All this seems to be simple enough, at least to the people for whom the nave was built, and to whom the windows were meant to speak.  There is nothing esoteric here; nothing but what might have suited the great hall of a great palace.  There is no difference in taste between the Virgin in the choir, and the Water-Carriers by the doorway.  Blanche, the young Queen, liked the same colours, legends, and lines that her Grocers and Bakers liked.  All equally loved the Virgin.  There was not even a social difference.  In the choir, Thibaut, the Count of Chartres, immediate lord of the province, let himself be put in a dark corner next the Belle Verriere, and left the Bakers to display their wealth in the most serious spot in the church, the central window of the central chapel, while in the nave and transepts all the lower windows that bear signatures were given by trades, as though that part of the church were abandoned to the commons.  One might suppose that the feudal aristocracy would have fortified itself in the clerestory and upper windows, but even there the bourgeoisie invaded them, and you can see, with a glass, the Pastrycooks and Turners looking across at the Weavers and Curriers and Money-Changers, and the “Men of Tours.”  Beneath the throne of the Mother of God, there was no distinction of gifts; and above it the distinction favoured the commonalty.

Of the seven immense windows above and around the high altar, which are designed as one composition, none was given by a prince or a noble.  The Drapers, the Butchers, the Bakers, the Bankers are charged with the highest duties attached to the Virgin’s service.  Apparently neither Saint Louis, nor his father Louis VIII, nor his mother Blanche, nor his uncle Philippe Hurepel, nor his cousin Saint Ferdinand of Castile, nor his other cousin Pierre de Dreux, nor the Duchess Alix of Brittany, cared whether their portraits or armorial shields were thrust out of sight into corners by Pastrycooks and Teamsters, or took a whole wall of the church to themselves.  The only relation that connects them is their common relation to the Virgin, but that is emphatic, and dominates the whole.

It dominates us, too, if we reflect on it, even after seven hundred years that its meaning has faded.  When one looks up to this display of splendour in the clerestory, and asks what was in the minds of the people who joined to produce, with such immense effort and at such self-sacrifice, this astonishing effect, the question seems to answer itself like an echo.  With only half of an atrophied imagination, in a happy mood we could still see the nave and transepts filled with ten thousand people on their knees, and the Virgin, crowned and robed, seating herself on the embroidered cushion that covered her imperial throne; sparkling with gems; bearing in her right hand the sceptre, and in her lap the infant King; but, in the act of seating herself, we should see her pause a moment to look down with love and sympathy