They walked on in silence. When they reached the cathedral, Madame Bavoil proposed that they should pay a visit to Notre Dame du Pilier.
They seated themselves in the gloom of the side aisle of the choir, where the dark-toned windows were still further
obscured by a poorly executed wooden niche, in which the Virgin, as dark as her namesake in the crypt, Notre Dame de Sous-Terre, stood on a pillar, hung round with bunches of metal hearts and little lamps on coronas, from the roof. Frames of tapers on each side shot up little tongues of flame, and prostrate women were praying, their faces hidden in their hands or upturned to the dark countenance, on which the light did not fall.
It struck Durtal that the woes repressed in the morning hours were poured out in the twilight; the faithful did not now come for Her alone, but for themselves; each one brought a load of sorrows and opened it before Her. What anguish of soul was poured out on the stones by these women, leaning prostrate against the railing that protected the pillar which each kissed as she rose.
And the swarthy image, carved in the early part of the sixteenth century, had listened, Her face invisible, to the same sighs, the same complaints, from succeeding generations, had heard the same cries, echoing down the ages, for ever lamenting the bitterness of life, for ever expressing the desire, all the same, for length of days!
Durtal looked at Madame Bavoil. She was praying with closed eyes, kneeling on the stones and sitting on her heels, her arms hanging, her hands clasped. How happy was she to be able thus to abstract herself.
And he tried to force himself to say a prayer, quite a short one, in the hope that he might succeed in getting to the end without letting his mind wander. He began "Sub tuum"—"Under Thy protection do we take refuge; Holy Mother of God, despise not us." What it was really indispensable that he should obtain from the Father Superior was permission to take his books with him into the monastery, and to have at least a few pious toys in his cell. Ah—but how could he explain that any profane literature was necessary in a convent, that, from an artist's point of view, it was requisite to refresh one's memory of the prose of Hugo, of Baudelaire, of Flaubert—"I am at sea again!" said Durtal suddenly to himself.
He tried to brush away these distractions, and went on: "Despise not the prayers we put up to Thee in our needs—" And he was off again at a gallop in his dreams—"Even supposing that no difficulty were made about this
request, the question would still remain as to submitting manuscripts for revision, obtaining the imprimatur; and how would that be arranged?"
Madame Bavoil interrupted his wanderings by rising from her knees. Recalled to himself, he hastily finished his prayer—"but deliver us from all perils, glorious and blessed Virgin; Amen." And he parted from the housekeeper on the steps of the church, going home much vexed by his dissipation of mind.