“And this time the Spirit of Prayer was quite dead; everything went to pieces.  The Renaissance, so lauded afterwards by Michelet and the historians, was the death of the Mystical soul of monumental theology, of religious art—­all the great art of France.

“Bless me! where am I?” Durtal suddenly asked himself, finding himself in the ill-paved alleys which lead from the Cathedral square to the lower town.  He saw that, dreaming as he walked, he had passed the Abbe’s lodgings.

He turned up the street again, stopped in front of an old house and rang.  A brass wicket was opened and closed, and a housekeeper, shuffling up in old shoes, half opened the door.  Durtal was met by the Abbe Plomb, who was watching for him, and who led him into a room full of statues; there were carved images in every spot—­on the chimney-shelf, on a chest of drawers, on a side table, and in the middle of the room.

“Do not look at them,” said the Abbe, “do not heed them; I have no part in the selection of this horrible bazaar.  I have to endure it in spite of myself; these are offerings from my penitents.”

Durtal laughed, though somewhat scared by the extraordinary specimens of religious art that crowded the room.

There was every kind of work:  black frames with brass flats, and in them engravings of Virgins by Bouguereau and Signol, Guido’s Ecce Homo, Pietas, Saint Philomenas—­and then the assembly of polychrome statues:  Mary painted with the crude green of angelica and the acrid pinks of English pear-drops; Madonnas gazing in rapture at their own feet, with extended hands whence proceeded fans of yellow rays; Joan of Arc squatting like a hen on her eggs, with eyes raised to heaven like white marbles, and pressing a standard to her bosom in its plaster cuirass; Saint Anthonys of Padua, clean and snug, as neat as two pins; Saint Josephs, not enough the carpenter and too little the Saint; Magdalens weeping silver pills; a whole mob of semi-divinities, best quality, of the class known as “The Munich Article” in the Rue Madame.

“Oh, Monsieur l’Abbe, the donors are certainly terrible people—­but could you not, quite by accident, drop one of these objects every day—­”

The priest gave a shrug of despair.

“They would only bring me more,” cried he.  “But if you are willing, we will be off at once, for I am afraid of being caught here if I linger.”

And as they walked, talking of the Cathedral, Durtal exclaimed,—­

“Is it not a monstrous thing that in the splendour of this Cathedral of Chartres it is impossible to hear any genuine plain-song?  I am reduced to frequenting the sanctuary only at hours when there is no high service going on.  Above all I avoid being present at High Mass on Sundays; the music that is tolerated infuriates me!  Is there no way of having the organist dismissed, and a clean sweep made of the precentor and the teachers in the choir-school, of packing off the basses with their vinous voices to the taverns?  Ugh!  And the gassy effervescence that rises from the thin pipes of the little boys! and the street tunes eructed in a hiccough, like the run of a lamp-chain when you pull it up, mingling with the noisy bellow of the basses!  What a disgrace, what a shame!  How is it that the Bishop, the priests, the Canons do not prohibit such treason?