CHAPTER XXVIII
A PROCESSION
All hearts were moved. The presence of God seemed to have descended into these narrow Gothic streets that stretched in every direction, and were sanded by the care of the faithful.—Young.
It was in vain that Julien pretended to be petty and stupid. He could not please; he was too different. Yet all these professors, he said to himself, are very clever people, men in a thousand. Why do they not like my humility? Only one seemed to take advantage of his readiness to believe everything, and apparently to swallow everything. This was the abbè Chas-Bernard, the director of the ceremonies of the cathedral, where, for the last fifteen years, he had been given occasion to hope for a canonry. While waiting, he taught homiletics at the seminary. During the period of Julien's blindness, this class was one of those in which he most frequently came out top. The abbé Chas had used this as an opportunity to manifest some friendship to him, and when the class broke up, he would be glad to take him by the arm for some turns in the garden.
"What is he getting at," Julien would say to himself. He noticed with astonishment that, for hours on end, the abbé would talk to him about the ornaments possessed by the cathedral. It had seventeen lace chasubles, besides the mourning vestments. A lot was hoped from the old wife of the judge de Rubemprè. This lady, who was ninety years of age, had kept for at least seventy years her wedding dress of superb Lyons material, embroidered with gold.
"Imagine, my friend," the abbé Chas would say, stopping abruptly, and staring with amazement, "that this material
