f colour mounting to her cheeks? Never before had
she perceived this warmth of perfume which now touched her as if with a
living breath.

And again, why had she never remarked in preceding years a great
Japanese Paulownia in blossom, which looked like an immense violet
bouquet as it appeared between two elm-trees in the garden of the
Voincourts? This year, as soon as she looked at it, her eyes grew
moist, so much was she affected by the delicate tints of the pale purple
flowers. She also fancied that the Chevrotte had never chattered
so gaily over the pebbles among the willows on its banks. The river
certainly talked; she listened to its vague words, constantly repeated,
which filled her heart with trouble. Was it, then, no longer the field
of other days, that everything in it so astonished her and affected her
senses in so unusual a way? Or, rather, was not she herself so changed
that, for the first time, she appreciated the beauty of the coming into
life of trees and plants?

But the Cathedral at her right, the enormous mass which obstructed the
sky, surprised her yet more. Each morning she seemed to see it for the
first time; she made constant discoveries in it, and was delighted to
think that these old stones lived and had lived like herself. She did
not reason at all on the subject, she had very little knowledge, but
she gave herself up to the mystic flight of the giant, whose coming into
existence had demanded three centuries of time, and where were placed
one above the other the faith and the belief of generations. At the
foundation, it was kneeling as if crushed by prayer, with the Romanesque
chapels of the nave, and with the round arched windows, plain,
unornamented, except by slender columns under the archivolts. Then it
seemed to rise, lifting its face and hands towards heaven, with the
pointed windows of its nave, built eighty years later; high, delicate
windows, divided by mullions on which were broken bows and roses. Then
again it sprung from the earth as if in ecstasy, erect, with the piers
and flying buttresses of the choir finished and ornamented two centuries
after in the fullest flamboyant Gothic, charged with its bell-turrets,
spires, and pinnacles. A balustrade had been added, ornamented with
trefoils, bordering the terrace on the chapels of the apse. Gargoyles at
the foot of the flying buttresses carried off the water from the roofs.
The top was also decorated with flowery emblems. The whole edifi