And when his departure was decided on, it became the Abbe’s turn to circumvent Durtal and persuade him to leave Paris and come to settle near him at Chartres.

Although he was deeply grieved at this move, which he had done his utmost to hinder, Durtal was refractory, and refused to bury himself in a country town.

“But why, our friend,” said Madame Bavoil, “I wonder why you are so obstinately bent on remaining here; you live in perfect solitude at home with your books.  You can do the same if you come with us.”

And when, his arguments exhausted, after a vehement diatribe against provincial life, Durtal ended by saying,—­

“Then at Paris there are the quays, Saint Severin, Notre Dame; there are delightful convents—­”

“You would find equally good things at Chartres,” answered the Abbe.  “You will have one of the finest cathedrals in the world, monasteries such as you love, and as for books, your library is so well furnished that I can hardly think that you can add to it by wandering along the quays.  Besides, as you know even better than I, no work of the class you seek is ever to be disinterred from the boxes of second-hand books.  Their titles figure only in the catalogues of sales, and there is nothing to hinder their being sent to you at Chartres.”

“I do not deny it—­but there are other things on the quays besides old books; there are curiosities to be seen, and the Seine—­a landscape—­”

“Well, if you are homesick for that particular walk, you have only to take a train, and spend a whole afternoon lounging by the parapet over the river; it is easy to get from Chartres to Paris; there are express trains morning and evening which make the journey in less than two hours.”

“And besides,” cried Madame Bavoil, “what does all that matter?  The great thing is that you leave a town just like any other town, to inhabit the very home of the Virgin.  Just think!  Notre Dame de Sous-Terre is the most ancient chapel to Mary in all France; think! you will live near Her, with Her, and She will load you with mercies!”

“And after all,” the Abbe went on, “this exile cannot interfere with any of your schemes in art.  You talk of writing the Lives of Saints; will you not work at them far better in the silence of the country than in the uproar of Paris?”

“The country—­the provinces!  The mere idea overpowers me,” exclaimed Durtal.  “If you could but imagine the impression it suggests to me, the sort of atmosphere, the kind of smell it presents to my brain.  You know the huge cupboards you find in old houses, with double doors, and lined within with blue paper that is always damp.  Well, at the mere name of the provinces I feel as if one of these were opened in my face, and I got a full blast of the stuffiness that comes out of it!—­And to put the finishing touch to the vision by combining taste and smell, I have only to bite one of the biscuits they make nowadays of Lord knows what, reeking the moment you taste them, of fish glue and plaster that has been rained upon, I have only to eat that cold, insipid paste and sniff at a musty closet, and at once the lugubrious picture rises before me of some Godforsaken place!—­Your Chartres will no doubt smell like that—­Pah!”