"In point of fact," said Durtal to himself as he stood dreaming on the
market-place, "no one exactly knows what was the origin of the Gothic
forms of a cathedral. Archæologists and architects have exhausted
hypotheses and systems in vain; they seem to agree in attributing the
Romanesque to Oriental parentage, and that in fact maybe proven. That
the Romanesque should be an offshoot of the Latin and Byzantine styles,
and be, as Quicherat defines it, 'the style which has ceased to be Roman
and is not yet Gothic, though it already has something of the Gothic,' I
am ready to admit; and indeed, on examining the capitals, and studying
their outline and drawing, we perceive that they are Assyrian or Persian
rather than Roman or Byzantine and Gothic; but as to discovering the
paternity even of the pointed and flamboyant styles, that is quite
another thing. Some writers assert that the pointed arch based on an
equilateral triangle existed in Egypt, Syria, and Persia; others regard
it as descended from Saracen and Arab art; nothing certainly is
provable.
"Again, it must be clearly stated that the pointed equilateral arch,
which some persons still suppose to be the distinctive characteristic of
an era in architecture, is not so in fact, as Quicherat has very clearly
demonstrated, and, since him, Lecoy de la Marche. The study of archives
has, on this point, completely overset the hobbies of architects, and
demolished the twaddle of the Bonzes. Besides, there is abundant
evidence of the employment of the pointed arch side by side with the
round arch in a perfectly systematic design, in the construction of many
Romanesque churches; in the Cathedrals of Avignon and Fréjus, in Notre
Dame at Aries, in Saint Front at Périgueux, at Saint Martin d'Ainay, at
Lyon, in Saint Martin des Champs in Paris, in Saint Etienne at Beauvais,
in the Cathedral of Le Mans; and in Burgundy, at Vézelay, at Beaune, in
Saint Philibert at Dijon, at La Charité-sur-Loire, in Saint Ladre at
Autun, and in most of the basilicas erected by the monastic school of
Cluny.
"Still, all this throws no light on the lineage of the Gothic, which
remains obscure--possibly because it is perfectly clear; setting aside
the theory which restricts itself to discerning in this question a
merely material and technical problem of stability and resistance,
solved by monks who discovered one fine day that the strength of their
roofs would be increased by the adoption of the mitre-shaped vaulting of
the pointed arch instead of the semicircular arch, would it not seem
that the romantic hypothesis--Chateaubriand's explanation--which was so
much laughed at, and which is nevertheless the simplest and the most
natural, may really be the most obvious and the true one?
"To me," thought Durtal, "it is almost certain that it was in the forest
that man found the prototype of the nave and the pointed arch. The most
amazing cathedral constructed by Nature herself, with lavish outlay of
the pointed aisle of branches, is at Jumièges. There, close to the
splendid ruins of the Abbey, where the two towers are still intact,
while the roofless nave, carpeted with flowers, ends in a chancel of
foliage shut in by an apse of trees, three vast aisles of centenary
boles extend in parallel lines; one in the middle, very wide, the two
others, one on each side, somewhat narrower; they exactly represent a
church nave with its two side aisles, upheld by black columns and roofed
with verdure. The ribs of the arches are accurately represented by the
branches which meet above, as the columns which support them are
simulated by the great shafts. It must be seen in winter, with the
groining outlined and powdered with snow, and the pillars as white as
the trunks of birch-trees, to understand the primitive idea, the seed of
art which could give rise in the mind of an architect to the conception
of similar arcades, and lead to the gradual refining of the Romanesque
till the pointed arch had entirely superseded the round.
"And there is not a park, whether older or more recent than the groves
of Jumièges, which does not exhibit the same forms with equal
exactitude; but what Nature could not give was the prodigious art, the
deep symbolical knowledge, the over-strung but tranquil mysticism of the
believers who erected cathedrals. But for them the church in its
rough-hewn state, as Nature had formed it, was but a soulless thing, a
sketch, rudimentary; the embryo only of a basilica, varying with the
seasons and the days, at once living and inert, awaking only to the
roaring organ of the wind, the swaying roof of boughs wrung with the
slightest breath; it was lax and often sullen; the yielding victim of
the breeze, the resigned slave of the rain; it was lighted only by the
sunshine that filtered between the diamond and heart-shaped leaves, as
if through the meshes of a green network. Man's genius collected the
scattered gleams, condensed them in roses and broad blades, to pour it
into his avenues of white shafts; and even in the darkest weather the
glass was splendid, catching the very last rays of sunset, dressing
Christ and the Virgin in the most fabulous magnificence, and almost
realizing on earth the only attire that beseems the glorified Body, a
robe of mingled flame.
