of mingled flame.

"Really, when you come to think of it, a cathedral is a superhuman
thing!

"Starting in our lands from the old Roman crypt, from the vault, crushed
like the soul by humility and fear, and bowed before the infinite
Majesty whose praise they hardly dared to sing, the churches gradually
waxed bolder; they gave an upward spring to the semicircular arch,
lengthening it to an almond shape, leaping from the earth, uplifting
roofs, heightening naves, breaking out into a thousand sculptured forms
all round the choir, and flinging heavenward, like prayers, their
rapturous piles of stones! They symbolized the loving tenderness of
orisons; they became more trusting, more playful, more daring in the
sight of God.

"Each and all seemed to smile, as soon as they gave up their dismal
skeleton and strove upwards.

"The Romanesque, I fancy, must have been born old," Durtal went on after
a pause. "At any rate it has always remained gloomy and timid.

"Although at Jumieges, for instance, it has attained grandiose
dimensions with its enormous span opening like a vast portal to the sky,
it still is depressing. The semicircular arch, in fact, bends to the
earth, for it has not the point, soaring upwards, of the lancet arch.

"Oh! to think of the tears, the dolorous murmurs of those thick
partitions, those smoky vaults, those arches resting on squat pillars,
those almost speechless blocks of stone, those sober ornaments
expressing their symbolism so curtly! The Romanesque is the La Trappe of
architecture; we find it sheltering the austerest Orders, the sternest
Brotherhoods, kneeling in ashes, and chanting in an undertone with bowed
heads none but penitential Psalms. These massive cellars speak of the
fear of sin, but also of the dread of a God whose wrath could only be
appeased by the Advent of the Son. The Romanesque seems to have
preserved from its Oriental origin an element antedating the Birth of
Christ; prayer seems to rise there to the implacable Adonai rather than
to the pitying Infant, the gentle Mother. The Gothic, on the contrary,
is less timid, more captivated by the two other Persons and the Virgin;
it is the home of less rigorous and more artistic Orders. Bowed
shoulders are straightened, downcast eyes are raised, sepulchral voices
become seraphic. It is, in fact, the expansion of the spirit, while the
Romanesque symbolizes its repression. At least, to me, that is the
interpretation of these styles," Du