“After all,” the Abbe went on, after a short silence, “how can we judge of the works of a past age, but by such help as we may obtain from the arcades pierced in shoring walls or from vaulting on round or pointed arches? for they are all debased by centuries of repair, or left unfinished.  Look at Chartres; Notre Dame was to have had nine spires, and it has but two!  The cathedrals of Reims, of Paris, of Laon, and many more, were to have had spires rising from their towers; and where are they?  We can form no exact idea of the effect their architects intended to produce.  And then, again, these churches were meant to be seen in a setting which has been destroyed, an environment that has ceased to exist; they were surrounded by houses of a character resembling their own; they are now in the midst of barracks five stories high, gloomy, ignoble penitentiaries!—­and we constantly see the ground about them cleared, when they were never intended to stand isolated on a square.  Look where you will, there is a total misapprehension of the conditions in which they were placed, of the atmosphere in which they lived.  Certain details, which seem to us inexplicable in some of these buildings, were, no doubt, imperatively required by the position and needs of the surroundings.  In fact, we stumble, we feel our way—­but we know nothing—­nothing!”

“And at best,” said Durtal, “archaeology and architecture have only done a secondary work; they have simply set before us the material organism, the body of the cathedrals; who shall show us the soul?”

“What do you mean by the word?” said the Abbe Gevresin.

“I am not speaking of the soul of the building at the moment when man by Divine help had created it; we know nothing of that soul—­not indeed as regards Chartres, for some invaluable documents still reveal it; but of the soul of other churches, the soul they still have, and which we help to keep alive by our more or less regular presence, our more or less frequent communion, our more or less fervent prayers.

“For instance, take Notre Dame at Paris; I know that it has been restored and patched from end to end, that its sculpture is mended where it is not quite new; in spite of Hugo’s rhetoric it is second-rate, but it has its nave and its wondrous transept; it is even endowed with an ancient statue of the Virgin before which Monsieur Olier had knelt, and very often.  Well, an attempt was made to revive there the worship of Our Lady, to incite a spirit of pilgrimage thither; but all is dead!  That Cathedral no longer has a soul; it is an inert corpse of stone; try attending Mass there, try to approach the Holy Table—­you will feel an icy cloak fall on you and crush you.  Is it the result of its emptiness, of its torpid services, of the froth of runs and trills they send up there, of its being closed in a hurry in the evening and never open till so late in the morning, long after daybreak?  Or has it something to do with the permitted rush of tourists, of London gapers that I have seen there talking at the top of their voice, sitting staring at the altar when the Holy Elements were being consecrated just in front of them?  I know not—­but of one thing I am certain, the Virgin does not inhabit there day and night and always, as she does Chartres.