In consternation at the poverty of these distressing non-sequiturs, Durtal turned to the less familiar biographies of the Blessed Women; but here again, what a farrago of the commonplace, what glutinous unction, what a hash by way of style!  There was certainly some curse from Heaven on the old women of the Sacristy who dared take up a pen.  Their ink at once turned to stickiness, to bird-lime, to pitch, which smeared all it touched.  Oh, the poor Saints! the hapless Blessed Women!

His meditations were interrupted by a ring at the bell: 

“Why, has the Abbe Plomb really come out in spite of the gale?”

It was indeed the priest that Madame Mesurat showed in.

“Oh,” said he to Durtal, who lamented over the rain, “the weather will clear up all in good time; at any rate, as you had not put me off I was determined not to keep you waiting.”

They sat chatting by the fire; and the room took the Abbe’s fancy, no doubt, for he settled himself at his ease.  He threw himself back in an arm-chair, tucking his hands into his cincture.  And when, in answer to his question as to whether Durtal were not too dull at Chartres, the Parisian replied, “It seems to me that I live more slowly, and yet am not such a burthen to myself,” the Abbe went on,—­

“What you must feel painfully is the lack of intellectual society; you, who in Paris lived in the world of letters—­how can you endure the atmosphere of this provincial town?”

Durtal laughed.

“The world of letters!  No, Monsieur l’Abbe, I should not be likely to regret that, for I had given it up many years before I came to live here; and besides, I assure you it is impossible to be intimate with those train-bands of literature and remain decent.  A man must choose—­them or honest folks; slander or silence; for their speciality is to eliminate every charitable idea, and above all to cure a man of friendship in the winking of an eye.”

“Really?”

“Yes, by adopting a homoeopathic pharmacopoeia which still makes use of the foulest matter—­the extract of wood-lice, the venom of snakes, the poison of the cockchafer, the secretions of the skunk and the matter from pustules, all disguised in sugar of milk to conceal their taste and appearance; the world of letters, in the same way, triturates the most disgusting things to get them swallowed without raising your gorge.  There is an incessant manipulation of neighbours’ gossip and play-box tittle-tattle, all wrapped up in perfidious good taste to mask their flavour and smell.

“These pills of foulness, exhibited in the required doses, act like detergents on the soul, which they almost immediately purge of all trustfulness.  I had enough of this regimen, which acted on me only too successfully, and I thought it well to escape from it.”

“But the pious world, too, is not absolutely free from gossip,” said the Abbe, smiling.

“No doubt, and I am well aware that devotion does not always sweeten the mind, but—­