Beneath the rose are five long windows, very unlike the twelfth-century pendants to the western rose.  These five windows blaze with red, and their splendour throws the Virgin above quite into the background.  The artists, who felt that the twelfth-century glass was too fine and too delicate for the new scale of the church, have not only enlarged their scale and coarsened their design, but have coarsened their colour-scheme also, discarding blue in order to crush us under the earthly majesty of red.  These windows, too, bear the stamp and seal of Blanche’s Spanish temper as energetically as though they bore her portrait.  The great central figure, the tallest and most commanding in the whole church, is not the Virgin, but her mother Saint Anne, standing erect as on the trumeau of the door beneath, and holding the infant Mary on her left arm.  She wears no royal crown, but bears a flowered sceptre.  The only other difference between Mary and her mother, that seems intended to strike attention, is that Mary sits, while her mother stands; but as though to proclaim still more distinctly that France supports the royal and divine pretensions of Saint Anne, Queen Blanche has put beneath the figure a great shield blazoned with the golden lilies on an azure ground.

With singular insistence on this motive, Saint Anne has at either hand a royal court of her own, marked as her own by containing only figures from the Old Testament.  Standing next on her right is Solomon, her Prime Minister, bringing wisdom in worldly counsel, and trampling on human folly.  Beyond Wisdom stands Law, figured by Aaron with the Book, trampling on the lawless Pharaoh.  Opposite them, on Saint Anne’s left, is David, the energy of State, trampling on a Saul suggesting suspicions of a Saul de Dreux; while last, Melchisedec who is Faith, tramples on a disobedient Nebuchadnezzar Mauclerc.

How can we, the common people, help seeing all this, and much more, when we know that Pierre de Dreux has been for years in constant strife with the Crown and the Church?  He is very valiant and lion-hearted;—­so say the chroniclers, priests though they are;—­very skilful and experienced in war whether by land or sea; very adroit, with more sense than any other great lord in France; but restless, factious, and regardless of his word.  Brave and bold as the day; full of courtesy and “largesse”; but very hard on the clergy; a good Christian but a bad churchman!  Certainly the first man of his time, says Michelet!  “I have never found any that sought to do me more ill than he,” says Blanche, and Joinville gives her very words; indeed, this year, 1230, she has summoned our own Bishop of Chartres among others to Paris in a court of peers, where Pierre has been found guilty of treason and deposed.  War still continues, but Pierre must make submission.  Blanche has beaten him in politics and in the field!  Let us look round and see how he fares in theology and art!