It had seemed to him superfluous to try St. Germain-des-Près, for he held that church in horror. Besides the weariness inspired by its heavy, ill-restored shell, and the miserable paintings with which Flandrin loaded it, the clergy there were specially, almost alarmingly, ugly, and the choir was truly infamous. They were like a set of bad cooks, boys who spat vinegar, and elderly choir-men, who cooked in the furnace of their throats a sort of vocal broth, a thin gruel of sound.
Nor did he think of taking refuge in St. Thomas Aquinas, where he dreaded the barking and the choruses; there was indeed St. Clotilde, where the psalmody, at least, is upright, and has not, like that of St. Thomas, lost all shame. He went there, but again encountered dance music and profane tunes, a worldly orgie.
At last he went to bed in a rage, saying to himself, "In Paris, at any rate, a singular baptism of music is reserved for the New-Born."
Next day, when he woke, he felt he had no courage to face the churches; the sacrileges of last night would, he thought, continue; and as the weather was almost fine, he went out, wandered in the Luxembourg, gained the square of the Observatoire, and the Boulevard de Port Royal, and mechanically made his way along the interminable Rue de la Santé.
He knew that street of old, and had taken melancholy walks in it, attracted by its poor houses, like those of a provincial town; then it was fit for a dreamer, for it was bounded on the right by the Prison de la Santé and Sainte Anne's madhouse, and on the left by convents. Light and air circulated in the street, but, behind it, all was black; it was a kind of prison corridor, with cells on either side, where some were condemned to temporary sentences, and others, of their own free will, suffered lasting sorrows.
"I can imagine," thought Durtal, "how it would have been painted by an Early Flemish master; the long street paved by patient pencils, the stories open from top to bottom, and the cupboards the same; and on one side massive cells with iron bedsteads, a stoneware jug; little peepholes in the doors secured by strong bolts, inside, scoundrels and thieves, gnashing their teeth, turning round and round, their hair on end, howling like caged animals; on the other side little rooms, furnished with a pallet-bed, a stoneware jug, a crucifix, these also closed by doors iron-banded, and within nuns or monks, kneeling on the flags, their faces clean cut against the light of a halo, their eyes lifted to heaven, their hands joined, raised from the ground in ecstasy, a pot of lilies at their side."
Then at the back of the canvas, between these two rows of houses, rises a great avenue, at the end of which in a dappled sky sits God the Father with Christ on His right, choirs of Seraphim playing on guitar and viol; God the Father immovable under his lofty tiara, His breast covered by His long beard, holds scales which balance exactly, the holy captives expiating precisely by their penances and prayers the blasphemies of the rascals and the insane.
"It must be admitted," thought Durtal, "that this street is very peculiar, that there is probably none like it in Paris, for it unites in its course virtues and vices, which in other quarters, in spite of the efforts of the Church, trend apart as far as possible from each other."
Thus thinking he had come as far as St. Anne's, where the street grows lighter and the houses are lower, with only one or two stories, then, gradually, there is greater space between them, and they are only joined to each other by blank ends of walls.
"At any rate," thought Durtal, "if this street has no distinction, it is very private; here at least one need not admire the impertinent decoration of those modern shops which expose in their windows as precious commodities, chosen piles of firewood, and in glass sweetmeat jars, coal drops and coke lollipops."