Further down all was still and lifeless; the houses were asleep, not so far awake even as to show the transient flash of glass when a window is thrown open, nor was there such a spot of red as is often seen in a country street when an eider-down quilt hangs out to air across the bar of a balcony; everything was closed and dull and soundless; there was not even the hive-like hum that hangs over inhabited places.

But for the distant rumble of a cart, the crack of a whip, the bark of a dog, all was still: it was a town asleep, a land of the dead.
And beyond the valley, on the further bank, the scene was still more sullen and silent; the plains of La Beauce stretched away as far as the eye could reach, mute and melancholy, without a smile, under a heartless sky divided by an ignoble barrack facing the Cathedral.
The dreariness of these plains, an endless level without a mound, without a tree! And you felt that even beyond the horizon they still stretched away as flat as ever; only the monotony of the landscape was emphasized by the raging fury of the tempestuous winds, sweeping the hillside, levelling the tree-tops, and wreaking themselves on this basilica, which, perched on high, had for centuries defied their efforts.

To uproot it the lightning had been needed to help, firing its towers, and even the combined attacks of the hurricane and the flames had been unable to destroy the original stock, which, replanted after each disaster, had always sprouted in fresh verdure with reinvigorated growth.
That morning, in the dawn of a rainy autumn day, lashed by a bitter north wind, Durtal, shivering and ill at ease, left the terrace and took refuge in the more sheltered walks, going down presently into a garden-slope where the brushwood afforded some little protection from the wind; these shrubberies wandered at random down the hill, and an inextricable tangle of blackberries clung with the cat's-claws of their long shoots to the saplings that were scattered about.
It was evident that since some immemorial time the Bishops, for lack of funds, had neglected these grounds.

Of all the old kitchen garden, overgrown by brambles, only one plot was more or less weeded, and rows of spinach and carrots alternated with the frosted balls of cabbages.
Durtal sat down on a stump that had once supported a bench, and tried to look into his own soul; but he found within, look where he might, only a spiritual Beauce; it seemed to him to mirror the cold and monotonous landscape; only it was not a mighty wind that blew through his being; but a sharp, drying little blast.

He knew that he was cross-grained and could not make his observations calmly; his conscience harassed him and insisted on vexatious argument.
"Pride! Ah, how is it to be kept under till the day shall come when it shall be quelled?
It insinuates itself so stealthily, so noiselessly, that it has ensnared and bound me before I can suspect its presence; and my case too is somewhat peculiar, and hard to cure by the religious treatment commonly prescribed in such cases.