retired place, and pay his debts from his income. To a man
accustomed to spend six thousand francs when he had but five, it was
no small undertaking to bring himself to live on two thousand. Every
morning he studied advertisements, hoping to find the offer of some
asylum where his expenses could be fixed, where he might have the
solitude a man wants when he makes a return upon himself, examines
himself, and endeavors to give himself a vocation. The manners and
customs of bourgeois boarding-houses shocked his delicacy,
sanitariums seemed to him unhealthy, and he was about to fall back
into the fatal irresolution of persons without will, when the following
advertisement met his eye:--
"To Let. A small lodging for seventy francs a month; suitable for an
ecclesiastic. A quiet tenant desired. Board supplied; the rooms can be
furnished at a moderate cost if mutually acceptable.
"Inquire of M. Millet, grocer, rue Chanoinesse, near Notre-Dame,
where all further information can be obtained."
Attracted by a certain kindliness concealed beneath these words, and
the middle-class air which exhaled from them, Godefroid had, on the
afternoon when we found him on the quay, called at four o'clock on the
grocer, who told him that Madame de la Chanterie was then dining, and
did not receive any one when at her meals. The lady, he said, was
visible in the evening after seven o'clock, or in the morning between
ten and twelve. While speaking, Monsieur Millet examined Godefroid,
and made him submit to what magistrates call the "first degree of
interrogation."
"Was monsieur unmarried? Madame wished a person of regular habits;
the gate was closed at eleven at the latest. Monsieur certainly seemed of
an age to suit Madame de la Chanterie."
"How old do you think me?" asked Godefroid.
"About forty!" replied the grocer.
This ingenuous answer threw the young man into a state of
misanthropic gloom. He went off and dined at a restaurant on the quai
de la Tournelle, and afterwards went to the parapet to contemplate
Notre- Dame at the moment when the fires of the setting sun were
rippling and breaking about the manifold buttresses of the apsis.
The young man was floating between the promptings of despair and the
moving voice of religious harmonies sounding in the bell of the
cathedral when, amid the shadows, the silence, the half-veiled light of
the moon, he heard the words of the priest. Though, like most of the
sons of our century, he was far from religious, his sensibilities were
touched by those words, and he returned to the rue Chanoinesse,
although he had almost made up his mind not to do so.
The priest and Godefroid were both surprised when they entered
together the rue Massilon, which is opposite to the small north portal of
the cathedral, and turned together into the rue Chanoinesse, at the point
where, towards the rue de la Colombe, it becomes the rue des
Marmousets. When Godefroid stopped before the arched portal of
Madame de la Chanterie's house, the priest turned towards him and
examined him by the light of the hanging street-lamp, probably one of
the last to disappear from the heart of old Paris.
"Have you come to see Madame de la Chanterie, monsieur?" said the
priest.
"Yes," replied Godefroid. "The words I heard you say to that workman
show me that, if you live here, this house must be salutary for the soul."
"Then you were a witness of my defeat," said the priest, raising the
knocker of the door, "for I did not succeed."
"I thought, on the contrary, it was the workman who did not succeed;
he demanded money energetically."
"Alas!" replied the priest, "one of the great evils of revolutions in
France is that each offers a fresh premium to the ambitions of the lower
classes. To get out of his condition, to make his fortune (which is
regarded to-day as the only social standard), the working-man throws
himself into some of those monstrous associations which, if they do not
succeed, ought to bring the speculators to account before human justice.
This is what trusts often lead to."
The porter opened a heavy door. The priest said to Godefroid:
"Monsieur has perhaps come about the little suite of rooms?"
"Yes, monsieur."
The priest and Godefroid then crossed a wide courtyard, at the farther
end of which loomed darkly a tall house flanked by a square tower
which rose above the roof, and appeared to be in a dilapidated
condition. Whoever knows the history of Paris, knows that the soil
before and around the cathedral has been so raised that there is not a
vestige now of the twelve steps which formerly led up to it. To-day the
base of the columns of the porch is on a
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