Baron Conon and Adela had still another duty ere they returned to St. Aliquis. They were fain to go with their sons, and each burn a tall candle before the altar of Our Lady in the cathedral. All dwellers near Pontdebois are intensely proud of their great church. It has been building now these forty years. At last it is fairly complete, although the left tower has still to be carried up to the belfry, and very many niches lack the sculptured saints presently to occupy them. A worthy cathedral, like a worthy character, is growing continually. Probably the Feudal Age will end before Notre Dame de Pontdebois is completed as its pious designers have intended.[127]

The cathedral is the center for a large group of buildings whereof most are in the noble pointed (Gothic) style of architecture. As just explained, in the sacred close there is the bishop's palace and the houses of the canons; there are also a cloister for promenading, a school (much like that at the monastery), a room for a library, and a synodal hall for meetings of the canons and where the bishop can conduct litigation. There is, in addition, a hospital for sick clerics. The whole forms a little world sequestered from the uproar and sordid bustle of the marts and workshops of Pontdebois. As you enter the cathedral compound, exterior cares are suddenly left behind you—a great sense of peace is realized. One hears the wind softly whistling through the soaring tracery of the massive right tower. There is a whirring flutter of doves from their homes under the flying buttresses. Through a section opened in the floral tracery of a great window comes the rumbling of an organ and the deep Gregorian chant of some hymn from the psalter. Utter contrast it all is either to the hammering and chaffering of the city, or the equally worldly clatter of the castle court! The vast tower pointing upward speaks even to the thoughtless, "Fortress and city, trade and tourney endure only for the instant—the things of the Spirit abide forever."

The cathedral, by its vast and soaring bulk, completely dwarfs the comparatively small and mean houses of the town. They are of thatch and wood. It is of stone. They lack even a tawdry magnificence. The cathedral could gaze with contempt on royal palaces. This fact teaches even more clearly than words the enormous place occupied by the Church in the Feudal Age. It is not by its literature and learning (though these are not to be despised), but by its sacred architecture and sculpture that the spirit of this era displays its power and originality. In contemplating so magnificent a fabric, it is best to remember that it is the work of men of ardent faith, profoundly convinced that in the church building there dwells continually upon the high altar God himself, invisible but ever present. Squalid dwellings may suffice for man, but not for the Creator. And since God actually takes his abode in such an edifice, every art must contribute to its splendor. Architects, sculptors, painters, jewelers, all perform their best, each rendering his homage to the Eternal. The cathedral, therefore, sums up all that is noblest in the art of the time when it is erected.

Since the nave of such a church often can be used for secular mass meetings without fear of impiety, and since a whole countryside will claim the right to throng the edifice on great festival days, a cathedral has to be far larger than an ancient pagan temple.[128] It must possess an interior meet for elaborate processions, stopping often at each of twenty-odd altars lining its walls. To erect a building like this is an undertaking in which a whole countryside can be asked to join. About forty years ago the old cathedral, built in the ancient Romanesque (round-arched) style with a wooden roof, was falling into disrepair, and the new pointed, stone-vaulted architecture was developing through all France. People from regions round made remarks about the "impiety" of the clergy and folk near Pontdebois in "dishonoring heaven." Various prelates taunted the ruling Bishop Thibaut with his mean cathedral. This Thibaut, however, had been an energetic as well as a devout man. By prudent administration of the diocese he had saved considerable money. He next persuaded his canons to curtail their luxuries and to contribute generously. Means, too, were taken to lure money from the faithful. The holy relics were exhibited. Indulgence from purgatory was promised to donors. Conscience-stricken barons were urged to atone for their crimes by liberal gifts to the new enterprise. Civic pride and excited piety won the deniers from the Pontdebois trade and industrial masters. A rich countess left a notable legacy on condition that the canons should always pray for her soul on the anniversary of her death. So between coaxing and religious feeling a goodly fund was collected—and, as was wisely said, "the new cathedral has saved many souls"—meaning that many sinful people were happily moved to redeeming acts of generosity. There were even gifts, it is said, from brigands and evil women, likewise a good many less debatable presents in kind, as when a baron gave both the necessary oak and the pay of the carvers for making the magnificent choir stalls, besides presenting the great stained-glass rose window. Whatever the source, no donation was denied, the bishop counting it fortunate if even the booty of thieves could be turned to the glory of God.

