en, scarcely seen by the light of the poverty-stricken lamps
standing here and there on the square, the cathedral assumed strange
aspects. The portals yawned as caverns full of blackness, and the outer
shape of the body of the building, from the towers to the apse, with
its abutments and buttresses merely guessed at in the dark, stood up
like a cliff worn away by invisible waves. It might have been a
mountain, its summit jagged by storms, eaten into deep caverns at the
foot by a vanished ocean; and on going nearer he could in the gloom
imagine ill-defined paths steeply running up the cliff, or winding on
shelves at the edge of a rock; and, occasionally, midway on one of these
dark paths, some white statue of a Bishop would start forth under a
moonbeam, like a ghost haunting the ruins, and blessing all comers with
uplifted fingers of stone.

These wanderings in the precincts of the cathedral, which by daylight
was so light and slender, and in the dark seemed so ponderous and
threatening, were ill-adapted to cure Durtal of his melancholy.

This illusion of rocks riven by the lightning, of caverns deserted by
the waves, plunged him into fresh reveries, and at last threw him back
on himself, ending, after many divagations of mind, in the contemplation
of the ruin within him. Then once more he sounded his soul, and tried to
reduce his thoughts to some sort of order.

"I am simply bored to death," said he to himself, "and why?" And by dint
of analyzing his condition he came to this conclusion: "My state of
boredom is not simple but two-fold; or, if it is indeed all of a piece,
it may be divided into two very distinct phases: I am bored by myself,
independently of place, of home, of books; and I am also bored by
provincial life--the special form of boredom inherent in Chartres.

"Bored by myself--ah, yes, most heartily! How tired I am of watching
myself, of trying to detect the secret of my disgust and
contentiousness. When I contemplate my life I could sum it up thus: the
past has been horrible; the present seems to me feeble and desolate; the
future--is appalling."

He paused, and then went on,--

"During my first days here I was happy in the dream suggested by this
cathedral. I believed it would re-act on my life, that it would people
the solitude I felt within me, that it would, in a word, be a help to me
in this provincial atmosphere. But I beguiled myself. In fact, it still
weighs on me, it still holds me wrapped i