"Really, when you come to think of it, a cathedral is a superhuman
thing!
"Starting in our lands from the old Roman crypt, from the vault, crushed
like the soul by humility and fear, and bowed before the infinite
Majesty whose praise they hardly dared to sing, the churches gradually
waxed bolder; they gave an upward spring to the semicircular arch,
lengthening it to an almond shape, leaping from the earth, uplifting
roofs, heightening naves, breaking out into a thousand sculptured forms
all round the choir, and flinging heavenward, like prayers, their
rapturous piles of stones! They symbolized the loving tenderness of
orisons; they became more trusting, more playful, more daring in the
sight of God.
"Each and all seemed to smile, as soon as they gave up their dismal
skeleton and strove upwards.
"The Romanesque, I fancy, must have been born old," Durtal went on after
a pause. "At any rate it has always remained gloomy and timid.
"Although at Jumièges, for instance, it has attained grandiose
dimensions with its enormous span opening like a vast portal to the sky,
it still is depressing. The semicircular arch, in fact, bends to the
earth, for it has not the point, soaring upwards, of the lancet arch.
"Oh! to think of the tears, the dolorous murmurs of those thick
partitions, those smoky vaults, those arches resting on squat pillars,
those almost speechless blocks of stone, those sober ornaments
expressing their symbolism so curtly! The Romanesque is the La Trappe of
architecture; we find it sheltering the austerest Orders, the sternest
Brotherhoods, kneeling in ashes, and chanting in an undertone with bowed
heads none but penitential Psalms. These massive cellars speak of the
fear of sin, but also of the dread of a God whose wrath could only be
appeased by the Advent of the Son. The Romanesque seems to have
preserved from its Oriental origin an element antedating the Birth of
Christ; prayer seems to rise there to the implacable Adonaï rather than
to the pitying Infant, the gentle Mother. The Gothic, on the contrary,
is less timid, more captivated by the two other Persons and the Virgin;
it is the home of less rigorous and more artistic Orders. Bowed
shoulders are straightened, downcast eyes are raised, sepulchral voices
become seraphic. It is, in fact, the expansion of the spirit, while the
Romanesque symbolizes its repression. At least, to me, that is the
interpretation of these styles," Durtal repeated to himself.
"Nor is that all," he went on. "Yet another distinction may be deduced
from these observations.
"The Romanesque is allegorical of the Old Testament, as the Gothic is of
the New.
"The parallel, when you consider it, is exact. Is not the Bible--the
inflexible Book of Jehovah, the awful Code of the Father, well expressed
by the stern and penitential Romanesque; and the consoling, tender
Gospel by the Gothic, full of effusiveness and invitation, full of
humble hope?
"If the symbols are these, it would seem that time very often plays the
part of man's purpose in evolving the completed idea and uniting the two
styles, as, in Holy Scripture, the two Books are united; thus certain
cathedrals present a very curious result. Some, austere at their birth,
are cheerful and even smiling as they are completed. All that is left
of the old Abbey church of Cluny is from this point of view a typical
instance. This, next to that of Paray-le-Monial, which remains entire,
is undoubtedly one of the most magnificent examples of the Burgundian
Romanesque, which, with its fluted pilasters, unfortunately betrays the
distressing tradition of Greek art imported into France by the Romans.
Still, allowing that these basilicas--which may have been built between
the eleventh and thirteenth centuries--are purely Romanesque, as
Quicherat opines, mentioning them as examples, their structure is
already of a mingled type, and the joyousness of the vaulted arch is
already to be seen there.
"Nor have we here, as at Notre Dame la Grande at Poitiers, a Romanesque
façade, minutely elaborate, flanked at each wing by a low tower
supporting a heavy stone spire cut into facets, like a pine-apple. At
Paray there is none of the puerile ornament and heavy richness that we
see at Poitiers. The barbaric dress of the little toy church of Notre
Dame la Grande gives way to the winding-sheet of a flat wall, but the
exterior is none the less remarkably impressive with its solemn
simplicity of outline. And those two square towers, pierced with narrow
windows and overlooked by a round tower resting so calmly, so firmly on
an open arcade of columns joined by round arches, are a belfry at once
dignified and rustic, spirited and strong.
