When from the top of Clermont-Ferrand Cathedral we viewed the mountains
of the Puy-de-Dome range, it seemed not only that anyone planning a trip
across them would have a difficult climb, but that any idea of going by
train was an impossibility. Modern engineering skill, however, overcomes
all obstacles, stops at nothing, and the railway awaits our command to
take us over the mountains to Eymoutiers and Limoges. The grades are so
steep that no expresses are attempted and therefore we have before us a
tedious five-hour trip on a way train. The first and the last parts of
this journey are very delightful for the automobilist or bicyclist,
because of the views revealed from time to time by the windings of the
road. More than half the trip, however, is quite uninteresting, as the
way lies through clefts in the hills at too great an elevation for much
foliage or verdure. When we descend to the village of Eymoutiers on the
other side of the mountains, all the difficulties and tedium of our
climb will be forgotten. There the traveller will find a charming little
inn by the river, where he can have a delicious repast of trout from
the neighbouring mountain stream. He will be served on a cosy terrace,
which is sheltered from the sun by vines and cooled by a tinkling
fountain shooting into the air a slender spray of icy water. As a glass
shrine, Eymoutiers is one of the most delightful that our pilgrim will
meet on his travels and one to which his memory will often pleasantly
revert. He need not look about for a cathedral or for any great
religious edifice. Instead, he will find a quaint, oddly-shaped
church whose older western half is so dimly lighted by its few
deeply-embrasured windows as to provide an excellent foil for the
silvery light of the fourteen that illumine the eastern half. We
cannot properly call it the choir end, because the church seems to have
three choirs placed side by side, opening into each other, the central
one extending a little more to the east than its two sisters. At
the Ste. Chapelle in Paris we have observed that the deeply-hued
medallion windows of the thirteenth century were not suited to a small
interior--that their materials and construction required that they be
viewed from the greater distance afforded within a cathedral in order
to yield to the observer a properly combined glow from their warmth of
colour. On the other hand, at Eymoutiers, we shall learn that the canopy
window is as beautiful in its soft lighting of a small interior as at
Bourges it is appropriate in the lower windows of a great nave, or at
Quimper in its delicate illumination of a splendid clerestory. Before
we have been long in the little Eymoutiers church we shall begin to
notice that the later windows in the central eastern bay have much more
colour than the earlier ones in the right and left ones. In these two
side bays the figures have only one colour besides white in their
costumes, and but one also in the backgrounds; while on the other hand,
in the central bay the figures have never less than two colours in their
costumes; and further, that besides the one in their backgrounds, an
additional colour is there contributed by a curtain stretched across the
niches, shoulder-high, behind the figures. Then, too, these later
figures in the central bay have coloured halos, and the little ceilings
under the canopies beneath which they stand are brightly tinted. The
local authorities date the glazing of the central bay from the latter
part of the fifteenth century and that of the two side ones from the
middle. The difference in the colour schemes of the two sets confirms
this dating. This same marked difference in the number of colours exists
at Quimper, where the choir windows glazed in the first years of the
fifteenth century have but few tints, while, on the other hand, there
are many in those of the nave which date from the latter part of that
century. As accentuating this enrichment of the artist's palette which
the passage of time seemed to effect, it is noticeable that the early
tracery lightings of the two side bays are very light in tone, being
mostly white or some faint hue or yellow stain, while the later
traceries of the central bay contain deep reds and blues, etc. A close
examination of these windows repays us by revealing several quaint
manifestations of the strict adherence to tradition for which the
mediaeval glass artists are noted. Contemporary conventions demanded that
St. Christopher have a tessellated pavement as the floor of his canopy,
but the legend requires that he must stand in water, so we find not only
the pavement but also upon it a semi-circular pool of water in which the
saint stands. So, too, the Virgin Mary is poised upon a halfmoon-shaped
cloud, neatly balanced on the conventional pavement. Though these little
touches make us moderns smile, they were doubtless at the time approved
as showing that the artist was well schooled. Our reader should make
every effort to visit Eymoutiers, for there he will truly feel the
delicate charm of the canopy window. The church is glazed throughout in
one style and as a type of perfection will linger in his memory in much
the same way as Ste. Foy at Conches, which we will visit later for its
sixteenth century glass. The canopy window, when properly placed, yields
a far softer beauty than any glass can show in the century before or the
century that came after, and it is greatly to be regretted that so few
of them survived the stress of those battle-troubled days.
Before we start on our way over rolling hills to Limoges, we must not
fail to observe in Eymoutiers a certain quaint custom of building
distinctive of that town. The topmost story of almost all the
dwelling-houses is not walled up on the street side. This open top floor
is used to store fuel. Under the eaves there is a pulley by which the
bundles of wood are pulled up from the street by a block and tackle and
swung in under the roof.