en the assembly of polychrome statues:
Mary painted with the crude green of angelica and the acrid pinks of
English pear-drops; Madonnas gazing in rapture at their own feet, with
extended hands whence proceeded fans of yellow rays; Joan of Arc
squatting like a hen on her eggs, with eyes raised to heaven like white
marbles, and pressing a standard to her bosom in its plaster cuirass;
Saint Anthonys of Padua, clean and snug, as neat as two pins; Saint
Josephs, not enough the carpenter and too little the Saint; Magdalens
weeping silver pills; a whole mob of semi-divinities, best quality, of
the class known as "The Munich Article" in the Rue Madame.

"Oh, Monsieur l'Abbe, the donors are certainly terrible people--but
could you not, quite by accident, drop one of these objects every day--"

The priest gave a shrug of despair.

"They would only bring me more," cried he. "But if you are willing, we
will be off at once, for I am afraid of being caught here if I linger."

And as they walked, talking of the Cathedral, Durtal exclaimed,--

"Is it not a monstrous thing that in the splendour of this Cathedral of
Chartres it is impossible to hear any genuine plain-song? I am reduced
to frequenting the sanctuary only at hours when there is no high service
going on. Above all I avoid being present at High Mass on Sundays; the
music that is tolerated infuriates me! Is there no way of having the
organist dismissed, and a clean sweep made of the precentor and the
teachers in the choir-school, of packing off the basses with their
vinous voices to the taverns? Ugh! And the gassy effervescence that
rises from the thin pipes of the little boys! and the street tunes
eructed in a hiccough, like the run of a lamp-chain when you pull it up,
mingling with the noisy bellow of the basses! What a disgrace, what a
shame! How is it that the Bishop, the priests, the Canons do not
prohibit such treason?

"Monseigneur, I know, is old and ill; but those Canons!--They look so
weary, to be sure! As I see them droning out the Psalms in their stalls,
I wonder whether they know where they are and what they are doing; they
always seem to me in a half unconscious state--"

"The high winds of la Beauce induce lethargy," said the Abbe, laughing.
"But allow me to assure you that though the Cathedral scorns Gregorian
chants, here, at Chartres, at the little Seminary, at the church of
Notre Dame de la Breche, and at the convent of the Sisters of Saint
Paul, the