Those who have read the terrible little story of "Le Cure de Tours"will perhaps remember that,as Ihave already mentioned,the simple and childlike old Abbe Birotteau,victim of the infernal machinations of the Abbe Troubert and Mademoiselle Gamard,had his quarters in the house of that lady (she had a speciality of letting lodgings to priests),which stood on the north side of the cathedral,so close under its walls that the supporting pillar of one of the great flying buttresses was planted in the spinster's garden.
If you wander round behind the church,in search of this more than historic habitation,you will have occasion to see that the side and rear of Saint Gatien make a delectable and curious figure.A narrow lane passes beside the high wall which conceals from sight the palace of the archbishop,and beneath the flying buttresses,the farprojecting gargoyles,and the fine south porch of the church.It terminates in a little,dead,grassgrown square entitled the Place Gregoire de Tours.All this part of the exterior of the cathedral is very brown,ancient,Gothic,grotesque;Balzac calls the whole place "a desert of stone."A battered and gabled wing,or outhouse (as it appears to be)of the hidden palace,with a queer old stone pulpit jutting out from it,looks down on this melancholy spot,on the other side of which is a seminary for young priests,one of whom issues from a door in a quiet corner,and,holding it open a moment behind him,shows a glimpse of a sunny garden,where you may fancy other black young figures strolling up and down.Mademoiselle Gamard's house,where she took her two abbes to board,and basely conspired with one against the other,is still further round the cathedral.You cannot quite put your hand upon it today,for the dwelling which you say to yourself that it must have been Mademoiselle Gamard's does not fulfil all the conditions mentioned in BaIzac's deion.The edifice in question,however,fulfils conditions enough;in particular,its little court offers hospitality to the big buttress of the church.Another buttress,corresponding with this (the two,between them,sustain the gable of the north transept),is planted in the small cloister,of which the door on the further side of the little soundless Rue de la Psalette,where nothing seems ever to pass,opens opposite to that of Mademoiselle Gamard.There is a very genial old sacristan,who introduced me to this cloister from the church.It is very small and solitary,and much mutilated;but it nestles with a kind of wasted friendliness beneath the big walls of the cathedral.Its lower arcades have been closed,and it has a small plot of garden in the middle,with fruittrees which Ishould imagine to be too much overshadowed.In one corner is a remarkably picturesque turret,the cage of a winding staircase which ascends (no great distance)to an upper gallery,where an old priest,the chanoinegardien of the church,was walking to and fro with his breviary.The turret,the gallery,and even the chanoinegardien,belonged,that sweet September morning,to the class of objects that are dear to painters in watercolors.
