M. Huysmans insists that this sculpture is poor in comparison with his twelfth-century Prodigal Daughter, and I hope you can enter into the spirit of his enthusiasm; but other people prefer the thirteenth-century work, and think it equals the best Greek.  Approaching, or surpassing this,—­as you like,—­is the sculpture you will see at Rheims, of the same period, and perhaps the same hands; but, for our purpose, the Queen of Sheba, here in the right-hand bay, is enough, because you can compare it on the spot with M. Huysmans’s figure on the western portal, which may also be a Queen of Sheba, who, as spouse of Solomon, typified the Church, and therefore prefigured Mary herself.  Both are types of Court beauty and grace, one from the twelfth century, the other from the thirteenth, and you can prefer which you please; but you want to bear in mind that each, in her time, pleased the Virgin.  You can even take for a settled fact that these were the types of feminine beauty and grace which pleased the Virgin beyond all others.

The purity of taste, feeling, and manners which stamps the art of these centuries, as it did the Court of Saint Louis and his mother, is something you will not wholly appreciate till you reach the depravity of the Valois; but still you can see how exquisite the Virgin’s taste was, and how pure.  You can also see how she shrank from the sight of pain.  Here, in the central bay, next to King David, who stands at her right hand, is the great figure of Abraham about to sacrifice Isaac.  If there is one subject more revolting than another to a woman who typifies the Mother, it is this subject of Abraham and Isaac, with its compound horror of masculine stupidity and brutality.  The sculptor has tried to make even this motive a pleasing one.  He has placed Abraham against the column in the correct harshness of attitude, with his face turned aside and up, listening for his orders; but the little Isaac, with hands and feet tied, leans like a bundle of sticks against his father’s knee with an expression of perfect faith and confidence, while Abraham’s left hand quiets him and caresses the boy’s face, with a movement that must have gone straight to Mary’s heart, for Isaac always prefigured Christ.

The glory of Mary was not one of terror, and her porch contains no appeal to any emotion but those of her perfect grace.  If we were to stay here for weeks, we should find only this idea worked into every detail.  The Virgin of the thirteenth century is no longer an Empress; she is Queen Mother,—­an idealized Blanche of Castile;—­too high to want, or suffer, or to revenge, or to aspire, but not too high to pity, to punish, or to pardon.  The women went to her porch for help as naturally as babies to their mother; and the men, in her presence, fell on their knees because they feared her intelligence and her anger.