“To return to my subject—­I was naturally somewhat hurt by the coldness I met with on my arrival at Chartres.  As I told you, I had to allay many apprehensions.  But I think I have succeeded.  And I thank God, too, for having given me a valuable supporter in the person of a subordinate priest of the Cathedral, who has done me invaluable service with my colleagues—­the Abbe Plomb; do you know him?”

“No.”

“He is a highly intelligent priest, very learned, a passionate mystic, thoroughly acquainted with the Cathedral, of which he has examined every corner.”

“Ah ha!  I am interested in that priest!  Perhaps he is one of those I have already noticed.  What is he like?”

“Short, young, pale, slightly marked with the small-pox, with spectacles that you may recognize by this peculiarity:  the arch which rests on the nose is shaped like a loop, or, if you choose to say so, like a horseman’s legs astride in the saddle.”

“That man!”—­and Durtal, left to himself, thought about the priest whom he had repeatedly seen in the church or the square.

“Certainly,” said he to himself, “there is always the risk of a mistake when we judge of people by appearances; but how startling is the truth of that commonplace remark when applied to the clergy!  This Abbe Plomb looks like a scared sacristan; he goes about gaping at invisible crows, and he seems so ill at ease, so loutish, so awkward—­and this is our learned man and devoted mystic, in love with his Cathedral!  Certainly it is not safe to judge of an Abbe from appearances.  Now that it is to be my fate to live in this clerical world, I must begin by throwing prejudice overboard, and wait till I know all the priests of the diocese, before allowing myself to form an opinion of them.”

CHAPTER III.

“In point of fact,” said Durtal to himself as he stood dreaming on the market-place, “no one exactly knows what was the origin of the Gothic forms of a cathedral.  Archaeologists and architects have exhausted hypotheses and systems in vain; they seem to agree in attributing the Romanesque to Oriental parentage, and that in fact maybe proven.  That the Romanesque should be an offshoot of the Latin and Byzantine styles, and be, as Quicherat defines it, ’the style which has ceased to be Roman and is not yet Gothic, though it already has something of the Gothic,’ I am ready to admit; and indeed, on examining the capitals, and studying their outline and drawing, we perceive that they are Assyrian or Persian rather than Roman or Byzantine and Gothic; but as to discovering the paternity even of the pointed and flamboyant styles, that is quite another thing.  Some writers assert that the pointed arch based on an equilateral triangle existed in Egypt, Syria, and Persia; others regard it as descended from Saracen and Arab art; nothing certainly is provable.