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Florence seemed present, to Durtal's imagination, at his lodgings, in the churches, in the street, everywhere, and he was constantly on the watch against her recurrent attractions. The weather was mixed up with it all; the heaven broke up, a stormy summer raged, shattering the nerves, enfeebling the will, letting the awakened troop of vices loose in their gloomy moisture.
And he complained to God, telling Him that all the joy he might have felt in being purified and clean at last, was now spoilt by this disappointment. He arrived at the refectory hanging his head. The curate was there already. Seeing Durtal's sad demeanour, he charitably tried to cheer him, but the jokes he attempted produced the opposite effect.
They exchanged a look, of distrust on the priest's side, of coldness on Durtal's. Durtal felt embarrassed and in the way, while the honest pair were effusively and with excessive humility thanking the abbé for coming up to see them.
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. "What do you think of the monastery?"
I hope that on your side you will keep no unfavourable memory of our poor hospitality, and that you will prove it in coming to see us again." As they talked they had come in front of the guest-house. The father pressed Durtal's hands, and slowly ascended the stairs, sweeping with his robe the silver dust of the steps, as he mounted, all white, in a ray of the moon.
Durtal remained stupefied, looking at the outline of the white bishop, the backs of the priests who were mounting the steps to give Benediction in the church, while behind them came in tears, their faces in their handkerchiefs, the mother and sister of the novice. "Well?" said the abbé, passing his arm through Durtal's.
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.
He did not know to what reflections he should give himself, and only saw, swimming on this whirlpool of troubled ideas, one clear thought, that the moment had come so dreaded by him in which he must make a resolution. The abbé looked at him, saw that he was really suffering, and was full of pity for a soul so unable to support a struggle. He took Durtal's arm, and said gently,
And there, in a chapel near the choir, might be seen, for a consideration, the most famous picture of the German school, the Dombild, by Stephan Lochner, a triptych representing the Adoration of the Magi on the centre panel, with St. Ursula on the left hand shutter and St. Gereon on the right. Durtal's consternation had risen to the highest pitch. The work was thus arranged.
Durtal's material for this study consisted of: a copy of the memorial addressed by the heirs of Gilles de Rais to the king, notes taken from the several true copies at Paris of the proceedings in the criminal trial at Nantes, extracts from Vallet de Viriville's history of Charles VII, finally the Notice by Armand Guéraut and the biography of the abbé Bossard.
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