At the high altar a
priest was saying mass, and March wondered whether his consciousness was
as wholly ecclesiastical as the beadle's, or whether somewhere in it he
felt the historical majesty, the long human consecration of the place.
He wandered at random in the town through streets German and quaint and
old, and streets French and fine and new, and got back to the river,
which he crossed on one of the several handsome bridges. The rough river
looked chill under a sky of windy clouds, and he felt out of season, both
as to the summer travel, and as to the journey he was making. The summer
of life as well as the summer of that year was past. Better return to his
own radiator in his flat on Stuyvesant Square; to the great ugly brutal
town which, if it was not home to him, was as much home to him as to any
one. A longing for New York welled up his heart, which was perhaps really
a wish to be at work again. He said he must keep this from his wife, who
seemed not very well, and whom he must try to cheer up when he returned
to the hotel.
But they had not a very joyous afternoon, and the evening was no gayer.
They said that if they had not ordered their letters sent to Dusseldorf
they believed they should push on to Holland without stopping; and March
would have liked to ask, Why not push on to America? But he forbore, and
he was afterwards glad that he had done so.
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