The walls rose on all sides to the point where the
vaulting would have begun. You entered as into a real church, you could
walk about at ease, identifying all the usual parts of an edifice of this
description. Only when you raised your eyes you saw the sky; the roofs
were wanting, the rain could fall and the wind blow there freely. Some
fifteen years previously the works had been abandoned, and things had
remained in the same state as the last workman had left them. What struck
you first of all were the ten pillars of the nave and the four pillars of
the choir, those magnificent columns of Pyrenean marble, each of a single
block, which had been covered with a casing of planks in order to protect
them from damage. The bases and capitals were still in the rough,
awaiting the sculptors. And these isolated columns, thus cased in wood,
had a mournful aspect indeed. Moreover, a dismal sensation filled you at
sight of the whole gaping enclosure, where grass had sprung up all over
the ravaged, bumpy soil of the aisles and the nave, a thick cemetery
grass, through which the women of the neighbourhood had ended by making
paths. They came in to spread out their washing there. And even now a
collection of poor people's washing--thick sheets, shirts in shreds, and
babies' swaddling clothes--was fast drying in the last rays of the sun,
which glided in through the broad, empty bays.
Slowly, without speaking, Pierre and Doctor Chassaigne walked round the
inside of the church.
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