than anything else had stirred imagination and brought the
consciousness of his own life warm and full. Gazing now upon the
"holy and beautiful place," as he had gazed on the dead face, for a
moment he seemed to anticipate the indifference of age. And when not
long after the rude hands of catholics themselves, at their wits' end
for the maintenance of the "religious war," spoiled it of the
accumulated treasure of centuries, leaving Notre-Dame de Chartres in
the bareness with which we see it to-day, he had no keen sense of
personal loss.



III. MODERNITY

[48] The besieging armies disappeared like the snow, leaving city and
suburb in all the hardened soilure of war and winter, which only the
torrents of spring would carry away. And the spring came suddenly:
it was pleasant, after that long confinement, to walk afar securely
through its early fervours. Gaston too went forth on his way home,
not alone. Three chosen companions went with him, pledged to the old
manor for months to come; its lonely ancient master welcoming readily
the tread of youth about him.

"The Triumvirate":--so their comrades had been pleased to call the
three; that term (delightful touch of classic colour on one's own
trite but withal pedantic age) being then familiar, as the
designation of three conspicuous agents on the political scene of the
generation just departing. Only, these young Latinists went back for
the associations of the word to its Roman original, to the three
gallants of the distant time, rather than to those native French [49]