cellars speak of the fear of sin, but also of the dread of a God whose wrath could only be appeased by the Advent of the Son.  The Romanesque seems to have preserved from its Oriental origin an element antedating the Birth of Christ; prayer seems to rise there to the implacable Adonai rather than to the pitying Infant, the gentle Mother.  The Gothic, on the contrary, is less timid, more captivated by the two other Persons and the Virgin; it is the home of less rigorous and more artistic Orders.  Bowed shoulders are straightened, downcast eyes are raised, sepulchral voices become seraphic.  It is, in fact, the expansion of the spirit, while the Romanesque symbolizes its repression.  At least, to me, that is the interpretation of these styles,” Durtal repeated to himself.

“Nor is that all,” he went on.  “Yet another distinction may be deduced from these observations.

“The Romanesque is allegorical of the Old Testament, as the Gothic is of the New.

“The parallel, when you consider it, is exact.  Is not the Bible—­the inflexible Book of Jehovah, the awful Code of the Father, well expressed by the stern and penitential Romanesque; and the consoling, tender Gospel by the Gothic, full of effusiveness and invitation, full of humble hope?

“If the symbols are these, it would seem that time very often plays the part of man’s purpose in evolving the completed idea and uniting the two styles, as, in Holy Scripture, the two Books are united; thus certain cathedrals present a very curious result.  Some, austere at their birth, are cheerful and even smiling as they are completed.  All that is left of the old Abbey church of Cluny is from this point of view a typical instance.  This, next to that of Paray-le-Monial, which remains entire, is undoubtedly one of the most magnificent examples of the Burgundian Romanesque, which, with its fluted pilasters, unfortunately betrays the distressing tradition of Greek art imported into France by the Romans.  Still, allowing that these basilicas—­which may have been built between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries—­are purely Romanesque, as Quicherat opines, mentioning them as examples, their structure is already of a mingled type, and the joyousness of the vaulted arch is already to be seen there.

“Nor have we here, as at Notre Dame la Grande at Poitiers, a Romanesque facade, minutely elaborate, flanked at each wing by a low tower supporting a heavy stone spire cut into facets, like a pine-apple.  At Paray there is none of the puerile ornament and heavy richness that we see at Poitiers.  The barbaric dress of the little toy church of Notre Dame la Grande gives way to the winding-sheet of a flat wall, but the exterior is none the less remarkably impressive with its solemn simplicity of outline.  And those two square towers, pierced with narrow windows and overlooked by a round tower resting so calmly, so firmly on an open arcade of columns joined by round arches, are a belfry at once dignified and rustic, spirited and strong.