Unfortunately, some squalid, square columns whitened with lime-wash, built on the altar to give support to Bridan's group in the choir above, spoilt the barbaric simplicity of this _oubliette_, forgotten, lost in the night of ages, and underground.
He went up again comforted nevertheless, accusing himself of ingratitude, and asking himself how he could dream of leaving Chartres and going away from the Virgin, with whom he could thus so easily converse in solitude whenever he would.
On other days, when it was fine, he would take for the object of his walk a convent whose existence had been revealed to him by Madame Bavoil.

One afternoon he had met her in the square, and she had said to him,-- "I am going to see the little Jesus of Prague at the Carmelite convent here.

Will you come with me, our friend ?" Durtal had no liking for these petty pilgrimages made by good women; but the idea of going to the Carmelite chapel, which was unknown to him, tempted him to accompany her, and she led the way to the Rue des Jubelines, behind the railway line and beyond the station.

They had to cross a bridge that groaned under the weight of rolling trains, and turned to the right down a path winding between the embankment on one side, and on the other thatched huts, and old sheds, and other houses less poverty-stricken, indeed, but closed and impenetrable after daybreak.

Madame Bavoil led him to where this alley ended under the arch of another bridge.