"If you could but imagine the impression it suggests to me, the sort of atmosphere, the kind of smell it presents to my brain.

You know the huge cupboards you find in old houses, with double doors, and lined within with blue paper that is always damp.

Well, at the mere name of the provinces I feel as if one of these were opened in my face, and I got a full blast of the stuffiness that comes out of it!--And to put the finishing touch to the vision by combining taste and smell, I have only to bite one of the biscuits they make nowadays of Lord knows what, reeking the moment you taste them, of fish glue and plaster that has been rained upon, I have only to eat that cold, insipid paste and sniff at a musty closet, and at once the lugubrious picture rises before me of some Godforsaken place!--Your Chartres will no doubt smell like that--Pah!" "Oh, oh!" cried Madame Bavoil.

"But you cannot know much about it, since you have never been to the place." "Let him be!" said the Abbe, laughing.

"He will get over his prejudices." And he went on,-- "Just explain this inconsistency: here is a Parisian who likes his city so little that he seeks out the most deserted nook to live in, the quietest, the least frequented, the spot that is most like a provincial retreat.