"And the august simplicity of the exterior is repeated in the interior
of the church.
"Here, however, the Romanesque has already lost its crushed, crypt-like
character, its obscure aspect as of a Persian cellar. The strong
structural lines are the same; the capitals still display the
inflorescence of Mussulman involutions, the fabulous entanglements of
Assyrian patterns, reminiscences of Asiatic art transplanted to our
soil; but we already see the union of dissimilar bays; columns struggle
upwards, pillars are taller, the wide arches are less rigid, and have a
lighter and longer trajectory; and the plain walls, enormous but already
light, are pierced at prodigious heights with holes admitting the day.
"At Paray the round arch is to be seen in harmony with the pointed arch
which appears in the higher summits of the structure, announcing the
advent of a less plaintive phase of the soul, a tenderer and less harsh
idea of Christ, who is preparing, and already revealing, the Mother's
indulgent smile.
"But then," said Durtal, suddenly, to himself, "if my theories are
correct, the architecture which could, by itself alone, symbolize
Catholicism as a whole, and represent the complete Bible in both
Testaments, must be either Romanesque with the pointed arch, or a
transition style, half Romanesque and half Gothic.
"The deuce!" thought he, thus led to an unforeseen conclusion. "To be
sure, it is not necessary perhaps that the church itself should offer so
complete a parallel, or that the Old and New Testaments should be bound
up in one volume; here, indeed, at Chartres the work, though integral,
is in two separate volumes, since the crypt on which the Gothic church
rests is Romanesque. Nay, it is thus even more symbolical, and it
emphasizes the idea of the windows in which the prophets bear on their
shoulders the four Evangelists; once more the Old Testament appears as
the base, the foundation of the New.
"What a fulcrum for dreams is this Romanesque!" Durtal went on. "Is it
not also the smoke-stained shrine, the gloomy retreat, constructed for
black Virgins? This seems all the less doubtful because all the
Mauresque Virgins are thick-set and heavy; they are not sylphs, like the
fair Virgins of Gothic art. The Byzantine School conceived of Mary as
swarthy, 'of the hue of polished brown ebony,' as the old historians
say; only, in opposition to the text in Canticles, it painted or carved
Her as black, indeed, but not comely. Thus figured, She is truly a
gloomy Virgin, eternally sorrowing, in harmony with the Romanesque
catacombs. Her presence naturally beseems the crypt of Chartres; but in
the Cathedral itself, on the pillar where She stands to this day, does
She not appear strange? For She is not in Her true home under the
soaring white vault."
"Well, our friend, you are dreaming!"
Durtal started like a man roused from sleep.
"Ah! It is you, Madame Bavoil?"
"To be sure. I am going home from market, and from your lodgings."
"From my lodgings?"
"Yes, to invite you to breakfast. The Abbé Plomb's housekeeper is to be
out this afternoon, so he is coming to take his morning meal with us;
and the Father thought it would be a good opportunity to make you
acquainted."
"I am much obliged to him; but I must go home and tell Mother Mesurat,
that she may not cook my cutlet."
"You need not do that, as I have just come from her; not finding you, I
left word and told Madame Mesurat. Are you still satisfied with her?"
"Once upon a time," said he, laughing, "I had, to manage my house in
Paris, one Sieur Rateau, a drunkard of the first class, who turned
everything upside down, and led the furniture a life! Now I have this
worthy woman, who sets to work on a different system, but the results
are identically the same. She works by persuasion and gentle means; she
does not overthrow the furniture, or bellow as she turns the mattress,
or rush at the wall with a broom as if she were charging with fixed
bayonet; no, she quietly collects the dust and stirs it round and ends
by piling it in little heaps that she hides in the corners of the rooms;
she does not rummage the bed, but restricts herself to patting it with
the tip of her fingers, stroking the creases out of the sheets, puffing
up the pillows and coaxing them out of their hollows. The man turned
everything topsy-turvy; she moves nothing."
"Well, well; but she is a good woman!"
"Yes, and in spite of it all, I am glad to have her."
As they talked they had reached the entrance to the Bishop's residence.
