Leon with solemn steps walked along by the walls.  Life had never seemed so good to him.  She would come directly, charming, agitated, looking back at the glances that followed her, and with her flounced dress, her gold eyeglass, her thin shoes, with all sorts of elegant trifles that he had never enjoyed, and with the ineffable seduction of yielding virtue.  The church like a huge boudoir spread around her; the arches bent down to gather in the shade the confession of her love; the windows shone resplendent to illumine her face, and the censers would burn that she might appear like an angel amid the fumes of the sweet-smelling odours.

But she did not come.  He sat down on a chair, and his eyes fell upon a blue stained window representing boatmen carrying baskets.  He looked at it long, attentively, and he counted the scales of the fishes and the button-holes of the doublets, while his thoughts wandered off towards Emma.

The beadle, standing aloof, was inwardly angry at this individual who took the liberty of admiring the cathedral by himself.  He seemed to him to be conducting himself in a monstrous fashion, to be robbing him in a sort, and almost committing sacrilege.

But a rustle of silk on the flags, the tip of a bonnet, a lined cloak—­it was she!  Leon rose and ran to meet her.

Emma was pale.  She walked fast.

“Read!” she said, holding out a paper to him.  “Oh, no!”

And she abruptly withdrew her hand to enter the chapel of the Virgin, where, kneeling on a chair, she began to pray.

The young man was irritated at this bigot fancy; then he nevertheless experienced a certain charm in seeing her, in the middle of a rendezvous, thus lost in her devotions, like an Andalusian marchioness; then he grew bored, for she seemed never coming to an end.

Emma prayed, or rather strove to pray, hoping that some sudden resolution might descend to her from heaven; and to draw down divine aid she filled full her eyes with the splendours of the tabernacle.  She breathed in the perfumes of the full-blown flowers in the large vases, and listened to the stillness of the church, that only heightened the tumult of her heart.

She rose, and they were about to leave, when the beadle came forward, hurriedly saying—­

“Madame, no doubt, does not belong to these parts?  Madame would like to see the curiosities of the church?”

“Oh, no!” cried the clerk.

“Why not?” said she.  For she clung with her expiring virtue to the Virgin, the sculptures, the tombs—­anything.

Then, in order to proceed “by rule,” the beadle conducted them right to the entrance near the square, where, pointing out with his cane a large circle of block-stones without inscription or carving—­

“This,” he said majestically, “is the circumference of the beautiful bell of Ambroise.  It weighed forty thousand pounds.  There was not its equal in all Europe.  The workman who cast it died of the joy—­”