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"Yes," interrupted the Abbé Plomb, wiping his spectacles, "but these are fancies borrowed simply from superficial resemblance; it is modern symbolism, which is really not symbolism at all. And is not this the case to a great extent with the various interpretations that you accept from Sister Emmerich? She died in 1824." "What does that matter?" said Durtal.
A shaft of lantern light struck her full in the face, the door opened noiselessly, and they penetrated into a garden. "Good evening, madame." "Good evening, Marie. In the chapel?" "Yes. Does madame wish me to guide her?" "No, thanks." The woman with the lantern scrutinized Durtal.
I need hardly add that this nunnery is dead." "Nor likely to revive," cried Durtal. "Well then, Monsieur l'Abbé, we meet on Sunday in the Rue Monsieur?" And on the assent of the abbé, Durtal went his way, with the strangest ideas in his head about the monastic orders.
Nevertheless Durtal could see no possibilities for the novelist outside of naturalism. Were we to go back to the pyrotechnics of romanticism, rewrite the lanuginous works of the Cherbuliez and Feuillet tribe, or, worse yet, imitate the lachrymose storiettes of Theuriet and George Sand? Then what was to be done?
"A thing to be ascertained," said Durtal, starting on a new line of thought, "is whether this church has preserved its surface uninjured, or whether it may not have been coloured in the thirteenth century. Some writers assert that, in Mediæval times, the interiors of cathedrals were always painted. Is that the fact?
"Oh," said Durtal, considering the old caricature, shrivelled by bad air and "three-six," "but if she is tired of that sort of thing, why did she run off with a man?" Rateau made a grimace of pitying contempt, "Oh, he's impotent. Good for nothing " "Ah!" "It's my job I'm sore about. The landlord won't keep a concierge that hasn't a wife."
All at once Durtal recovered himself, the material arguments were but little disquieting, for none could remain standing: all confounded the function and the organ, the lodger and the lodging, the clock and the hour. Their assertions rested on no base.
"Not being able to go to a café like a man, they go to church," said Durtal. "Unless it is," said Madame Bavoil, "that they would rather confide to an unknown priest the sins it would pain them to confess to their own director." "At any rate, this is a new light on things: the influence of big shops on the tribunal of penance!" exclaimed Durtal. "And of railway stations," added the Abbé Gévresin.
You must have milk or water to dip your sop in!" "Dear me," said Durtal, "by way of high feeding I can improve on that. I remember reading in an old book the story of the Blessed Catherine of Cardona, who, without using her hands, cropped the grass, on her knees, among the asses." It had not struck Madame Bavoil that the friends were speaking in fun, and she replied quite humbly,
And as Durtal thanked both of them for their kind attentions, "It is a pleasure to receive a retreatant such as you," cried Father Etienne, "nothing repulses you, and you are so exact that you are about before the hour: you rendered my task of overseer easy. If all were as little exacting and as pliable."
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