They went through a little gate by the lodge into a large forecourt
strewn with small river pebbles, in front of a vast building of the
seventeenth century. There were no flowers of stone-work, no sculpture,
no decorative doorways--nothing but a frontage of shabby brick and
stone, a bare, uninviting structure evidently neglected, with tall
windows, behind which the shutters could be seen, painted grey. The
entrance was on the level of the first floor; double outside steps led
up to the door, and under the landing, in the arch below, there was a
glass door, through which, framed in the square, could be seen the
trunks of trees beyond.
This courtyard was bordered with tall poplars, which the late Bishop,
who had frequented the Tuileries, used to speak of with a smile as his
hundred guards.
Madame Bavoil and Durtal crossed this forecourt, sloping to the left
towards a wing of the building, roofed with slate.
There, on the first floor, with only a loft above lighted by round
dormers, lived the Abbé Gévresin.
They went up a narrow staircase with a rusty iron balustrade. The walls
were trickling with damp, they secreted drops, distilled spots like
black coffee; the steps were worn hollow, and thin at the ends like
spoons; they led up to a door smeared yellow, with a cast-iron knob as
black as ink. A copper ring swung in the wind at the end of a bell-rope,
knocking the chipped plaster of the wall. An indescribable smell of
stale apples and stagnant water came up the middle of the staircase from
the little outer hall below, which was paved with rows of bricks set on
edge, eaten into patterns like madrepores, while the ceiling looked like
a map, furrowed with seas that were traced in yellow by the soaking
through of the rain.
And the Abbé's little apartment, lately "done up" with a vile
red-checked paper, reeked of the tomb. It was evident that under the
shadow of the Cathedral that overhung this wing no sunshine ever dried
the walls, of which the skirting boards were rotting into powder like
brown sugar, crumbling slowly, on the icy cold polish of the floor.
"How sad to see an old man, a victim to rheumatism, housed here!"
thought Durtal.
When he went into the Abbé's room, he found the chill somewhat taken off
by a large coke fire; the priest was reading his breviary, wrapped in a
wadded gown, close to the window, of which he had drawn back the blind
to see a little better.
This room was furnished with a small iron bedstead hung with white
cotton curtains looped back by bands of red cretonne; opposite the bed
were a table covered with a cloth, and on it a desk, and a prie-dieu
below a Crucifix nailed to the wall; the remainder of the room was
fitted with bookshelves up to the ceiling. Three arm-chairs, such as are
nowhere to be seen nowadays but in religious houses or seminaries, made
of walnut wood with straw bottoms like church chairs, were set round the
table, and two more, with round rush mats for the feet, stood one on
each side of the fireplace. On the chimney-shelf was an Empire clock
between two vases, and from these rose the faded stems of some dried
grasses stuck upright into sand.
"Come to the fire," said the Abbé, "for in spite of the brazier it is
fearfully cold."
And in answer to Durtal, who spoke of his rheumatism, he resignedly
shrugged his shoulders.
"All the residence is the same," said he. "Monseigneur, who is almost a
cripple, could not find a single dry room in the whole palace. Heaven
forgive me, but I believe his rooms are even damper than mine. In point
of fact there ought to be hot-air pipes all over the place, and it will
never be done for lack of money."
"But at any rate Monseigneur might have stoves put into the rooms, here
and there."
"He!" cried the Abbé, laughing, "but he has no private means whatever.
He draws a stipend of ten thousand francs a year and not another penny;
for there is no endowment at Chartres, and the revenue from the fees on
the ecclesiastical Acts is nothing. In this rich, but irreligious town
he can hope for no assistance; the gardener and porter are paid by him;
he is obliged for economy's sake to employ Sisters from a convent as
cook and linen-keeper. Add to that his inability to keep a carriage, so
that he has to hire a conveyance for his pastoral rounds. And how much
then do you suppose he has left to live on, if you deduct his charities?
Why, he is poorer than you or I!"
"But then Chartres is the fag end of Church preferment, a mere raft for
the shipwrecked and starving."
"Thou hast said! Bishop, canons, priests, everybody here is
poverty-stricken."
The bell rang, and Madame Bavoil showed in the Abbé Plomb. Durtal
recognized him. He looked even more scared than usual; he bowed, backing
away, and did not know what to do with his hands, which he buried in his
sleeves.
By the end of half an hour, when he was more at his ease, he expanded
into smiles, and at last he talked; Durtal, much surprised, saw that the
Abbé Gévresin was right. This priest was highly intelligent and
well-informed, and what made the man even more attractive was his
perfect freedom from the want of breeding, the narrow ideas, the goody
nonsense which make intercourse so difficult with the ecclesiastics in
literary circles.
