the infinite is always
imposing.

In strolling about the cathedral I had climbed to the triforium,
then under the arched buttresses, then to the top of the edifice. The
timber-work under the pointed roof is admirable; but less remarkable
than the "forest" of Amiens. It is of chestnut-wood.

These cathedral attics are of grim appearance. One could almost lose
one's self in the labyrinths of rafters, squares, traverse beams,
superposed joists, traves, architraves, girders, madriers, and tangled
lines and curves. One might imagine one's self to be in the skeleton
of Babel. The place is as bare as a garret and as wild as a cavern.
The wind whistles mournfully through it. Rats are at home there. The
spiders, driven from the timber by the odour of chestnut, make their
home in the stone of the basement where the church ends and the roof
begins, and low down in the obscurity spin their webs in which you catch
your face. One respires a mysterious dust, and the centuries seem to
mingle with one's breath. The dust of churches is not like the dust of
houses; it reminds one of the tomb, it is composed of ashes.

The flooring of these colossal garrets has crevices in it through which
one can look down into the abysm, the church, below. In the corners that
one cannot explore are pools of shadow, as it were. Birds of prey enter
through one window and go out through the other. Lightning is also
familiar with these high, mysterious regions. Sometimes it ventures too
near, and then it causes the conflagration of Rouen, of Chartres, or of
St. Paul's, London.

My guide the beadle preceded me. He looked at the dung on the floor, and
tossed his head. He knew the bird by its manure, and growled between his
teeth:

"This is a rook; this is a hawk; this is an owl."

"You ought to study the human heart," said I.

A frightened bat flew before us.

While walking almost at hazard, following this bat, looking at this
manure of the birds, respiring this dust, in this obscurity among the
cobwebs and scampering rats, we came to a dark corner in which, on a big
wheelbarrow, I could just distinguish a long package tied with string
and that looked like a piece of rolled up cloth.

"What is that?" I asked the beadle.

"That," said he, "is Charles X.'s coronation carpet."

I stood gazing at the thing, and as I did so--I am telling truthfully
what occurred--there was a deafening report that sounded like a
thunder-clap, only it came from below. I