“In legend he is associated with Saint Simon; according to the Breviary, he is said to have evangelized Mesopotamia and to have suffered martyrdom with his companion Saint in Persia.  The Bollandists, on the other hand, assert that he was the Apostle to Arabia and Idumea, while the Greek Menology relates that he was shot to death with arrows by the infidels in Armenia.

“In fact all these accounts differ; and iconography adds to the confusion by representing Jude with the most various attributes.  Sometimes, as at Amiens, he holds a palm, or, as at Chartres, a book.  He is also seen with a cross, a square, a boat, a wand, an axe, a sword, and a spear.

“But in spite of the unfortunate reputation earned for him by his namesake Judas, the symbolists of the Middle Ages regard him as a man of charity and zeal, and attribute to him the splendour of the purple and gold fires of the chrysoprase, regarded as emblematical of good works.

“All this is but incoherent,” thought Durtal, “and what also strikes me as strange is that this Saint, so rarely invoked by our forefathers—­who for long never dedicated any altar to him, is twice represented in effigy at Chartres—­supposing the Verlaine of the royal porch to represent Saint Jude; but then that seems improbable.”

“What I should now like to know,” he went on, “is why the historians of this cathedral pronounce the scene of the last Judgment represented on the tympanum of the door as the most remarkable of its kind in France.  This is utterly false, for it is vulgar, and certainly inferior to many others.

“The demoniacal half is far less vigorous, more supine, less crowded than in other churches of the same period.  At Chartres, it is true, the devils with wolves’ muzzles and asses’ ears, trampling down bishops and kings, laymen and monks, and driving them into the maw of a dragon spouting flames—­the demons with goats’ beards and crescent-shaped jaws seizing hapless sinners who have wandered to the mouldings of the arch, are all very skilfully arranged, in well composed groups round the principal figure; but the Satanic vineyard lacks breadth and its fruit is insipid.  The preying demons are not ferocious enough, they almost look as if they were monks and were doing it for fun, while the damned take it very calmly.

“How far more desperate is the devil’s festival at Dijon!” Durtal recalled to mind the church of Notre Dame in that city, so strange a specimen of thirteenth-century gothic of the Burgundian stamp.  The church was of almost elementary simplicity; above its three porches rose a straight wall with two storeys of columns forming arcades and surmounted by grotesque figures.  To the right of this front was a small tower with a pointed roof; and on the roof a “Jacquemart” of iron tracery, with three puppets that strike the hours; behind, rising from the transept, was a small tower with four little glazed belfries.

This building, small as compared with great cathedrals, was stamped with the Flemish hall-mark; it had the homespun peasant expression, the cheerful faith of the race.  It was a domestic sanctuary, very native to the soil; the folks would hold converse with the Black Virgin standing there on an altar, tell her all their little concerns, make themselves at home there in confidential gossiping prayer, quite without ceremony.