But what was chiefly characteristic of this bedizened porter’s lodge was a horribly sickening smell, the smell of lukewarm castor oil.

Durtal, nauseated by this odour, was on the point of making his escape, when the Abbe Plomb came in and took his arm.  They went out together.

“Then you have just come back from Solesmes?” said Durtal.

“As you see.”

“And were you satisfied with your visit?”

“Enchanted,” and the Abbe smiled at the impatience he could detect in Durtal’s accents.

“What do you think of the monastery?”

“I think it most interesting to visit, both from the monastic and from the artistic point of view.  Solesmes is a great convent, the parent House of the Benedictine Order in France, and it has a flourishing school of novices.  What is it that you want to know, exactly?”

“Why, everything you can tell me.”

“Well, then, I may tell you that ecclesiastical art, brought to its very highest expression, is fascinating in that monastery.  No one can conceive of the magnificence of the liturgy and of plain-song who has not heard them at Solesmes.  If Notre Dame des Arts had a special sanctuary, it undoubtedly would be there.”

“Is the chapel ancient?”

“A part of the old church remains, and the famous Solesmes sculpture, dating from the sixteenth century.  Unfortunately, there are some quite disastrous windows in the apse:  the Virgin between Saint Peter and Saint Paul; modern glass in its most piercing atrocity.  But, then, where is decent glass to be had?”

“Nowhere.  We have only to look at the transparent pictures let into the walls of our new churches to appreciate the incurable idiocy of painters who insist on treating window panes from cartoons, as they do subject pictures—­and such subjects! and such pictures!  All turned out by the gross from cheap glass melters, whose thin material dots the pavement of the church with spots like confetti, strewing lollipops of colour wherever the light falls.

“Would it not be far better to accept the colourless scheme of window-glass used at Citeaux, where a decorative effect was produced by a design in the lead lines; or to imitate the fine grisailles, iridescent from age, which may still be seen at Bourges, at Reims, and even here, in our cathedral?”

“Certainly,” said the Abbe.  “But to return to our monastery.  Nowhere, I repeat, are the services performed with so much pomp.  You should see it on the occasion of some high festival!  Picture to yourself above the altar, where commonly the tabernacle shines, a Dove suspended from a golden crozier, its wings outspread amid clouds of incense; then a whole army of monks deploying in a solemn rhythmic march, and the Abbot standing, on his brow a mitre thickly set with jewels, his green and white ivory crozier in his hand, his train carried by a lay-brother when he moves, while the gold of many copes blazes in the light of the tapers, and a torrent of sound from the organ bears the voices up, carrying to the very vault the cry of repentance or the joy of the Psalms.