ten and twelve. While speaking, Monsieur Millet examined Godefroid,
and made him submit to what magistrates call the "first degree of
interrogation."

"Was monsieur unmarried? Madame wished a person of regular habits; the
gate was closed at eleven at the latest. Monsieur certainly seemed of
an age to suit Madame de la Chanterie."

"How old do you think me?" asked Godefroid.

"About forty!" replied the grocer.

This ingenuous answer threw the young man into a state of misanthropic
gloom. He went off and dined at a restaurant on the quai de la
Tournelle, and afterwards went to the parapet to contemplate
Notre-Dame at the moment when the fires of the setting sun were
rippling and breaking about the manifold buttresses of the apsis.

The young man was floating between the promptings of despair and the
moving voice of religious harmonies sounding in the bell of the
cathedral when, amid the shadows, the silence, the half-veiled light
of the moon, he heard the words of the priest. Though, like most of
the sons of our century, he was far from religious, his sensibilities
were touched by those words, and he returned to the rue Chanoinesse,
although he had almost made up his mind not to do so.

The priest and Godefroid were both surprised when they entered
together the rue Massilon, which is opposite to the small north portal
of the cathedral, and turned together into the rue Chanoinesse, at the
point where, towards the rue de la Colombe, it becomes the rue des