“And this church above all!” sighed Durtal.

He looked at his cathedral, loving it better than ever now that he was to part from it for a few days.  To impress it the better on his memory he tried to sum it up, to concentrate it, saying to himself,—­

“It is the epitome of Heaven and Earth; of Heaven by showing us the serried phalanx of its inhabitants—­Prophets, Patriarchs, Angels and Saints, lighting up the interior of the church by their transparent figures; by singing to the glory of the Mother and the Son.  Of Earth, for it connotes the elation of the soul, the ascension of man; it points out quite clearly to Christian souls the path of the perfect life.  They, to apprehend its symbolism, should enter by the Royal doorway, and pass up the nave, the transept and the choir—­the three successive phases of Asceticism; reach the top of the Cross where, surrounded by the chapels of the apse as by a Crown, the head of the Saviour lies, His neck bent, as we see them symbolized by the altar and the deflected axis of the church.

“There the pilgrim has reached the united ways, close to the Virgin, who mourns no more as she does in the agonizing scene on Calvary, at the foot of the Tree, but, under the figure of the Sacristy, remains veiled by the side of Her Son’s countenance, getting closer to Him the better to comfort and to see Him.

“And this allegory of the mystical life as set forth by the interior of the cathedral, is carried out by the exterior, in the suppliant effect of the whole building.

“The Soul, distraught by the joy of union, heart-broken at having still to live, only aspires now to escape for ever from the Gehenna of the flesh; thus it beseeches the Bridegroom with the uplifted arms of its towers, to take pity on it, to come to fetch it, to take it by the clasped hands of its spires and snatch it from earth, to carry it up with Him into Heaven.

“In short, this church is the finest expression of art bequeathed to us by the Middle Ages.  The great front has neither the awful majesty of that of Reims, pierced as it is with tracery, nor the dull melancholy of Notre Dame de Paris, nor the gigantic grace of Amiens, nor the massive solemnity of Bourges; but it is full of imposing simplicity, a lightness, a spring, which no other cathedral has attained to.

“The nave of Amiens alone grows beautifully less as it rises with as eager a spring from the earth; but the body of the Amiens church is light and uncomforting, and that of Chartres is mysterious and hushed; of all cathedrals it is that which best suggests the idea of a delicate, saintly woman, emaciated by prayer, and almost transparent by fasting.

“And then its windows are matchless, superior even to those of Bourges, where, again, the sanctuary blossoms with glorious clumps of holy persons.  And finally, the sculpture of the west front, the Royal Portal, is the most beautiful, the most superterrestrial statuary ever wrought by the hand of man.