture of
modern cities. But Lyons is also the refuge of mysticism, the haven of
preternatural ideas and doubtful creeds. That's where Vintras died, the
one in whom, it seems, the soul of the prophet Elijah was incarnate.
That's where Naundorff found his last partisans. That is where
enchantment is rampant, because in the suburb of La Guillotiere you can
have a person bewitched for a louis. Add that it is likewise, in spite
of its swarms of radicals and anarchists, an opulent market for a dour
Protestant Catholicism; a Jansenist factory, richly productive of
bourgeois bigotry.

"Lyons is celebrated for delicatessen, silk, and churches. At the top of
every hill--and there's a hill every block--is a chapel or a convent,
and Notre Dame de Fourviere dominates them all. From a distance this
pile looks like an eighteenth century dresser turned upside down, but
the interior, which is in process of completion, is amazing. You ought
to go and take a look at it some day. You will see the most
extraordinary jumble of Assyrian, Roman, Gothic, and God knows what,
jacked together by Bossan, the only architect for a century who has
known how to create a cathedral interior. The nave glitters with inlays
and marble, with bronze and gold. Statues of angels diversify the rows
of columns and break up, with impressive grace, the known harmonies of
line. It's Asiatic and barbarous, and reminds one of the architecture
shown in Gustave Moreau's Herodiade.

"And there is an endless stream of pilgrims. They strike bargains with
Our Lady. They pray for an extension of markets, new outlets for
sausages and silks. They consult her on ways and means of getting