They had settled themselves in the dining-room, as dismal a room as the
rest, but warmer, for an earthenware stove was roaring and puffing hot
gusts from its open ventilators.
When they had eaten their boiled eggs, the conversation, hitherto
discursive as to subject, turned on the Cathedral.
"It is the fifth erection over a Druidical cave," said the Abbé Plomb.
"It has a strange history.
"The first, built at the time of the Apostles by Bishop Aventinus, was
razed to the ground. Rebuilt by another Bishop named Castor, it was
partly burnt down by Hunaldus Duke of Aquitaine, then restored by
Godessaldus; again injured by fire, by Hastings, the Norman chief;
repaired once more by Gislebert, and finally destroyed utterly by
Richard Duke of Normandy when he sacked the city after the siege.
"We have no very authentic records of these two basilicas; at most are
we certain that the Roman Governor of the land of Chartres completely
destroyed the first and at the same time slaughtered a great number of
Christians, among them his own daughter Modesta, throwing the corpses
into a well dug near the cave, and thence known as _le Puits des Saints
Forts_.
"A third fabric, built by Bishop Vulphardus, was burnt down in 1020,
when Fulbert was Bishop, and he founded the fourth Cathedral. This was
blasted by lightning in 1194; nothing remained but the two belfries and
the crypt.
"The fifth structure, finally, built in the reign of Philippe Auguste,
when Régnault de Mouçon was Bishop of Chartres, is that we still see; it
was consecrated on the 17th of October, 1260, in the presence of Saint
Louis. This again has passed through the fire. In 1506 the northern
spire was struck by lightning; the structure was of wood covered with
lead; a terrific storm raged from six in the evening till four in the
morning, fanning the fire to such violence that the six bells were
melted like cakes of wax. The flames were, however kept within limits,
and the church was refitted. But the scourge returned many times; in
1539, in 1573, and in 1589 lightning fell on the new belfry. Then a
century elapsed before the visitation was repeated; in 1701 the same
spire was struck again.
"It then stood uninjured till 1825, when a thunder-bolt fell and shook
it severely on Whit Monday while the _Magnificat_ was being chanted at
Vespers.
"Finally, on the 4th of June, 1836, a tremendous fire broke out, caused
by the carelessness of two plumbers working under the roof. It lasted
eleven hours, and destroyed all the timbers, the whole forest that
supported the roof; it was by a miracle that the church was not entirely
consumed in this fury of fire."
"You must allow, Monsieur, that there is something strange in this
disaster without respite."
"Yes, and what is still more strange," said the Abbé Gévresin, "Is the
persistency of fire from heaven, bent on destroying it."
"How do you account for that?" asked Durtal.
"Sébastien Rouillard, the author of _Parthénie_, believes that these
visitations were permitted as a punishment for certain sins, and he
insinuates that the conflagration of the third Cathedral was justified
by the misconduct of some pilgrims who at that time slept in the nave,
men and women together. Others believe that the Devil, who can command
the lightning, was bent on suppressing this sanctuary at any cost."
"But why, then, did not the Virgin protect Her particular church more
effectually?"
"You may observe that She has several times preserved it from being
utterly reduced to cinders; however, it is, all the same, very strange
when we remember that Chartres is the first place where the Virgin was
worshipped in France. It goes back to Messianic times, for, long before
Joachim's daughter was born, the Druids had erected, in the cave which
has become our crypt, an altar to the Virgin who should bear a
child--_Virgini Pariturae_. They, by a sort of grace, had intuitive
foreknowledge of a Saviour whose Mother should be spotless; thus it
would seem that at Chartres, above all places, there are very ancient
bonds of affection with Mary. This makes it very natural that Satan
should be bent on breaking them."
"Do you know," said Durtal, "that this grotto is prefigured in the Old
Testament by a human structure of almost official character? In her
"Life of Our Lord," that exquisite visionary, Catherine Emmerich, tells
us that there was, hard by Mount Carmel, a grotto with a well, near
which Elias saw a Virgin; and it was to this spot, she says, that the
Jews who expected the Advent of the Redeemer made pilgrimages many times
a year.
"Is not this the prototype of the cave of Chartres and the well of the
Strong Saints?
