“Yes, but you will observe that Saint Peter here stands next to Saint John the Baptist; the two statues are side by side and touch each other.  Then do you not perceive the meaning of this juxtaposition?  One was the Precursor and the other the Successor of Christ; the first anticipated Him, the second carried out His mission.  It was quite natural to place them together, and that the Chief of the Apostles should figure as the conclusion to the premisses set forth by the other statues of this portal.

“Finally, in addition to this series of patriarchs and prophets, you may see there, in the hollow between the pilasters, a pair of statues, one on each side of the door:  Elijah the Tishbite, and Elisha his disciple.

“The first prefigures the Saviour’s Ascension by his being carried up alive to Heaven in a chariot of fire; the second typifies Jesus saving and preserving mankind in the person of the Shunammite’s son.

“Argument is vain,” murmured Durtal, who was meditative.  “The Messianic prophecies are irresistible.  All the logic of the Rabbins, the Protestants, the Freethinkers, all the ingenuity of the Germans, have failed to find a crack or to undermine the old rock of the Church.  There is such a body of evidence, such certainty, such demonstration of the truth, such an indestructible foundation, that a man must be stricken with spiritual blindness to dare deny it.”

“Yes:  and to the end that there should be no mistake, no possibility of alleging that the inspired Scriptures were written subsequent to the arrival of the Messiah they prophesy, to prove that they were neither invented nor added to after the event, it was God’s pleasure that they should be translated into Greek in the Septuagint version and known to the whole world more than two hundred and fifty years before the birth of Christ.”

“To imagine the impossible—­supposing the Gospels were to be annihilated, they could, I suppose, be restored, and a brief history written of the Saviour’s life as they relate it merely by studying the Messianic announcements in the books of the Prophets?”

“No doubt; for, after all, and it cannot be too often repeated, the Old Testament is the story before the event of the Son of Man and the founding of His Church; as Saint Augustine bears witness, ’the whole history of the Jewish people was a perpetual prophecy of the expected King.’

“You will see, apart from personages prefiguring the Redeemer which you may find in every page of the Bible:  Isaac, Joseph, Moses, David, Jonah, to name five taken at random; apart, too, from the animals and objects that symbolized Him under the Old Laws, as, for instance, the Paschal Lamb, the Manna, the Brazen Serpent, and others, we can, if you please, simply by quoting the Prophets, trace the broad outlines of Emmanuel’s life and epitomize the Gospels in a few words.  Listen!”

The Abbe paused for thought, his hand over his eyes.