“By the way,” said the Abbe, when they had left the church and were walking down the street, “I forgot to point out to you the Number which is everywhere stamped on Chartres; it is identical with Paray-le-Monial.  Here, again, everything is in threes.  Thus there are three aisles, and three entrances each with three doors; if you count the pillars of the nave, you will count twice three on each side.  The transept aisles again have each three bays and three pillars, the windows are in threes under the three great roses.  So, you see, Notre Dame is full of the Trinity.”

“And it is also the great store-house of Mediaeval painting and sculpture.”

“Yes, and like other Gothic cathedrals, it is the completest and most trustworthy collection of symbolism; for the allegories we fancy we can interpret in Romanesque churches are on the whole but artificial and doubtful—­and that is quite conceivable.  The Romanesque is a convert, a pagan turned monk.  It was not born Catholic as the pointed arch was; it only became so by baptism conferred by the Church.  Christianity discovered it in the Roman basilica, and utilized while modifying it; thus its origin is pagan, and it was only as it grew up that it could learn the language and use the forms of our emblems.”

“And yet, to me, as a whole, it seems to be a symbol, for it is the image in stone of the Old Testament, a figure of contrition and fear.”

“And yet more of the soul’s peace,” replied the Abbe.  “Believe me, really to understand that style we must go back to the fountain-head, to the earliest times of Monasticism, of which it is a perfect expression; back, in fact, to the Fathers of the Church, the monks of the Desert.

“Now, what is the very special character of the mysticism of the East?  It is the calmness of faith, love feeding on itself, ecstasy without display, ardent but reserved, internal.

“In the books of the Egyptian Recluses you will never find the vehemence of a Maddalena de’ Pazzi or a Catherine of Siena, the passionate ejaculations of a Saint Angela.  Nothing of the kind, no amorous addresses, no trepidations, no laments.  They look upon the Redeemer less as the Victim to be wept over than as the Mediator, the Friend, the Elder Brother.  To them He was, to quote Origen’s words, ’The Bridge between us and the Father.’

“These tendencies, transplanted from Africa to Europe, were preserved by the first monks of the West, who followed the example of their predecessors, and modified and built their churches on the same pattern.

“That repentance, contrition, and awe dwell under these dark vaults, among these heavy pillars, in this fortress, as it were, where the elect shut themselves in to resist the assaults of the world, is quite certain—­but this mystical Romanseque also suggests the notion of a sturdy faith, of manly patience, and stalwart piety—­like its walls.

“It has not the flaming raptures of the mystical Gothic, which finds utterance in all these soaring shafts of stone; the Romanesque lives self-centred, in reserved fervour, brooding in the depths of the soul.  It may be summed up in this saying of Saint Isaac’s:  In mansuetudine et in tranquillitate, simplifica animam tuam.’”