"Observe, too, on the other hand, the tendency of the thunder to fall,
not on the old belfry, but on the new one. No meteorological reason, I
suppose, can account for this preference; but on carefully considering
the two spires, I am struck by the delicate foliage, the slender
lacework of the new spire, the elegant and coquettish grace of the whole
of that side. The other, on the contrary, has no ornament, no carved
tracery; it is simply carved in scallops like scale armour; it is sober,
stern, stalwart and strong. It might really almost be thought that one
is female and the other of the male sex. And then might we not conclude
that the first is symbolical of the Virgin and the second of Her Son? In
that case my inference would be akin to that offered to us by Monsieur
l'Abbé: the fires are to be ascribed to Satan, who would wreak himself
on the image of Her who has the power to crush his head."
"Pray have a slice of beef, our friend," said Madame Bavoil, coming in
with a bottle in her hands.
"No, thank you."
"And you, Monsieur l'Abbé?"
The Abbé Plomb bowed, but declined.
"Why, you eat nothing!"
"What! I? I may even confess that I am rather ashamed of having eaten so
heartily, after reading this morning the life of Saint Laurence of
Dublin, who, by way of food, was content to dip his bread in the water
clothes had been washed in."
"Why?"
"Well, in order to be able to say with the Prophet-King that he fed on
ashes--since ashes are used for lye; that is a penitential banquet which
is very unlike that we have just consumed," he added, laughing.
"Well, my dear Madame Bavoil, that puts even you to shame," said the
Abbé Gévresin. "You are not yet covetous of so meagre a feast; you are
really quite dainty! You must have milk or water to dip your sop in!"
"Dear me," said Durtal, "by way of high feeding I can improve on that. I
remember reading in an old book the story of the Blessed Catherine of
Cardona, who, without using her hands, cropped the grass, on her knees,
among the asses."
It had not struck Madame Bavoil that the friends were speaking in fun,
and she replied quite humbly,--
"God Almighty has never yet required me to strew my bread with ashes or
to graze the field--if He should give me the order, I should certainly
obey it.--But it does not matter."
And she was so far from enthusiastic that they all laughed.
"Then the Cathedral as a whole," said the Abbé Gévresin after a short
silence, "dates from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, excepting, of
course, the new spire and numerous details."
"Yes."
"And the names of the architects are unknown?"
"As are those of almost all the builders of great churches," replied the
Abbé Plomb. "It may, however, be safely assumed that during the twelfth
and thirteenth centuries the Benedictines of the Abbey of Tiron directed
the building of our church, for that monastery had established a House
at Chartres in 1117; we also know that this convent contained more than
five hundred Brothers practising all the arts, and that sculptors,
image-makers, stone-cutters, or workers in pierced stone, were numerous.
It would therefore seem very natural that these monks sent to live at
Chartres were the men who drew the plans of Notre Dame, and employed the
horde of artists whom we see represented in one of the old windows of
the apse--men in furred caps shaped like a jelly bag, who are busily
carving and polishing the statues of kings.
"Their work was finished at the beginning of the sixteenth century by
Jehan Le Texier, known as Jehan de Beauce, who erected the northern
belfry, called the New Belfry, and the decorative work inside the
church, forming the niches for the groups on the walls of the
choir-aisles or ambulatory."
"And has no one ever been able to discover the name of any one of the
original architects, sculptors, or glass-makers of this Cathedral?"
"It has been the subject of much research, and I, personally, may say
that I have grudged neither time nor trouble, but all in vain.
"This much we know: At the top of the southern belfry, the Old Belfry as
it is called, near the window-bay looking towards the New Belfry, this
name was deciphered: 'Harman, 1164.' Is it that of an architect, of a
workman, or of a night watchman on the look-out at that time in the
tower? We can but wonder. Didron, again, discovered on the pilaster of
the eastern porch, above the head of a butcher slaughtering an ox, the
word 'Rogerus' in twelfth century characters. Was he the architect, the
sculptor, the donor of this porch--or the butcher? Another signature,
'Robir,' is to be seen on the pedestal of a statue in the north porch.
Who was Robir? None can say.
"Langlois, too, mentions a glass-worker of the thirteenth century,
Clément of Chartres, whose signature he found on a window of the
Cathedral at Rouen--_Clement Vitrearius Carnutensis_; but it is a wide
leap to infer, as some would do, that merely because this Clément was a
native of Chartres, he must have painted one or more of the glass
pictures in Notre Dame here. And at any rate we have no information as
to his life or his works in this city. It may also be remarked that on a
pane in our church we read _Petrus Bal ...;_ is this the name, complete
or defaced, of a donor or of a painter? Once more we must confess
ourselves ignorant.
