An arm was laid on his, and Durtal recognized the Abbé
Gévresin, who had come up while he stood dreaming in front of the cathedral.
"I am going on at once, they are waiting for me," said the priest. "I only took advantage of our meeting to tell you that I had a letter this morning from the Abbé Plomb."
"Indeed! And where is he?"
"At Solesmes; but he comes home the day after to-morrow. Our friend seems greatly taken with the Benedictine life."
And the Abbé smiled, while Durtal, a little startled, watched him turn the corner by the new belfry.
[!-- Page 183 --]CHAPTER X.
One morning Durtal went out to seek the Abbé Plomb. He could not find him in his own house, nor in the cathedral; but at last, directed by the beadle, he made his way to the house at the corner of the Rue de l'Acacia, where the choir-school was lodged.
He went in by a gate that stood half open, into a yard littered with broken pails and other rubbish. The house, beyond this courtyard, was suffering from the cutaneous disease that affects plaster, eaten with leprosy and spotted with blisters, with zig-zag rifts from top to bottom, and a crackled surface like the glaze of an old jar. The dead stock of a vine stretched its gnarled black arms along the wall.