“Then the rule in the thirteenth century was to place the Virgin in the northern portion?”

“Yes.  To the men of that time the north meant the gloom of winter, the dejection of darkness, the misery of cold; the ice-bound chant of the winds was to them the very blast of evil; to the north was the home of the devil, the hell of nature, as the south was its Eden.”

“But that is absurd!” cried Durtal, “the greatest blunder ever introduced into the symbolism of the elements.  The medieval sages were mistaken, for snow is pure and cold is chastity.  It is the sun, on the contrary, that is the active agent in developing the germs of rottenness, the ferment of vice!

“They forget that the third Psalm of Compline speaks of the hot hour of noon as the most harassing and dangerous of all; they must have overlooked the horrors of sweat and unwholesome heat, the risks of relaxed nerves, of loosened dresses, all the abominations of leaden clouds and hard blue skies!

“There are diabolical effluvia in the storm, and in weather when the air stirs like the vapours from a furnace, rousing evil instincts and bringing about us the raging swarm of evil angels.”

“But remember the passages in which Isaiah and Jeremiah speak of Lucifer as dwelling in the blast of the north wind; and recollect that the great cathedrals did not originate in the south but in the middle and north of France; consequently, after having adopted this symbolism of seasons and weather, the pious architects dreamed of the horror of men buried in snow, and longing for a gleam of sunshine and a bright day.  Naturally they thought of the east as the region of the original Paradise, and of those lands as milder and less inclement than their own.”

“That does not hinder the fact that this theory was controverted by Our Lord Himself.”

“Where do you find that?” asked the Abbe Plomb.

“On Calvary; Jesus died” turning His back to the south, which had crucified Him, and extending His arms on the Cross to bless and embrace the north.  He seemed to be withdrawing His favours from the east, ’to bestow them on the west.  Hence, if any region is accurst and inhabited by Satan, it is the south and not the north.”

“You abominate the south and its races, that is evident,” said the Abbe, laughing.

“I do not love them.  Their scenery, vulgarized by crude daylight, their dusty trees standing out against a sky of washerwoman’s blue, have no charm for me; as to the natives, hairy and noisy, with a blue bar under their nostrils if they shave, I flee from them!”

“Here, in short, we are face to face with a fact which no discussions can alter.  This side of the church is dedicated to the Virgin.  Shall we now examine it, first as a whole, and then in detail?

“This portal, brought forward like an open porch, a sort of verandah in front of the doors, is an allegory of the Saviour showing the way into the heavenly Jerusalem.  It was begun in the year 1215 under Philip Augustus, and finished by about 1275, under Philip the Bold; thus it was nearly sixty years in building, the greater part of the thirteenth century.  It is divided into three parts, corresponding to the three doors behind it; there are more than seven hundred statues grouped here, large and small, representing, for the most part, personages from the Old Testament.