He wouldn't hear to my continuing my tour of circumnavigation, so we went inside at once, and there I held the guide-book and read the explanation while he kept up a running contradiction of everything I read. I don't see the good of Uncle's carrying a guide-book, for he says they needn't suppose he doesn't know better than most of it.
There is a wonderful carved marble screen around the altar, and a sacred statue with a yellow satin dress on; but being inside made Uncle want to be outside right away, so we left very quickly, and then he studied the Baedeker just long enough to let me notice how all the Roman noses on the kings and saints outside had been turned into Eskimo noses by the rains of centuries; and then he suddenly shut it, and said we would go right straight off then and there and see the famous enamels that Diane de Poitiers gave Henry II. He explained to me that this wasn't the English Henry II, but the French Henry II, and then he asked me which of us had the luggage-checks, and if I had noticed whether the train went at eleven or half-past. I must say it is like doing multiplications in your head to travel with Uncle, but of course I enjoy it, and the walk to St. Peter's Church was very pleasant, through quaint streets and along by little canals like those at Gisors.
The church was open, and open in more ways than one, for they were tearing up the whole floor to put in a furnace and grave-stones and pick-axes were leaning up against the columns everywhere. There wasn't a soul to be seen, and Uncle was so happy to be able to poke about unconcierged for a while that I sat down and let him desecrate around with his cane until he came to with a start and asked me what I supposed we came to Chartres for, anyway. I got up at that, and we went to look at the enamels, which are in behind a locked balustrade and have curtains hung in front of them besides. We had to get a woman to unlock the gate and draw the curtains aside and explain which enamel was which Apostle; and uncle was very much put out over their being apostles at all. I don't know what he expected in a church, but he said he never thought about the church; he only thought about Diane de Poitiers. He says he doesn't think it was in good taste her having anything to do with the apostles, and then he read in the book again and found he'd made a mistake, and it was the king who gave them to her, and not she who gave them to the king, and that used him all up, and he said he wished that he had never come.
I saw that we should have to have something to eat right off, so I said I was hungry and Uncle said that was just like a woman, but to come on. We found a small restaurant and had a very good lunch, and then Uncle said if I felt satisfied he would take it as a personal favor if we could go on to Dreux. I do wish he wouldn't put everything just that way when I really haven't done anything; but he looked at his watch and found that the time before when he had looked at it he had looked at it wrong and that we had barely ten minutes to make the train. As a matter of fact, the train was going then, but they don't go until ten minutes after in France, so when you miss a train you always have ten minutes left to make it. We took a cab, and Uncle made the man understand that if he hurried it would pay; so we galloped madly over the ridge and just got aboard in time to learn that Uncle had left his cane in the cab and that we'd forgotten our luggage in consigne.
Of course the ride was rather gloomy, because there was almost no way to lay the blame on me; but after a while Uncle asked me if I really ever did see such a rank idiot as M. Sibilet, and he felt better after that. We reached Dreux about two o'clock, and I telegraphed back about the luggage while Uncle looked up a train for Argentan and set his watch by the railway time. He told me that the train that he had decided on left at 3:04 and that we could make it and see the mausoleum "easy." I never contradict Uncle, because it doesn't do any good and does upset him awfully, so I went with him to get the cab, and wondered how long a mausoleum usually took to examine.
Dreux
It seems that there are no cabs in Dreux!