“Next to this saint, who was subsequently roasted to death by a slow fire, in the town of Amasea, were Saint Stephen, Saint Clement, and Saint Laurence.

“Above this double rank of martyrs the tympanum represented the story of Saint Stephen disputing with the Doctors and stoned by the Jews; and on all sides, on the square pillars that supported the roof of the porch, was carved stone-work representing the tortured bodies of the righteous:  Saint Leger, Saint Laurence, Saint Thomas of Canterbury, Saint Bacchus, Saint Quentin, and many more; a whole procession of the Blessed, being blinded, burnt, cut in pieces, flogged with vigorous energy, and beheaded.  But it was all in melancholy decay.  The sans-culottes, by amputating more of their limbs in their tempest of fury, had crowned the martyrdom of these Saints.

“The doorway to the right, dedicated to the Confessors, was a vast hull set on end; on the sloping side to the left of the door stood Saint Nicholas, Archbishop of Myra, holding up a gloved hand, and trampling under foot the cruel host killing the children whose death became a theme for so many laments; Saint Ambrose, Doctor of the Church and Bishop of Milan, wearing a singular peaked mitre, like an extinguisher; Saint Leo, the Pope who defied Attila; and finally Saint Laumer, one of the glories of the Chartres district.

“He, like Saint Piat in the left-hand bay, is somewhat of a stranger dragged into this illustrious company.  He was of old highly venerated in La Beauce, having, in his lifetime, had a career which may be briefly summed up.  During his childhood he had kept sheep; he had then been cellarer to the cathedral; had become first an anchorite, then a monk, and finally Abbot of the Monastery of Corbion in the forests of the Orne.

“The opposite slope of the bay sheltered Saint Martin, Bishop of Tours, Saint Jerome, as a Doctor of the Church, Saint Gregory, Pope and Doctor, and Saint Avitus.

“What is curious in this door,” thought Durtal, “is the parallel of personages.  On one side, to the right, Saint Nicholas, the great miracle-worker of the East; on the other side, to the left, Saint Martin, the great miracle-worker of the West.  Then, as companion figures, Saint Ambrose and Saint Jerome;—­the first often redundant and pompous in second-rate prose, but ingenious and delightful in his hymns; the second who, in the Vulgate, really created the language of Church use, purifying and airing the Latin of Pagan literature, foul with lascivious meaning, reeking at once of an old goat and of essence of roses.  Again, face to face, two Popes, Saint Leo and Saint Gregory, and two Abbots of Monasteries, Saint Laumer and Saint Avitus, who was Prior of a House founded in the forests of Le Perche.”

These two last statues had been added later; their style and costume betrayed a date subsequent to the thirteenth century; had they, then, taken the place of others representing the same Monks, or different Saints?