Besides, he was fondling his chimera,--a desire already twelve years
old, the desire of a priest, a desire formed anew every evening and
now, apparently, very near accomplishment; in short, he had wrapped
himself so completely in the fur cape of a canon that he did not feel
the inclemency of the weather. During the evening several of the
company who habitually gathered at Madame de Listomere's had almost
guaranteed to him his nomination to the office of canon (then vacant
in the metropolitan Chapter of Saint-Gatien), assuring him that no one
deserved such promotion as he, whose rights, long overlooked, were
indisputable.

If he had lost the rubber, if he had heard that his rival, the Abbe
Poirel, was named canon, the worthy man would have thought the rain
extremely chilling; he might even have thought ill of life. But it so
chanced that he was in one of those rare moments when happy inward
sensations make a man oblivious of discomfort. In hastening his steps
he obeyed a more mechanical impulse, and truth (so essential in a
history of manners and morals) compels us to say that he was thinking
of neither rain nor gout.

In former days there was in the Cloister, on the side towards the
Grand'Rue, a cluster of houses forming a Close and belonging to the
cathedral, where several of the dignitaries of the Chapter lived.
After the confiscation of ecclesiastical property the town had turned
the passage through this close into a narrow street, called the Rue de
la Psalette, by which pedestrians passed from the Cloister to the
Grand'Rue. The name of this street, proves clearly enough that the
precentor and his pupils and those connected with the choir formerly
lived there. The other side, the left side, of the street is occupied
by a single house, the walls of which are overshadowed by the