Page:The Bible of Amiens.djvu/184

148 days, when the people first began to find Christianity too serious, and devised a merrier faith for France, and would have bright-glancing, soubrette Madonnas everywhere—letting their own dark-eyed Joan of Arc be burnt for a witch. And thenceforward, things went their merry way, straight on, 'ça allait, ça ira,' to the merriest days of the guillotine.

But they could still carve, in the fourteenth century, and the Madonna and her hawthorn-blossom lintel are worth your looking at,—much more the field above, of sculpture as delicate and more calm, which tells St. Honore's own story, little talked of now in his Parisian faubourg.

8. I will not keep you just now to tell St. Honore's story—(only too glad to leave you a little curious about it, if it were possible) —for certainly you will be impatient to go into the church; and cannot enter it to better advantage than by this door. For all cathedrals of any mark have nearly the same effect when you enter at the west door; but I know no other which shows so much of its nobleness from the south interior transept; the opposite rose being of exquisite fineness in tracery, and lovely in lustre; and the shafts of the transept aisles forming wonderful groups with those of the choir and nave; also,