“With the Trappists the ordinances are so closely drawn that they are stifling; with the Benedictines, on the contrary, they would be light and airy enough to allow the soul to breathe easily.  One Fraternity clings scrupulously to the letter; the other, on the contrary, draws inspiration from the Spirit of the Saint.

“Before goading myself along this road I must consult the Abbe Plomb,” was Durtal’s conclusion.  He went to call on the priest; but he was absent for some days.

As a precaution against indolence, a measure of spiritual discipline, he threw himself on the cathedral once more, and tried, now that he was less overpowered by speculation, to read its meaning.

The stone text which he was bent on understanding was puzzling, if not difficult to decipher, in consequence of the interpolated passages, repetitions, and parts eliminated or abridged; in fact, to say the truth, as the result of a certain incoherence, accounted for no doubt by the circumstance that the work had been carried on, altered or extended by successive artists during a lapse of two hundred years.

The image-makers of the thirteenth century had not always taken into account the ideas expressed by their precursors; they had repeated them, expressing them from their own point of view in their personal tongue; thus, for instance, they had introduced a second version of the signs of the seasons and of the zodiac.  The sculptors of the twelfth century had made a calendar in stone on the western front; those of the thirteenth did the same in the right-hand doorway of the north porch, justifying this reduplication of the subject on the same church by the fact that the zodiac and the seasons may in symbolism have several interpretations.

According to Tertullian the death and new birth of the circling years afforded an image of the Resurrection at the end of the world.  According to others the Sun, surrounded by the twelve Signs, was emblematic of the Sun of Justice surrounded by his twelve Apostles.  The Abbe Bulteau sees in these stony calendars a rendering of the passage in which St. Paul declares to the Hebrews that “Jesus is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever,” while the Abbe Clerval gives this simple interpretation:  that all times belong to Christ, and are bound to glorify Him.

“But this is a mere detail,” said Durtal to himself.  “In the whole structure of the cathedral itself we can trace two-fold purposes.

“The architectural mass of Notre Dame de Chartres as a whole may be divided, externally, into three great parts, as indicated by the three grand porches.  The western or royal portal, which is the ceremonial entrance to the sanctuary, between the two towers; the north porch on the side next the bishop’s palace, beyond the new spire; the south porch, flanked by the old spire.