One morning Durtal went out to seek the Abbe Plomb.

He could not find him in his own house, nor in the cathedral; but at last, directed by the beadle, he made his way to the house at the corner of the Rue de l'Acacia, where the choir-school was lodged.
He went in by a gate that stood half open, into a yard littered with broken pails and other rubbish.

The house, beyond this courtyard, was suffering from the cutaneous disease that affects plaster, eaten with leprosy and spotted with blisters, with zig-zag rifts from top to bottom, and a crackled surface like the glaze of an old jar.

The dead stock of a vine stretched its gnarled black arms along the wall.
Durtal, looking in at a window, saw a dormitory with rows of white beds, and he was amused, for never had he seen beds so tiny.
A lad was in the room, whom he called, by tapping on the pane, and asked whether the Abbe Plomb were still about the place.

The boy nodded an affirmative, and showed Durtal into a waiting-room.
This room was like the office of an exceedingly inferior and pious hotel.