ermine, and behind them, a little in advance of the next
group, walked two white cowls, that of a Brother of Picpus, and that of
a Trappist who represented the Trappist Sisterhood of La Cour Peytral,
to which he was chaplain.

Finally the Seminarists came on in a black crowd; those of the Great
Seminary of Chartres and of the Little Seminary of Saint Cheron
preceding the priests, and behind them, under a purple velvet canopy
embroidered in gold with wheat ears and grapes, and decorated at each
corner with bunches of snow-white feathers, with his mitre on his head
and holding his crozier, came Monseigneur Le Tilloy des Mofflaines.

As he passed, in the act of blessing the street, many an unknown Lazarus
rose up, the forgotten dead come back to life; His Reverence seemed to
multiply the Miracles of the Lord. Effete old men, huddled in their
chairs in the doorways or at the windows, revived for a second, and
found strength enough to cross themselves. Persons who had been
supposed dead for years managed almost to smile. The vacant eyes of old,
old children gazed at the violet cross outlined in the air by the
Prelate's gloved hand. Chartres, that city of the dead, had changed to a
vast nursery; in the extravagance of its joy the town was in its second
childhood.

But as soon as the Bishop was past the scene changed. Durtal was
startled, and he tittered.

A whole "Court of Miracles" seemed to follow in the Prelate's train,
strutting but tottering; a procession of old wrecks, dressed out in such
garments as are sold from the dead-house, staggered along holding each
other's arms, propped one against another. Every reach-me-down that had
been hanging these twenty years flapped about their limbs, hindering
their progress. Trousers with baggy ankles or with gaiter tops,
balloon-shaped or close-fitting, made of loose-woven stuff or so shrunk
that they would not meet the boot, displaying feet where the elastic
sides wriggled like living vermin, and ankles covered with vermicelli
dipped in ink; then the most impossibly threadbare and discoloured
coats, made, as it seemed, of old billiard cloths, of tarpaulin worn to
the canvas, of cast-off awnings; overcoats of cast iron, the surface
worn off the back-seam and sleeves--glaucous waistcoats, sprigged with
flowers and furnished with buttons of dry brawn-parings; and all this
was as nothing; what was prodigious, beyond the bounds of belief,
fabulous, positively insane, was the colle