quiet experience of things--the oldest, the most authentic, of all
voices, audible always, if one stepped aside for a moment and got
one's ears into what might after all be their normal condition. It
might be heard, it would seem, in proportion as men were in touch
with the Earth itself, in country life, in manual work upon it, above
all by the open grave, as if, reminiscent of some older, deeper, more
permanent ground of fact, it whispered then oracularly a certain
secret to those who came into such close contact with it. Persistent
after-thought! Would it always survive, amid the indifference of
others, amid the verdicts of the world, amid a thousand doubts? It
seemed to have found, and filled to overflowing, the soul of one
amiable little child who had a kind of genius for tranquillity, and
on his first coming hither had led Gaston to what he held to be the
[43] choicest, pleasantest places, as being impregnable by noise. In
his small stock of knowledge, he knew, like all around him, that he
was going to die, and took kindly to the thought of a small grave in
the little green close, as to a natural sleeping-place, in which he
would be at home beforehand. Descending from the tower, Gaston knew
he should find the child seated alone, enjoying the perfect quiet of
the warm afternoon, for all the world was absent--gone forth to
receive or gaze at a company of distinguished pilgrims.

Coming, sometimes with immense prelude and preparation, as when King
Charles himself arrived to replace an image disfigured by profane
Huguenots, sometimes with the secrecy and suddenness of an apparition
vanished before the public was aware, the pilgrims to "Our Lady under
the Earth" were the standing resource of those (such there were at
Chartres as everywhere else) who must needs depend for the interest
of their existence on the doings of their neighbours. A motley host,
only needing their Chaucer to figure as a looking-glass of life, type