Durtal, looking in at a window, saw a dormitory with rows of white beds, and he was amused, for never had he seen beds so tiny.
A lad was in the room, whom he called, by tapping on the pane, and asked whether the Abbé Plomb were still about the place. The boy nodded an affirmative, and showed Durtal into a waiting-room.
This room was like the office of an exceedingly inferior and pious hotel. The furniture consisted of a mahogany table of a sort of salmon pink colour, on which stood a pot-stand bereft of flowers; arm-chairs with circular backs fit for a gatekeeper's room, a chimney-piece adorned with statues of saints much fly-bitten, and a chimney board covered with paper representing the Vision of Lourdes. On the walls hung a black board with rows of numbered keys; opposite, a chromo-lithograph of Christ, displaying, with an amiable smile, an underdone heart bleeding amid streams of yellow sauce.
But what was chiefly characteristic of this bedizened
porter's lodge was a horribly sickening smell, the smell of lukewarm castor oil.
Durtal, nauseated by this odour, was on the point of making his escape, when the Abbé Plomb came in and took his arm. They went out together.
"Then you have just come back from Solesmes?" said Durtal.
"As you see."
"And were you satisfied with your visit?"
"Enchanted," and the Abbé smiled at the impatience he could detect in Durtal's accents.