"If I add to this that two of Jehan de Beauce's colleagues have been
traced: Thomas Le Vasseur, who assisted him in the building of the new
spire, and one Sieur Bernier, whose name occurs in ancient accounts;
that from some old contracts, discovered by Monsieur Lecoq, we know that
Jehan Soulas, image-maker, of Paris, carved the finest of the groups
that are the glory of the choir-aisles, and can verify the names of
other sculptors who succeeded this admirable artist, but who are less
interesting, since with them pagan art reappears and mediocrity is
evident: François Marchant, image-maker, of Orleans, and Nicolas
Guybert, of Chartres--we have mentioned almost all the records worthy of
preservation as to the great artists who laboured at Chartres from the
twelfth till the close of the first half of the fifteenth century."
"And after that period the names that have been handed down to us
deserve nothing but execration. Thomas Boudin, Legros, Jean de Dieu,
Berruer, Tuby, Simon Mazières--these were the men that dared to carry on
the work begun by Soulas! Louis, the Duc d'Orléans' architect, who
debased and ravaged the choir, and the infamous Bridan, who, to the
contemptible delight of some of the Canons, erected his blatant and
wretched presentment of the Assumption!"
"Alas!" said the Abbé Gévresin, "and they were Canons who thought fit to
break two ancient windows in the choir and fill them with white panes,
the better to light that group of Bridan's!"
"Will you eat nothing more?" asked Madame Bavoil, who, at a negative
from the guests, cleared away the cheese and preserves, and brought in
coffee.
"Since you are so much charmed by our Cathedral, I shall be most happy
to take you over it and explain its details," said the Abbé Plomb to
Durtal.
"I shall accept with pleasure, Monsieur l'Abbé, for it fairly haunts me,
it possesses me--your Notre Dame! You know, no doubt, Quicherat's
theories of Gothic art?"
"Yes, and I believe them to be correct. Like him, I am convinced that if
the essential character of the Romanesque is the substitution of the
vaulted roof for the truss, the distinctive element and principle of the
Gothic is the buttress, and not the pointed arch.
"I reserve my opinion, indeed, as to the accuracy of Quicherat's
declaration that 'the history of architecture in the middle ages is no
more than the history of the struggle of architects against the thrust
and weight of vaulting,' for there is something in this art beyond
material industry and a problem of practice; at the same time he is
certainly right on almost every point.
"It may be added as a general principle, that in our use of the terms
Ogee and Gothic, we are misapplying words which have lost their original
meaning; since the Goths have nothing to do with the style of
architecture which has taken their name, and the word ogee or ogyve,
which strictly means the semicircular form, is inaccurate as applied to
the arch with a double curve, which has for so long been regarded as the
basis, nay, as the characteristic stamp of a style."[1]
"After all," the Abbé 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, "archæology 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 Abbé Gévresin.
"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.
"Look at Amiens, again, with its colourless windows and crude daylight,
its chapels enclosed behind tall railings, its silence rarely broken by
prayer, its solitude. There too is emptiness; and why I know not, but to
me the place exhales a stale odour of Jansenism. I am not at large
there, and prayer is difficult; and yet the nave is magnificent, and the
sculptures in the ambulatory, finer even than those of Chartres, may be
pronounced unique.
"But here, too, the soul is absent.
"It is the same with the Cathedral of Laon--bare, ice-bound, dead past
hope; while some are in an intermediate state, dying, but not yet cold:
Reims, Rouen, Dijon, Tours, and Le Mans for instance; even in these
there is some refreshment; and Bourges, with its five porches opening on
a long perspective of aisles, and its vast deserted spaces; or Beauvais,
a melancholy fragment, having no more than a head and arms flung out in
despair like an appeal for ever ignored by Heaven, have still preserved
some of the aroma of olden days. Meditation is possible there; but
nowhere, nowhere is there such comfort as there is here, nowhere is
prayer so fervent as at Chartres!"
"Those are heaven-sent words!" cried Madame Bavoil. "And you shall have
a glass of old black currant liqueur for your pains! Yes, indeed, he is
quite right--our friend is right," she went on, addressing the priests,
who laughed. "Everywhere else, excepting at Notre Dame des Victoires in
Paris and, more especially, Notre Dame de Fourvière at Lyon, when you go
to meet Her, you wait and wait; and often enough She does not come.