Bishop Thibaut found a skillful architect, a Norman, half cleric, half layman, who had assisted on one of the great churches at Rouen. The plans this man drew up were very elaborate, but he did not live to see them more than half executed. Even if workmen and money failed not, it was dangerous to rush the erection of the great piers, buttresses, and vaulted ceilings. At Auxerre, where they tried to hasten the work, much of the choir suddenly collapsed "like a crash of thunder," though Heaven mercifully prevented the loss of life. At Noyon they began to build in 1152. Their cathedral was nearly finished by 1200. Notre Dame de Paris was begun in 1163, and the choir was fairly completed by 1177; but the great towers and faÇade certainly cannot be finished before 1225. Rheims was begun in 1211, but undoubtedly even the work on the choir cannot be ended under thirty years from that date. If Pontdebois is reasonably complete after forty years of effort it is therefore being built more expeditiously than the average cathedral. Indeed, many wiseacres shake their heads. "Too much haste," they mutter; "when one builds for God and in order to last till His Judgment Day, it is very sinful to hurry."

First the choir was finished with all energy possible, for here the canons must constantly chant their offices. The nave, which was more for popular gatherings, waited till later. There was great rejoicing when at last the main portal was so far completed that a very fine and tenderly carved statue of Christ could be set above the same. "Our beautiful God!" the people lovingly call the image; and from that time, year by year, the work went forward, every member or ornament that was added seeming to suggest something additional, as if the achieving of perfection were to be a work for eternity.

To erect the main structure of his cathedral, Thibaut had called in a traveling fraternity of workmen, the Lodging-House Keepers of the Good God, who obeyed the Master of the Work—i.e., an architect. They would stay for years in one place, recruiting new members as old ones died, then moving elsewhere when no longer needed. This fraternity erected the main structure of the building; then Thibaut passed away, money failed, and enthusiasm somewhat lapsed. However, twenty years later, a new fraternity were put to work on the faÇade and towers. This was more delicate work, involving a great deal of skillful carving. They were obliged to stop again before completion had been attained. Probably a score of years hence, still another such fraternity will raise the second tower. Meantime, every year, a few skillful craftsmen, sustained by donations, add a statue here and a gargoyle yonder, put richly painted glass into another window, or complete the intricate carving around the railing to the pulpit stairs. Now and then there is a special exhibition of relics to attract worshipers and their alms.[129] One of the results is that the style of the different parts of the cathedral differs subtly according to the respective periods of their construction. There is not a contradiction, but only a pleasing variety. One feels that the cathedral is something living. It has come into being, not by arbitrary creation, but by a natural growth; like a mighty, comfort-spreading tree.

As we wander about this glorious fabric, with its hundreds of statues,[130] its blazing windows, its vaulted roof which hangs its massive weight of stone so safely above our heads, all attempts at detailed description become futile. Let them be left for other books and other moods. Later generations doubtless will record at great length that about the middle of the twelfth century a great activity in church building, as a surpassing work of Christian piety, began to manifest itself especially in northern France. This activity was not to spend itself for more than a hundred years.[131] It absorbed much of the best thought and energy of the time. In addition, it developed a genuinely new type of architecture, a real innovation upon those models traceable back to the pagan Greek. We come to the reign of the pointed arch which adapts itself to endless curves and varieties. We have, too, the grouped columns which uphold the groins of the lofty vaulting, their members radiating outward like the boughs of a stately forest. These columns and piers can be made amazingly light, thanks to the daring use of flying buttresses, an invention not merely of great utility, but of great beauty. Thanks also to these grouped pillars, groins, and buttresses, the walls between the bays (intervals between the columns) are in no wise needed to uphold the roof of stone; and as a result these bays can be filled up with thin curtain walls crowned above with enormous windows which are filled with a delicate tracery and a stained glass that throws down upon the pavement of the church all the rainbow tints of heaven. Each bay is likely to contain a separate chapel or at least an altar to some particular saint. Over the portal, where the main entrance gives access to the long nave, radiates the mighty rose window, the final triumph of the glass and tracery. And so through all the vast structure—huge in proportions, yet, as it were, a harmonious mass of fair carving and jewel work, until (even as says Holy Writ) "the whole body fitly joined together, and compacted by that which every joint supplyeth, according to the effectual working in every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love."

