“Thank you.  Then do you understand gardening?”

“I?  Why, am I not a peasant?  I have lived in the country all my life, and a kitchen garden is just my business!  Besides, if I were in difficulties, would not my Friends Above come to advise me?”

“You are a wonderful woman, Madame Bavoil,” said Durtal, somewhat disconcerted in spite of himself by the answers of a cook who so calmly asserted that she was on intimate terms with the divine Beyond.

CHAPTER V.

It rained without ceasing.  Durtal breakfasted under the assiduous watchfulness of his servant, Madame Mesurat.  She was one of those women whose stalwart build and masculine presence would allow of their dressing in men’s clothes without attracting attention.  She had a pear-shaped head, cheeks that hung flabby as if they had been emptied of air, a pompous nose that drooped till it very nearly touched a projecting underlip like a bracket, giving her an expression of determined contempt which she very certainly had never felt.  In short, she suggested the absurd idea of a solemn, gawky Marlborough disguised as a cook.

She served unvarying meats with inglorious sauces; and as soon as the dish was on the table she stood at attention, waiting to know whether it was good.  She was imposing and devoted—­quite insufferable.  Durtal, on edge with irritation, found it all he could do not to dismiss her to the kitchen, and finally buried his nose in a book that he might not have to answer her, might not see her.

This day, provoked by his silence, Madame Mesurat lifted the window curtain, and for the sake of saying something, exclaimed,—­

“Good heavens!  What weather!  Impossible!”

And in fact the sky offered no hope of consolation.  It was all in tears.  The rain fell in uninterrupted streams, unwinding endless skeins of water.  The Cathedral was standing in a pool of mud lashed into leaping drops by the falling torrent, and the two spires looked drawn together, almost close, linked by loose threads of water.  This indeed was the prevailing impression—­a briny atmosphere full of strings holding the sky and earth together as if tacked with long stitches, but they would not hold; a gust of wind snapped all these endless threads, which were whirled in every direction.

“My arrangement to meet the Abbe Plomb to go over the Cathedral is evidently at an end,” said Durtal to himself.  “The Abbe will certainly not turn out in such weather.”

He went into his study; this was his usual place of refuge.  He had his divan there, his pictures, the old furniture he had brought from Paris; and against the walls, shelves, painted black, held thousands of books.  There he lived, looking out on the towers, hearing nothing but the cawing of the rooks and the strokes of the hours as they fell one by one on the silence of the deserted square.  He had placed his table in front of a window, and there he sat dreaming, praying, meditating, making notes.