Whereas in our Cathedral She receives you at once, just as She is. And I
have told him, told our friend, that he should attend the first morning
Mass in the crypt, and he will see what a welcome our Mother gives her
visitors."
"Chartres is a marvellous place," said the Abbé Gévresin, "with its two
black Madonnas--Notre Dame of the Pillar, above in the body of the
church, and Notre Dame de Sous-Terre below, in the vault over which the
basilica is built. No other sanctuary, I believe, possesses the
miraculous images of Mary, to say nothing of the antique relic known as
the Shift or Tunic of the Virgin."
"And what in your opinion constitutes the soul of Chartres?" asked the
Abbé Plomb.
"Certainly not the souls of the citizens' wives and the church servants
that are poured out there," replied Durtal. "No, its vitality comes from
the Sisterhoods, the peasant women, the pious schools, the pupils of the
Seminary, and perhaps more especially from the children of the choir,
who crowd to kiss the Pillar and kneel before the Black Virgin. As for
the devotion of the respectable classes! It would scare away the
angels!"
"With a few rare exceptions the fine flower of female Pharisaism is no
doubt the outcome of that class," said the Abbé Plomb, and he added in a
half jesting, half sorrowful tone,--
"And I, here at Chartres, am the distressful gardener of these souls!"
"To return to our starting point," said the Abbé Gévresin: "what was the
birthplace of the Gothic?"
"France: so Lecoy de la Marche emphatically asserts. 'The buttress made
its appearance as the essential basis of a style in the early years of
Louis le Gros, in the district lying between the Seine and the Aisne.'
In his opinion the first practice of this form was in the Cathedral of
Laon; other authorities regard it as merely supplementary to earlier
basilicas, instancing Saint-Front at Périgueux, Vézelay, Saint-Denis,
Noyon, and the ancient college chapel at Poissy; but no two agree. One
thing is certain, Gothic art is the art of the North; it made its way
into Normandy, and from thence into England. Then it spread to the Rhine
in the twelfth century, and to Spain by the beginning of the thirteenth.
Gothic churches in the South are but an importation, evidently
ill-assorted with the men and women who frequent them, and the merciless
blue sky which spoils them."
"And observe," said Durtal, "that in our country that aspect of
mysticism is discordant with the rest."
"How is that?"
"Well, you see, in the distribution of the sacred arts France received
architecture only. Consider the pre-Raphaelite painters. All the early
painters were Italians, Spaniards, Flemings, or Germans. Those whom some
writers try to represent as our fellow-countrymen are Flemings
transplanted to Burgundy, or docile Frenchmen whose imitative work bears
an unmistakable Flemish stamp. Look in the Louvre at our primitive
artists; look at Dijon, especially at what remains from the time when
northern art was introduced by Philippe le Hardi into his own province.
It is impossible to feel a doubt. Everything came from Flanders--Jean
Perréal, Bourdichon, even Fouquet are whatever you please, only not the
inventors of an original Gallic art.
"It is the same with the mystic writers. Of what use would it be to
mention the nationalities to which they belong? They too are Spanish,
Italian, German, Flemish--not one is French."
"I beg your pardon, our friend!" cried Madame Bavoil, "there was the
Venerable Jeanne de Matel, who was born at Roanne."
"Yes, but she was the daughter of an Italian father who was born at
Florence," said the Abbé Gévresin, who, hearing the bell ring for Nones,
now folded up his table napkin. They all stood up and said grace, and
Durtal made an appointment with the Abbé Plomb to visit the Cathedral.
Then he went home, meditating, as he walked, on this strange division of
art in the middle ages, and the supremacy given to France in
architecture, when as yet she was so inferior in every other art.
"And it must be owned," he concluded, "that she has now lost this
superiority; for it is long indeed since she produced an architect. The
men who assume the name are mere thieving bunglers, builders devoid of
all individuality and learning. They are not even able to pilfer
skilfully from their precursors. What are they nowadays? Patchers up of
chapels, church cobblers, botchers and blunderers!"
[1] The English use of the word Ogee is thus defined: "An arch
or moulding which displays sectionally contrasted curves similar
to that of the _cyma reversa_." FAIRHOLT, "Dict. of Terms used in
Art;" and PARKER, "A Concise Glossary of Terms used in
Architecture."--[_Translator_.]