So the apostle of the making of a Christian man, so, too, of the making of the august church. And after saying this, what profit to add that this cathedral has a length of about four hundred feet, that the ceiling of the nave rises at least one hundred feet above the pavement, that the rose window is nearly forty feet in diameter, that the higher tower is much more than two hundred?[132] Numbers are for sordid traffic, they are not for a work wrought out of a passionate love of man toward God.

We cannot stay to linger over the symbolism which they tell us is in every part of the church; how the "Communion of Saints" is proclaimed by the chapels clustering around the choir and nave; how the delicate spire which rises at the center of the transepts teaches that "vanquishing earthly desire we should also ascend in heart and mind"; how the triple breadth of the nave and two aisles, likewise the triple stretch of the choir, transepts and nave, proclaim the Holy Trinity; and how the serried armies of piers and columns announce the Prophets and Apostles who uphold the fabric of the Church; while font, altar, crucifix, and crosses innumerable attest the earthly pilgrimage and redeeming passion of Jesus Christ.

But the cathedral is more than a great collection of allegories. Everywhere in stained glass, and still more in the multitudinous images, is told the Bible story. The characters are not clothed in Hebraic fashion. "Baron Abraham" and "Sire David" appear in ring mail like doughty cavaliers. The history of the good warrior Judas MaccabÆus perhaps is told in greater detail than that of prophets like Isaiah and Jeremiah. But very few important stories are omitted, and, above all, the great pageant of the life of Jesus is worked out in loving detail. The child, who is brought time and again to visit the cathedral, knows almost every essential Bible narrative, albeit he may never learn to read even French, much less to con the Latin of the Vulgate. Likewise, in the cathedral rest the tombs of brave seigneurs and worthy bishops, each covered either with an effigy showing his armor and his beloved hunting dogs couched at his feet, or in his pontificals; and the tombs also of noble women, sculptured as richly clad, who have made life beautiful by their worthy living, and who now rest securely until God's great Judgment. So the cathedral is both a temple for the hopes of the present, and an inspiration from the remote and nearer past.[133]

After he had prayed beside his father and mother, little Anseau stole away from the altar and wandered timidly about the church. In a corner of a transept he found a stone craftsman completing a small image of St. Elizabeth to adorn some niche. The sculptor was polishing the back of the statue no less carefully than the front. "Why such trouble?" asked the boy curiously. "No one can see the back." "Ah, my fair damoiseau," replied the other, smiling, "no man, of course; but God can see. This is for the Cathedral; and is God 'no one'?"

The next day, having spent all their money and become wearied of the mechanic bustle of Pontdebois, Baron Conon and his company rode back to St. Aliquis. After they had traveled for miles, the great mass of the cathedral was still visible behind them.

The Feudal Age has produced very much that is evil—it has also produced the Gothic church and its builders. By which ought the epoch be judged?

Seven hundred years afterward the donjon of St. Aliquis is an ivy-covered ruin. Vanished is the monastery; vanished, too, the peasants' huts. In the smoky industrial city on the site of Pontdebois not one ancient stone seems left upon another. But, hold! Soaring high above ugly roof and factory chimney, with its airy pinnacles denouncing a life of materialism and doubt, visited by admiring pilgrims from beyond the Sea of Darkness, the great fabric of the gray cathedral remains.