He has a horror of the Boulevards, of public promenades, and of theatres; he buries himself in a hole, and stops his ears that he may not hear the noises around him; but, when he has a chance of improving on this scheme of existence, of ripening in real silence far from the crowd, when he can invert the conditions of life, and, instead of being a provincial Parisian, can become a Parisian of the provinces, he shies and kicks!" "It is a fact," Durtal admitted when he was alone, "a positive fact that the capital is unprofitable to me.

I never see anybody now, and shall be reduced to still more utter solitude when these friends are gone.

I shall, for all purposes, be quite as well off at Chartres; I can study at my ease amid peaceful surroundings, within reach of a cathedral of far greater interest than Notre Dame de Paris.

And besides--besides--there is another question of which the Abbe Gevresin says nothing, but which disturbs me greatly.

If I remain here, alone, I shall have to find a new confessor, to wander through the churches, just as I wander through work-a-day life in search of dining-places and tables d'hote.