The furniture consisted of a mahogany table of a sort of salmon pink colour, on which stood a pot-stand bereft of flowers; arm-chairs with circular backs fit for a gatekeeper's room, a chimney-piece adorned with statues of saints much fly-bitten, and a chimney board covered with paper representing the Vision of Lourdes.

On the walls hung a black board with rows of numbered keys; opposite, a chromo-lithograph of Christ, displaying, with an amiable smile, an underdone heart bleeding amid streams of yellow sauce.
But what was chiefly characteristic of this bedizened porter's lodge was a horribly sickening smell, the smell of lukewarm castor oil.
Durtal, nauseated by this odour, was on the point of making his escape, when the Abbe Plomb came in and took his arm.

They went out together.
"Then you have just come back from Solesmes ?" said Durtal.
"As you see." "And were you satisfied with your visit ?" "Enchanted," and the Abbe smiled at the impatience he could detect in Durtal's accents.
"What do you think of the monastery ?" "I think it most interesting to visit, both from the monastic and from the artistic point of view.

Solesmes is a great convent, the parent House of the Benedictine Order in France, and it has a flourishing school of novices.

What is it that you want to know, exactly ?" "Why, everything you can tell me." "Well, then, I may tell you that ecclesiastical art, brought to its very highest expression, is fascinating in that monastery.