The Abbé Plomb, to divert his mind, took him for walks in the country, but La Beauce was so flat, so monotonous, that any variety of landscape was impossible to find. Then the Abbé took him through other parts of the town. Some of the buildings claimed their attention, as, for instance, the House of Detention, in the Rue-Sainte-Thérèse near the Palais de Justice. The edifices themselves were not, indeed, very impressive, but the history of their origin made them available as the fulcrum for old dreams. There was something in the prison walls, in their height and austerity, in their look of order and precision, which made the cloister wall of a Carmel look small. They had, in fact, of old, sheltered a Sisterhood of that Order, and a few
steps further on, in a blind alley, was the entrance to the ancient convent of the Jacobins, the Mother-House of the great Sisterhood of Chartres: the Nursing Sisters of Saint Paul.
The Abbé Plomb took him to visit this house, and he retained a cheerful impression of the walk in the fresh air on the old ramparts. The Sisters had kept up the sentry's walk, which followed a long and narrow avenue with a statue of the Virgin at each end, one representing the Immaculate Conception, the other the Virgin Mother. And this walk, strewn with river-pebbles and edged with flowers, shut in on one side by the Abbey and the novices' schools, on the left overlooked a precipice down to the Butte des Charbonniers, and below that again, the Rue de la Couronne; while beyond lay the grass lawns of the Clos Saint Jean, the line of the railroad, labourers' hovels, and convent buildings.
"There you see," said the Abbé, "behind the embankment of the Western Railway stands the Convent of the Sisters of Our Lady and of the Carmelites; here, nearer to the town on this side of the line, are the Little Sisters of the Poor."
And indeed the place swarmed with convents: Sisters of the Visitation, Sisters of Providence, Sisters of Good Comfort, Ladies of the Sacred Heart, all lived in hives close round Chartres. Prayer hummed up on every side, rising as the fragrant breath of souls above a city where, by way of divine service, nothing was chanted but the price-current of grain and the higher and lower cost of horses in the fairs which, on certain days, brought all the copers of La Perche together in the cafés on the Place.
Besides this walk on the old ramparts, the Convent of the Sisters of Saint Paul was attractive by reason of its quiet and cleanliness. Down silent passages the backs of the good women might be seen crossed by the triangular fold of linen, and the click could be heard of their heavy black rosaries on links of copper, as they rattled on their skirts against the hanging bunch of keys. Their chapel was redolent of Louis XIV., at once childish and pompous, too much bedizened with gold, and the floor too shiny with wax; but there was an interesting detail: at the entrance large panes of glass had been substituted for the walls, so that in winter the sick, sitting in a warm room, could look through
the glass partition and follow the services and hear the plain song of Solesmes which the Sisters had the good taste to use.
This visit revived Durtal's spirit; but he inevitably compared the peaceful hours told out in that retreat with others, and his disgust was increased for this town, and its inhabitants, and its avenues, and its boasted Place des Epars, aping a little Versailles, with its surrounding blatant mansions, and its ridiculous statue of Marceau in the middle.
And then the limpness of the place, hardly awake by sunrise and asleep again by dusk!
Once only did Durtal see it really awake, and that was on the day when Monseigneur Le Tilloy des Mofflaines was enthroned as Bishop.