"And then," said Durtal, "is it not another mouth to feed out of the wretched pittance allowed by the State?"
"So far as that goes, no. I draw no stipend, and damage no man's interest; in fact I would not accept it. The only pecuniary advantage I derive from being about the Bishop's person is that I have no rent to pay, since I am lodged for nothing in the episcopal building.
"I could not in any case have drawn a stipend, for the allowance granted to Canons by the Government has ceased to be given, since a measure was passed, on March 22nd, 1885, decreeing the suppression of such emoluments as the incumbents died off. Hence only those who held such benefices before the passing of the law now draw on the funds devoted to the maintenance of the Church; and they are dying off one by one, so that the time is fast approaching when there will not be a single Canon left who is salaried by the State. In some dioceses these lapsed benefices are compensated for by the revenues from some religious foundation, or, as you may call it, a prebend. But there are none at Chartres. The Chapter has at the utmost the use of a varying income which it divides among those who have no benefice, giving them, good years with bad, a sum of about three hundred francs each, and that is all."
"And the Canons have no perquisites?"
"None whatever."
"Then I wonder how they live."
"If they have no private fortune they live more penuriously than the poorest labourers in Chartres. Most of them simply vegetate; some perform Mass for Sisterhoods, or are convent chaplains, but that brings in very little, two hundred or two hundred and fifty francs perhaps. Another holds the post of secretary to the diocese, by which he gets rooms and as much, perhaps, as six hundred francs. Yet another conducts the services of the holy week known as the Voice of Our Lady of Chartres, and acts as precentor; and some find employment as the Bishop's officials. Each one, in short, has a struggle to earn his food and lodging."
"What exactly is a Canon; what are his functions, and the origin of his office?"
"The origin? It is lost in the night of ages. It is supposed that Colleges of Canons existed in the time of Pépin le Bref; it is at any rate certain that during his reign Saint Chrodegang, Bishop of Metz, assembled the clerks of his cathedral and obliged them to live together, in a house in common, as though it were a convent, under a rule of which Charlemagne makes mention in his Capitularies.—A Canon's functions? They consist in the solemn celebration of the Canonical services, and the direction of all processions. As a matter of conscience every Canon is required in the first place to reside in the town where the church is situated to whose service he is attached; then to be present at the Canonical hours when Mass is said; finally to sit on the meetings of the Chapter on certain fixed days. But to tell the truth, their part has almost fallen into desuetude. The Council of Trent speaks of them as the 'Senatus Ecclesiæ,' the Senate of the Church, and they then formed the necessary Council of the Bishop. In these days the prelates do not even consult them.
"They only exercise a small part of their lost prerogatives when the See is vacant. At that time the Chapter acts in the place of the Bishop, and even then its rights are greatly restricted. As it has not Episcopal Orders, it can exercise none of the powers inherent in them. It cannot consequently ordain or confirm."
"And if the See remains long vacant?"
"Then the Chapter requests the Bishop of a neighbouring diocese to ordain its seminarists, and confirm the children it presents to him. In short, as you see, a Canon is not a very important gentleman.
"I am not speaking, of course, of Honorary Canons, or Titular Canons. They have no duties to fulfil; they merely enjoy an honorary title which allows them to wear the Canon's hood, by permission of their own Bishop when, as frequently happens, they belong to another diocese.
"The Chapter of this Cathedral of Chartres is said to have been founded in the sixth century by Saint Lubin. It then consisted of seventy-two Canons, and the number was added to, for when the Revolution broke out it amounted to seventy-six, and included seventeen dignitaries: the Dean, the sub-Dean, the Precentor, the sub-Precentor, the chief Archdeacon of Chartres, the Archdeacons of Beauce-en-Dunois, of Dreux, of Le Pincerais, of Vendôme, and of Blois; the gatekeeper, the Chancellor, the Provosts of Normandy, of Mézangey, of Ingré, and of Auvers; and the Chancel Warden. These priests, most of them men of family and wealth, were a nursery ground of Bishops; they owned all the houses round the Cathedral and lived independently in their cloister, devoting themselves to history, theology, and the Canon law—they are now indeed fallen!"
The Abbé was silent, shaking his head. Then he went on—
"To return to my subject—I was naturally somewhat hurt by the coldness I met with on my arrival at Chartres. As I told you, I had to allay many apprehensions. But I think I have succeeded. And I thank God, too, for having given me a valuable supporter in the person of a subordinate priest of the Cathedral, who has done me invaluable service with my colleagues—the Abbé Plomb; do you know him?"
"No."
"He is a highly intelligent priest, very learned, a passionate mystic, thoroughly acquainted with the Cathedral, of which he has examined every corner."
"Ah ha! I am interested in that priest! Perhaps he is one of those I have already noticed. What is he like?"
"Short, young, pale, slightly marked with the small-pox, with spectacles that you may recognize by this peculiarity: the arch which rests on the nose is shaped like a loop, or, if you choose to say so, like a horseman's legs astride in the saddle."
"That man!"—and Durtal, left to himself, thought about the priest whom he had repeatedly seen in the church or the square.
"Certainly," said he to himself, "there is always the risk of a mistake when we judge of people by appearances; but how startling is the truth of that commonplace remark when applied to the clergy! This Abbé Plomb looks like a scared sacristan; he goes about gaping at invisible crows, and he seems so ill at ease, so loutish, so awkward—and this is our learned man and devoted mystic, in love with his Cathedral! Certainly it is not safe to judge of an Abbé from appearances. Now that it is to be my fate to live in this clerical world, I must begin by throwing prejudice overboard, and wait till I know all the priests of the diocese, before allowing myself to form an opinion of them."
CHAPTER III.
"In point of fact," said Durtal to himself as he stood dreaming on the market-place, "no one exactly knows what was the origin of the Gothic forms of a cathedral. Archæologists and architects have exhausted hypotheses and systems in vain; they seem to agree in attributing the Romanesque to Oriental parentage, and that in fact maybe proven. That the Romanesque should be an offshoot of the Latin and Byzantine styles, and be, as Quicherat defines it, 'the style which has ceased to be Roman and is not yet Gothic, though it already has something of the Gothic,' I am ready to admit; and indeed, on examining the capitals, and studying their outline and drawing, we perceive that they are Assyrian or Persian rather than Roman or Byzantine and Gothic; but as to discovering the paternity even of the pointed and flamboyant styles, that is quite another thing. Some writers assert that the pointed arch based on an equilateral triangle existed in Egypt, Syria, and Persia; others regard it as descended from Saracen and Arab art; nothing certainly is provable.
"Again, it must be clearly stated that the pointed equilateral arch, which some persons still suppose to be the distinctive characteristic of an era in architecture, is not so in fact, as Quicherat has very clearly demonstrated, and, since him, Lecoy de la Marche. The study of archives has, on this point, completely overset the hobbies of architects, and demolished the twaddle of the Bonzes. Besides, there is abundant evidence of the employment of the pointed arch side by side with the round arch in a perfectly systematic design, in the construction of many Romanesque churches; in the Cathedrals of Avignon and Fréjus, in Notre Dame at Aries, in Saint Front