true: until the dawn of the Renaissance the genius of successive
builders was singularly well matched. If they made any alterations in
their predecessors' plans, they were able to introduce some touch of
individuality, inventions of exquisite beauty that did not clash with
the whole. They engrafted their genius on that of their first masters;
there was the perpetuated tradition of an admirable conception, a
perennial breath of the Holy Spirit. It was the interloper, the period
of false and farcical Pagan art, that extinguished that pure flame, and
annihilated the luminous truthfulness of the Mediaeval past, when God had
dwelt intimately, at home, in souls; it substituted a merely earthly
form of art for one that was divine.

"As soon as the sensuality of the Renaissance revealed itself, the
Paraclete fled; the mortal sin of stone could display itself at will. It
contaminated the buildings that were finished, defiled the churches,
debasing their purity of form; this, with the gross license of sculpture
and painting, was the great stupration of the cathedrals.

"And this time the Spirit of Prayer was quite dead; everything went to
pieces. The Renaissance, so lauded afterwards by Michelet and the
historians, was the death of the Mystical soul of monumental theology,
of religious art--all the great art of France.

"Bless me! where am I?" Durtal suddenly asked himself, finding himself
in the ill-paved alleys which lead from the Cathedral square to the
lower town. He saw that, dreaming as he walked, he had passed the Abbe's
lodgings.

He turned up the street again, stopped in front of an old house and
rang. A brass wicket was opened and closed, and a housekeeper, shuffling
up in old shoes, half opened the door. Durtal was met by the Abbe Plomb,
who was watching for him, and who led him into a room full of statues;
there were carved images in every spot--on the chimney-shelf, on a
chest of drawers, on a side table, and in the middle of the room.

"Do not look at them," said the Abbe, "do not heed them; I have no part
in the selection of this horrible bazaar. I have to endure it in spite
of myself; these are offerings from my penitents."

Durtal laughed, though somewhat scared by the extraordinary specimens of
religious art that crowded the room.

There was every kind of work: black frames with brass flats, and in them
engravings of Virgins by Bouguereau and Signol, Guido's _Ecce Homo_,
Pietas, Saint Philomenas--and th