“Are you quite comfortable?” Madame Francois asked as the cart turned into the Rue du Pont Neuf.

Claude declared that their couch was as soft as a bridal bed.  Lying on their backs, with their hands crossed under their heads, both men were looking up at the pale sky from which the stars were vanishing.  All along the Rue de Rivoli they kept unbroken silence, waiting till they should have got clear of the houses, and listening to the worthy woman as she chattered to Balthazar:  “Take your time, old man,” she said to him in kindly tones.  “We’re in no hurry; we shall be sure to get there at last.”

On reaching the Champs Elysees, when the artist saw nothing but tree-tops on either side of him, and the great green mass of the Tuileries gardens in the distance, he woke up, as it were, and began to talk.  When the cart had passed the end of the Rue du Roule he had caught a glimpse of the side entrance of Saint Eustache under the giant roofing of one of the market covered-ways.  He was constantly referring to this view of the church, and tried to give it a symbolical meaning.

“It’s an odd mixture,” he said, “that bit of church framed round by an avenue of cast iron.  The one will kill the other; the iron will slay the stone, and the time is not very far off.  Do you believe in chance, Florent?  For my part, I don’t think that it was any mere chance of position that set a rose-window of Saint Eustache right in the middle of the central markets.  No; there’s a whole manifesto in it.  It is modern art, realism, naturalism—­whatever you like to call it—­that has grown up and dominates ancient art.  Don’t you agree with me?”

Then, as Florent still kept silence, Claude continued:  “Besides, that church is a piece of bastard architecture, made up of the dying gasp of the middle ages, and the first stammering of the Renaissance.  Have you noticed what sort of churches are built nowadays?  They resemble all kinds of things—­libraries, observatories, pigeon-cotes, barracks; and surely no one can imagine that the Deity dwells in such places.  The pious old builders are all dead and gone; and it would be better to cease erecting those hideous carcasses of stone, in which we have no belief to enshrine.  Since the beginning of the century there has only been one large original pile of buildings erected in Paris—­a pile in accordance with modern developments—­and that’s the central markets.  You hear me, Florent?  Ah! they are a fine bit of building, though they but faintly indicate what we shall see in the twentieth century!  And so, you see, Saint Eustache is done for!  It stands there with its rose-windows, deserted by worshippers, while the markets spread out by its side and teem with noisy life.  Yes! that’s how I understand it all, my friend.”

“Ah!  Monsieur Claude,” said Madame Francois, laughing, “the woman who cut your tongue-string certainly earned her money.  Look at Balthazar laying his ears back to listen to you.  Come, come, get along, Balthazar!”