Durtal followed to the cathedral.  When he reached the little square, the procession, caught by a gale of wind, was struggling and clinging to the banners, which bellied like the sails of a ship, carrying on the men who clutched the poles.  At last, more or less easily, all the people were swallowed up in the basilica.  The Te Deum was pouring out in a torrent from the organ.  At this moment it really seemed as though, under the impulsion of this glorious hymn, the church, springing heavenward in a rapturous flight, were rising higher and higher; the echo resounded down the ages, repeating the hymn of triumph which had so often been sung under that roof; and for once the music was in harmony with the building, and spoke the language which the cathedral had learnt in its infancy.

Durtal was exultant.  It seemed to him that Our Lady smiled down from those glowing windows, that She was touched by these accents, created by the saints she had loved, to embody for ever, in a definite melody, and in unique words, the scattered praise of the faithful, the unformulated rejoicing of the multitude.

Suddenly his exalted mood was sobered.  The Te Deum was ended; a roll of drums and a clarion flourish rang out from the transept.  And while the brass band of Chartres cannonaded the old walls with the balista of mere noise, he fled to breathe away from the crowd, which, however, did not nearly fill the church; and then, after the ceremony, he went to see the parade of representatives of the various institutions in the town, who came to pay their respects to the new Bishop in his palace.

There he could laugh and not be ashamed.  The forecourt was packed full of priests.  All the superiors of the different Archdeaconries—­Chartres, Chateaudun, Nogent le Rotrou, and Dreux—­had left there, within the great gate, their following of parish priests and cures, who were pacing round and round the green circus of a grass plot.

The big-wigs of the town, not at all less ridiculous than the pensioners of the Little Sisters of the Poor, crowded in, driving the ecclesiastics into the garden walks.  Teratology seemed to have emptied out its specimen bottles; it was a seething swarm of human larvae, of strange heads—­bullet-shaped, egg-shaped, faces as seen through a bottle or in a distorting mirror, or escaped from one of Redon’s grotesque albums; a perfect museum of monsters on the move.  The stagnation of monotonous toil, handed down for generations from father to son in a city of the dead, was stamped on every face, and the Sunday-best festivity of the day added a touch of the absurd to hereditary ugliness.

Every black coat in Chartres had come out to take the air.  Some dated from the days of the Directory, swallowed up the wearer’s neck, climbed up high behind the nape, muffled the ears and padded the shoulders; others had shrunk by lying in the drawer, and their sleeves, much too short, cut the wearer round the armholes so that he dared not move.