breath, still half-stunned by the sudden change from a stinging north
wind to a velvety airy caress. At five every morning he left his rooms,
and to reach the covert of that strange forest he had to cross the
square; the same figures were always to be seen at the turnings from the
same streets; nuns with bowed heads, leaning forward, the borders of
their caps blown back and flapping like wings, the wind whirling in
their skirts, which they could hardly hold down; and shrunken women, in
garments they hugged round them, struggling forward with bent shoulders
lashed by the gusts.

Never at that hour had he seen anybody walking boldly upright, without
straining her neck and bowing her head; and these scattered women
gathered by degrees into two long lines, one of them turning to the
left, to vanish under a lighted porch opening to a lower level than the
square; the other going straight on, to be swallowed up in the darkness
by an invisible wall.

Closing the procession came a few belated priests, hurrying on, with one
hand gathering up the gown that ballooned behind them, and with the
other clutching their hats, or snatching at the breviary that was
slipping from under one arm, their faces hidden on their breast, to
plough through the wind with the back of their neck; with red ears, eyes
blinded with tears, clinging desperately, when it rained, to umbrellas
that swayed above them, threatening to lift them from the ground and
dragging them in every direction.

The passage had been more than usually stormy this morning; the squalls
that tear across the district of La Beauce, where nothing can check
them, had been bellowing for hours; there had been rain, and the puddles
splashed under foot. It was difficult to see, and Durtal had begun to