And this assumption of a soul was attended, supported, by the bands of angels, the apostles, the prophets, and the righteous, all arrayed in their glorified bodies of flame, an escort of honour to the Cross lying low on the stones, and the image of the Mother enthroned in all the high places of this vast reliquary, opening the walls, as it seemed, to present to Her, as for a perpetual festival, their posies of gems that had blossomed in the fiery heat of the glass windows.

Nowhere else was the Virgin so well cared for, so cherished, so emphatically proclaimed the absolute mistress of the realm thus offered to Her; and one detail proved this.  In every other cathedral kings, saints, bishops, and benefactors lay buried in the depths of the soil; not so at Chartres.  Not a body had ever been buried there; this church had never been made a sarcophagus, because, as one of its historians—­old Rouillard—­says, “it has the preeminent distinction of being the couch or bed of the Virgin.”

Thus it was Her home; here She was supreme amid the court of Her Elect, watching over the sacramental Body of Her Son in the sanctuary of the inmost chapel, where lamps were ever burning, guarding Him as She had done in His infancy; holding Him on Her knee in every carving, every painted window; seen in every storey of the building, between the ranks of saints, and sitting at last on a pillar, revealing herself to the poof and lowly, under the humble aspect of a sunburnt woman, scorched by the dog-days, tanned by wind and rain.  Nay, She went lower still, down to the cellars of Her palace, waiting in the crypt to give audience to the waverers, the timid souls who were abashed by the sunlit splendour of Her Court.

How completely does this sanctuary—­where the sweet and awful presence is ever felt of the Child who never leaves His Mother—­lift the spirit above all realities, into the secret rapture of pure beauty!

“And how good must They both be,” Durtal said to himself, as he looked round and found himself alone, “never to abandon this desert, never to weary of waiting for worshippers!  But for the honest country folk who come at all hours to kiss the pillar, what a solitude it would be, even on Sunday, for this cathedral is never full.  However, to be just, at the nine o’clock mass on Sundays the lower end of the nave is thronged,” and he smiled, remembering that end of the church packed with little girls brought in schools by Sisters, and with peasant women who, not being able to see there to read their prayers, would light ends of taper and crowd together closely, several looking over one book.

This familiarity, this childlike simplicity of piety, which the dreadful sacristans of Paris would never endure in a church, were’ so natural at Chartres, so thoroughly in harmony with the homely and unceremonious welcome of Our Lady!

“A thing to be ascertained,” said Durtal, starting on a new line of thought, “is whether this church has preserved its surface uninjured, or whether it may not have been coloured in the thirteenth century.  Some writers assert that, in Mediaeval times, the interiors of cathedrals were always painted.  Is that the fact?  Or, admitting that the statement is correct as to all Romanesque churches, is it equally so with regard to Gothic churches?