At Chartres, as you turn out of the little market-place, which is sweptin all weathers by the surly wind from the flats, a mild air as of acellar, made heavy by a soft, almost smothered scent of oil, puffs inyour face on entering the solemn gloom of the sheltering forest.
Durtal knew it well, and the delightful moment when he could takebreath, still half-stunned by the sudden change from a stinging northwind to a velvety airy caress. At five every morning he left his rooms,and to reach the covert of that strange forest he had to cross thesquare; the same figures were always to be seen at the turnings from thesame streets; nuns with bowed heads, leaning forward, the borders oftheir caps blown back and flapping like wings, the wind whirling intheir skirts, which they could hardly hold down; and shrunken women, ingarments they hugged round them, struggling forward with bent shoulderslashed by the gusts.
Never at that hour had he seen anybody walking boldly upright, withoutstraining her neck and bowing her head; and these scattered womengathered by degrees into two long lines, one of them turning to theleft, to vanish under a lighted porch opening to a lower level than thesquare; the other going straight on, to be swallowed up in the darknessby an invisible wall.
Closing the procession came a few belated priests, hurrying on, with onehand gathering up the gown that ballooned behind them, and with theother clutching their hats, or snatching at the breviary that wasslipping from under one arm, their faces hidden on their breast, toplough through the wind with the back of their neck; with red ears, eyesblinded with tears, clinging desperately, when it rained, to umbrellasthat swayed above them, threatening to lift them from the ground anddragging them in every direction.
The passage had been more than usually stormy this morning; the squallsthat tear across the district of La Beauce, where nothing can checkthem, had been bellowing for hours; there had been rain, and the puddlessplashed under foot. It was difficult to see, and Durtal had begun tothink that he should never succeed in getting past the dim mass of thewall that shut in the square, by pushing open the door behind which laythat weird forest, redolent of the night-lamp and the tomb, andprotected from the gale.
He sighed with satisfaction, and followed the wide path that led throughthe gloom. Though he knew his way, he walked cautiously in this alley,bordered by enormous trunks, their crowns lost in shadow. He could havefancied himself in a hothouse roofed with black glass, for there