rth side of the building; and many more similar changes might
be noted," said Durtal to himself. "But, which is yet more strange, the
parallel so commonly to be observed between the subjects treated on the
inner and outer surface of the same wall, in sculptured stone without
and painted glass within, does not constantly exist at Chartres. This,
for instance, is the case with regard to the genealogical Tree of
Christ, which is seen inside in glass on the upper wall of the west
front, and is carved outside on the north porch. At the same time, when
the subjects do not entirely coincide on the front and back of the page,
they are often complementary, or carry out the same idea. Thus the Last
Judgment, which is not to be found on the outside of the north front,
blazes out, within, from the great rose window above on the same side.
This, then, is not cumulative but appropriate development--history begun
in one dialect and finished in another.

"In short, it is the ruling idea of the poem which governs all these
differences and harmonies; which comes out like a refrain after each of
these three strophes in stone; the idea that this church belongs to Our
Mother. The cathedral is faithful to its name, loyal to its dedication.
The Virgin is Lady over all. She fills the whole interior, and appears
outside even on the western and southern portals, which are not
especially Hers, above a door, on a capital, high in air on a pediment.
The angelic salutation of art has been repeated without intermission by
the painters and sculptors of every age. The cathedral of Chartres is
truly the Virgin's fief.

"And on the whole," thought Durtal, "in spite of the discrepancies in
some of its texts, the cathedral is legible.

"It contains a rendering of the Old and New Testaments; it also engrafts
on the sacred Scriptures the Apocryphal traditions relating to the
Virgin and St. Joseph, the lives of the saints preserved in the Golden
Legend of Jacopo da Voragine and the special biographies of the aspiring
recluses of the diocese of Chartres. It is a vast encyclopaedia of
mediaeval learning as concerning God, the Virgin, and the Elect.

"Didron is almost justified in saying that it is a compendium of those
great encyclopaedias composed in the thirteenth century; only the theory
that he bases on this truthful observation wanders off and becomes
faulty as soon as he tries to work it out.

"He concludes, in fact, by conceiving of this cathedral as