of worthies admired and congratulated each other; clasped
hands encased in white gloves--gloves scoured with paraffin, cleaned
with indiarubber or breadcrumb. Presently a retiring wave cleared a
space in the crowd of priests and laymen, who shrank back hat in hand to
make way for an old hearse of a landau, drawn by a consumptive horse and
driven by a sort of Moudjik, a coachman with a puffy face behind a
thicket of hair sprouting on his cheeks and his mouth, in his ears and
nose. This vehicle came to an anchor before the front steps, and out of
it stepped a fat man, blown out like a bladder and buttoned up in an
uniform with silver lace; after him came a thinner personage in a coat
with facings of dark and light blue, and everybody bowed to the Prefet
attended by one of his three Councillors.

They had lifted their plumed cocked hats, distributed a dole of
hand-shaking, and vanished into the vestibule when the army made its
appearance, represented by a Colonel of Cuirassiers, some officers of
the Artillery and the Commissariat, a few subalterns of Infantry, and
one gendarme.

This was all.

Within an hour of this reception the exhausted town was asleep again,
not having energy enough even to remove the poles; Lazarus had gone back
to his sepulchre, the resuscitated antiquities had relapsed into death;
the streets were empty; reaction had ensued; Chartres would be exhausted
for months by this outbreak.

"What a sty it is! What a hole!" cried Durtal to himself.

On certain days, tired of spending his afternoons shut up with his books
or of attending service in the cathedral, hearing the canons languidly
playing rackets from side to side of the choir with the Psalms, of which
they tossed the verses to and fro in a mumbling tone, he would go down
after dinner and smoke cigarettes in the little Place. At Chartres,
eight o'clock in the evening was as three in the morning in any other
town; every light was out, every house closed.

The priesthood, eager for bed, had shut up shop. No prayers to the
Virgin, no Benediction, nothing in this cathedral! At such an hour,
kneeling in the dark, you feel as if the Mother were more immediately
present, nearer, more intimately your own; but these moments of
confidence, when it is easier to tell Her all your trivial woes, were
unknown at Notre Dame. No one was worn out by midnight prayer in that
church!

But though he could not go in, Durtal could prowl round and about it.
And th