And he tried to force himself to say a prayer, quite a short one, in the hope that he might succeed in getting to the end without letting his mind wander.  He began “Sub tuum”—­“Under Thy protection do we take refuge; Holy Mother of God, despise not us.”  What it was really indispensable that he should obtain from the Father Superior was permission to take his books with him into the monastery, and to have at least a few pious toys in his cell.  Ah—­but how could he explain that any profane literature was necessary in a convent, that, from an artist’s point of view, it was requisite to refresh one’s memory of the prose of Hugo, of Baudelaire, of Flaubert—­“I am at sea again!” said Durtal suddenly to himself.

He tried to brush away these distractions, and went on:  “Despise not the prayers we put up to Thee in our needs—­” And he was off again at a gallop in his dreams—­“Even supposing that no difficulty were made about this request, the question would still remain as to submitting manuscripts for revision, obtaining the imprimatur; and how would that be arranged?”

Madame Bavoil interrupted his wanderings by rising from her knees.  Recalled to himself, he hastily finished his prayer—­“but deliver us from all perils, glorious and blessed Virgin; Amen.”  And he parted from the housekeeper on the steps of the church, going home much vexed by his dissipation of mind.

He there found a note from the Editor of the Review, which had published his paper on the Fra Angelico in the Louvre, asking him for another article.

This diversion made him glad; he thought that this task might perhaps preserve him from vain thoughts of his discomfiture at Chartres and his fancy for the cloister.

“What can I send to the Review?” said he to himself.  “Since what they chiefly ask for is criticism of religious art, I might write some short study of the early German painters.  I have ample notes, made on the spot in the galleries there; let us see!”

He turned them over, lingering to read a note-book containing his impressions of travel.  A summing up of his remarks on the School of Cologne arrested his attention.

At every page he gave vent to his surprise in more and more vehement exclamations, at the false ideas and absurd theories put forward for so many years with regard to these pictures.

Every writer, without exception, had expatiated, each more enthusiastically than the last, on the pure and religious art of these early painters, speaking of them as seraphic artists who had depicted superhuman beauty, white and sylph-like Virgins all soul, standing out like celestial visions, against backgrounds of gold.

Durtal, prejudiced by the unanimity of this universal praise, expected to find almost impalpably fair angels, Flemish Madonnas, etherealized in some sort, having shed their husk of flesh, rapturous Memlings with eyes full of heaven, and bodies that had almost ceased to be—­and he remembered his dismay on entering the galleries of the Cologne Museum.