are endowed with almost total ignorance of evil.

"And yet are there not some souls too experienced, alas! in the culture
of wrong-doing, who nevertheless find mercy at Her feet? Has not the
Virgin other sanctuaries less frequented, less well known, which yet
have outlived the wear of time, the various caprice of the ages; very
ancient churches where She welcomes you if you love Her in solitude and
silence?"

And Durtal, coming back to Chartres once more, looked about him at the
persons who were waiting in the warm shade of the indefinite forest till
the Virgin should awake, to worship Her.

With dawn, now beginning to break, this forest of the church under whose
shade he was sitting became absolutely unintelligible. The shapes,
faintly sketched, were transformed in the gloom which blurred every
outline as it slowly faded. Below, in the vanishing mist, rose the
immemorial trunks of fabulous white trees, planted as it seemed in wells
that held them tightly in the rigid circle of their margin; and the
night, now almost diaphanous on the level of the ground, was thicker as
it rose, cutting them off at the spring of the branches, which were
still invisible.

Durtal, as he raised his head, gazed into deep obscurity unlighted by
moon or star.

Looking up still, but straight before him, he saw in the air, through
the hazy twilight, sword-blades already bright, gigantic blades without
hilts or handles, thinner towards the point; and these blades, standing
on end at an immense height, appeared in the gloom they cut, to be