I wait till She is alone before I visit her.

Hosts of people shouting canticles with eyes straight to Heaven or looking for Jesus on the ground by way of unction are too much for me.

I am all for the forlorn Queens, for the deserted churches and dark chapels.

I am of the opinion of Saint John of the Cross, who confesses that he does not love the pilgrimage of crowds because one comes back more distracted than when one started.
"No.

What it is really a grief to me to leave in quitting Chartres is that very silence, that solitude in the cathedral, those interviews with the Virgin in the gloom of the crypt and the twilight of the nave.