the blue sky, looking scarcely larger than a fly, a crow alighted on
the point of a spire to smooth its wings. The old stones themselves were
animated by the quiet working of the roots of a whole flora of plants,
the lichens and the grasses, which pushed themselves through the
openings in the walls. On very stormy days the entire apse seemed to
awake and to grumble under the noise of the rain as it beat against the
leaden tiles of the roof, running off by the gutters of the cornices and
rolling from story to story with the clamour of an overflowing torrent.
Even the terrible winds of October and of March gave to it a soul, a
double voice of anger and of supplication, as they whistled through
its forests of gables and arcades of roseate ornaments and of little
columns. The sun also filled it with life from the changing play of
its rays; from the early morning, which rejuvenated it with a delicate
gaiety, even to the evening, when, under the slightly lengthened-out
shadows, it basked in the unknown.

And it had its interior existence. The ceremonies with which it was ever
vibrating, the constant swinging of its bells, the music of the organ,
and the chanting of the priests, all these were like the pulsation of
its veins. There was always a living murmur in it: half-lost sounds,
like the faint echo of a Low Mass; the rustling of the kneeling
penitents, a slight, scarcely perceptible shivering, nothing but the
devout ardour of a prayer said without words and with closed lips.

Now, as the days grew longer, Angelique passed more and more time in the
morning and evening with her elbows on the balustrade of the balcony,
side by side with her great friend, the Cathedral. She loved it the best
at night, when she saw the enormous mass detach itself like a huge block
on the starry skies. The form of the building was lost. It was with
difficulty that she could even distinguish the flying buttresses, which