fact maybe proven. That
the Romanesque should be an offshoot of the Latin and Byzantine styles,
and be, as Quicherat defines it, 'the style which has ceased to be Roman
and is not yet Gothic, though it already has something of the Gothic,' I
am ready to admit; and indeed, on examining the capitals, and studying
their outline and drawing, we perceive that they are Assyrian or Persian
rather than Roman or Byzantine and Gothic; but as to discovering the
paternity even of the pointed and flamboyant styles, that is quite
another thing. Some writers assert that the pointed arch based on an
equilateral triangle existed in Egypt, Syria, and Persia; others regard
it as descended from Saracen and Arab art; nothing certainly is
provable.

"Again, it must be clearly stated that the pointed equilateral arch,
which some persons still suppose to be the distinctive characteristic of
an era in architecture, is not so in fact, as Quicherat has very clearly
demonstrated, and, since him, Lecoy de la Marche. The study of archives
has, on this point, completely overset the hobbies of architects, and
demolished the twaddle of the Bonzes. Besides, there is abundant
evidence of the employment of the pointed arch side by side with the
round arch in a perfectly systematic design, in the construction of many
Romanesque churches; in the Cathedrals of Avignon and Frejus, in Notre
Dame at Aries, in Saint Front at Perigueux, at Saint Martin d'Ainay, at
Lyon, in Saint Martin des Champs in Paris, in Saint Etienne at Beauvais,
in the Cathedral of Le Mans; and in Burgundy, at Vezelay, at Beaune, in
Saint Philibert at Dijon, at La Charite-sur-Loire, in Saint Ladre at
Autun, and in most of the basilicas erected by the monastic school of
Cluny.

"Still, all this throws no light on the lineage of the Gothic, which
remains obscure--possibly because it is perfectly clear; setting aside
the theory which restricts itself to discerning in this question a
merely material and technical problem of stability and resistance,
solved by monks who discovered one fine day that the strength of their
roofs would be increased by the adoption of the mitre-shaped vaulting of
the pointed arch instead of the semicircular arch, would it not seem
that the romantic hypothesis--Chateaubriand's explanation--which was so
much laughed at, and which is nevertheless the simplest and the most
natural, may really be the most obvious and the true one?

"To me," thought Durtal, "it is almo