Page:A Motor-Flight Through France.djvu/265

THE RHONE TO THE SEINE peculiar majesty to the building, and conduce no doubt to the impression that in all church architecture there is nothing quite like it, nothing in which the passive strength of the elder style so imperceptibly blends with the springing grace of the new. The latter meets one first, in the two-storied narthex, a church in itself, which precedes the magnificent round-arched portals of the inner building, It is from the threshold of this narthex that, looking down its lofty vista, and through the triple doorways to the vast and stern perspective of the Romanesque nave, one gets the keenest impression of the way in which, in this incomparable building, the two styles have been wrought into an accord that shows their essential continuity. In the nave itself, with the doors of the narthex closed, another, subtler impression awaits one; for here one seems to surprise the actual moment of transition, to see, as nowhere else, the folded wings of the Gothic stirring under the older forms.

More even than its rich mysterious sculptures, far more than its mere pride of size and majesty, does this undefinable fremissement of the old static Romanesque lines remain with one as the specific [ 163 ]