Françoise, if I spoke to her about a church in Milan—a town to which she would probably never go—or the cathedral at Reims—or even just the one at Arras!—which she would not be able to see since it had been more or less destroyed, would express her envy of the rich who could afford to go and look at such treasures, and exclaim, with nostalgic regret: “Ah! how beautiful that must have been!” even though she, who had lived in Paris for so many years, had never had the curiosity to go and look at Notre-Dame. The reason for this, though, was because Notre-Dame was so much a part of Paris, of the
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