ion!

"And the interior of the edifice is not more religious nor artistic than
the exterior. The only thing in it that pleases me is good Carhaix's
aerial cave." Then he looked about him. "This square is very ugly, but
how provincial and homelike it is! Surely nothing could equal the
hideousness of that seminary, which exhales the rancid, frozen odour of
a hospital. The fountain with its polygonal basins, its saucepan urns,
its lion-headed spouts, its niches with prelates in them, is no
masterpiece. Neither is the city hall, whose administrative style is a
cinder in the eye. But on this square, as in the neighbouring streets,
Servandoni, Garanciere, and Ferrou, one respires an atmosphere
compounded of benign silence and mild humidity. You think of a
clothes-press that hasn't been open for years, and, somehow, of incense.
This square is in perfect harmony with the houses in the decayed streets
around here, with the shops where religious paraphernalia are sold, the
image and ciborium factories, the Catholic bookstores with books whose
covers are the colour of apple seeds, macadam, nutmeg, bluing.

"Yes, it's dilapidated and quiet."

The square was then almost deserted. A few women were going up the
church steps, met by mendicants who murmured paternosters as they
rattled their tin cups. An ecclesiastic, carrying under his arm a book
bound in black cloth, saluted white-eyed women. A few dogs were running
about. Children were chasing each other or jumping rope. The enormous
chocolate-coloured la Villette omnibus and the little honey-yellow bus
of the Auteuil line went past, almost empty. Hackmen were standing
beside their hacks on the sidewalk, or in a group around a comfort
station, talking. There were no crowds, no noise, and the great trees
gave the square the appearance of the silent mall of a little town.

"Well," said Durtal, considering the church again, "I really must go up
to the top of the tower some clear day." Then he shook his head. "What
for? A bird's-eye view of Paris would have been interesting in the
Middle Ages, but now! I should see, as from a hill top, other heights, a
network of grey streets, the whiter arteries of the boulevards, the
green plaques of gardens and squares, and, away in the distance, files
of houses like lines of dominoes stood up on end, the black dots being
windows.

"And then the edifices emerging from this jumble of roofs, Notre Dame,
la Sainte Chapelle, Saint Severin, Saint Etie