All of the beauty of the town, all the energy of the plains, and all the power and dignity of the people seemed to have been sucked out of them by the cathedral. American soldiers, some in uniform, some in civilian clothes, leaned over bridges, entered bistros in strident, uneasy, smiling packs, circled displays of colored post cards, and picked up meretricious mementos, of a sacred character.
Tow-haired boys and girls, earnest, carrying knapsacks, wearing khaki-colored shorts, with heavy buttocks and thighs, wandered dully through the town. Tourist buses, from Holland, from Denmark, from Germany, stood in the square before the cathedral. The town was full of tourists, with their cameras, their three-quarter coats, bright flowered dresses and shirts, their children, college insignia, Panama hats, sharp, nasal cries, and automobiles crawling like monstrous gleaming bugs over the laming, cobblestoned streets. It is impossible to be in that town and not be in the shadow of those great towers impossible to find oneself on those plains and not be troubled by that cruel and elegant, dogmatic and pagan presence. They had wandered up and down the old crooked streets, in the hot sun Eric remembered a lizard darting across a wall and everywhere the cathedral pursued them. Copy Bookmark “That day in Chartres they had passed through town and watched women kneeling at the edge of the water, pounding clothes against a flat, wooden board.
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