"Inquire of M.Millet, grocer, rue Chanoinesse, near Notre-Dame, where all further information can be obtained."Attracted by a certain kindliness concealed beneath these words, and the middle-class air which exhaled from them, Godefroid had, on the afternoon when we found him on the quay, called at four o'clock on the grocer, who told him that Madame de la Chanterie was then dining, and did not receive any one when at her meals.The lady, he said, was visible in the evening after seven o'clock, or in the morning between ten and twelve.While speaking, Monsieur Millet examined Godefroid, and made him submit to what magistrates call the "first degree of interrogation.""Was monsieur unmarried? Madame wished a person of regular habits; the gate was closed at eleven at the latest.Monsieur certainly seemed of an age to suit Madame de la Chanterie.""How old do you think me?" asked Godefroid.
"About forty!" replied the grocer.
This ingenuous answer threw the young man into a state of misanthropic gloom.He went off and dined at a restaurant on the quai de la Tournelle, and afterwards went to the parapet to contemplate Notre-Dame at the moment when the fires of the setting sun were rippling and breaking about the manifold buttresses of the apsis.
The young man was floating between the promptings of despair and the moving voice of religious harmonies sounding in the bell of the cathedral when, amid the shadows, the silence, the half-veiled light of the moon, he heard the words of the priest.Though, like most of the sons of our century, he was far from religious, his sensibilities were touched by those words, and he returned to the rue Chanoinesse, although he had almost made up his mind not to do so.