shivering attitudes with narrow and tightly-drawn raiment, their arms
and legs held close," thought Durtal, with a smile. "And is it not the
same with that strange figure dwelling in companionship with a sow
spinning--though it is not in fact a sow, but a hog--and an ass playing
on a hurdy-gurdy on the storm-beaten wall of the old tower?"

These two animals, whose careless herd he seems to be, represent in
their merry guise the old popular sayings: _Ne sus Minerveum_, and
_Asinus ad lyram_, which may be freely rendered by "Every man to his
trade," and "Never force a talent;" for we should but be as inept as a
pig trying to be wise or an ass trying to strike the lyre.

But this angel with a nimbus, standing barefoot under a canopy,
supporting a sun-dial against his breast, what does he mean, what is he
doing?

A descendant of the royal women of the north porch, for he is like them
in his slender shape, sheathed in a clinging robe with string-like
pleats, he looks over our heads, and we wonder whether he is very impure
or very chaste.

The upper part of the face is innocent, the hair cropped round the head;
the face is beardless and the expression monastic, but between the nose
and mouth there is a broad slope, and the lips, parting in a straight
gash, wear a smile, which as we look seems just a little impudent, just
a little vulgar, and we wonder what manner of angel this may be.

There is in this figure something of the recalcitrant seminarist, and
also something of the virtuous postulant. If the sculptor took a young
Brother for his model, he certainly did not choose a docile novice, such
as he who no doubt served for the study of Joseph standing under the
north door; he must have worked from one of the religious _Gyrovagoi_
who so tormented St. Benedict. A strange figure is this angel, who has a
father at Laon, behind the cathedral, and who anticipated by many
centuries the puzzling seraphic types of the Renaissance.

"What a wind!" muttered Durtal, hastening back to the west front, where
he went up the steps and pushed the door open.

The entrance to this immense and obscure church is always coercive; we
instinctively bend the head and advance cautiously under the oppressive
majesty of its vault. Durtal stopped when he had gone a few steps,
dazzled by the illumination of the choir in contrast with the dark alley
of the nave, which only gained a little light where it joined the
transepts. The Christ had the leg