And yet that lavish display of jewellers' work on the altars, in the
chapels, the sacristies, of Our Lady's Church, was but a framing for
little else than dead people's bones. To Gaston, a piteous soul,
with a touch also of that grim humour which, as we know, holds of
pity, relic-worship came naturally. At Deux-manoirs too there had
been relics, including certain broken children's toys and some rude
childish drawings, taken forth now and then with almost religious
veneration, with trembling hands and renewal of old grief, to his
wondering awe at the greatness of men's sorrows. Yes! the pavement
under one's feet had once been, might become again for him, molten
lava. The look, the manner, of those who exposed these things, had
been a revelation. The abundant relics of the church of Chartres
were for the most part perished remnants of the poor human body
itself; but, appertaining to persons long ago and of a far-off,
immeasurable kind of sanctity, stimulated a more indifferent sort of
curiosity, and seemed to bring the distant, the impossible, as with
tangible evidence of fact, close to one's side.
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