The next morning, which was lovely, I lost no
time in going back to it, and found, with satisfaction,
that the daylight did it no injury.
The cathedral of
Bourges is indeed magnificently huge; and if it is a
good deal wanting in lightness and grace it is perhaps
only the more imposing. I read in the excellent hand-
book of M. Joanne that it was projected "_des_ 1172,"
but commenced only in the first years of the thirteenth
century. "The nave" the writer adds, "was finished
_tant bien que mal, faute de ressources;_ the facade is of
the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in its lower
part, and of the fourteenth in its upper." The allusion
to the nave means the omission of the transepts. The
west front consists of two vast but imperfect towers;
one of which (the south) is immensely buttressed, so
that its outline slopes forward, like that of a pyramid,
being the taller of the two. If they had spires, these
towers would be prodigious; as it is, given the rest
of the church, they are wanting in elevation. There
are five deeply recessed portals, all in a row, each
surmounted with a gable; the gable over the central
door being exceptionally high. Above the porches,
which give the measure of its width, the front rears
itself, piles itself, on a great scale, carried up by gal-
leries, arches, windows, sculptures, and supported by
the extraordinarily thick buttresses of which I have
spoken, and which, though they embellish it with deep
shadows thrown sidewise, do not improve its style.
The portals, especially the middle one, are extremely
interesting; they are covered with curious early sculp-
tures. The middle one, however, I must describe
alone. It has no less than six rows of figures, - the
others have four, - some of which, notably the upper
one, are still in their places. The arch at the top has
three tiers of elaborate imagery. The upper of these
is divided by the figure of Christ in judgment, of great
size, stiff and terrible, with outstretched arms. On
either side of him are ranged three or four angels,
with the instruments of the Passion. Beneath him, in
the second frieze, stands the angel of justice, with his
scales; and on either side of him is the vision of the
last judgment. The good prepare, with infinite titilla-
tion and complacency, to ascend to the skies; while
the bad are dragged, pushed, hurled, stuffed, crammed,
into pits and caldrons of fire. There is a charming
detail in this section. Beside the angel, on, the right,
where the wicked are the prey of demons, stands a
little female figure, that of a child, who, with hands
meekly folded and head gently raised, waits for the
stern angel to decide upon her fate. In this fate, how-
ever, a dreadful, big devil also takes a keen interest;
he seems on the point of appropriating the tender
creature; he has a face like a goat and an enormous
hooked nose. But the angel gently lays a hand upon
the shoulder of the little girl - the movement is full
of dignity - as if to say, "No; she belongs to the other
side." The frieze below represents the general re-
surrection, with the good and the wicked emerging from
their sepulchres. Nothing can be more quaint and
charming than the difference shown in their way of
responding to the final trump. The good get out of
their tombs with a certain modest gayety, an alacrity
tempered by respect; one of them kneels to pray as
soon as he has disinterred himself. You may know
the wicked, on the other hand, by their extreme shy-
ness; they crawl out slowly and fearfully; they hang
back, and seem to say, "Oh, dear!" These elaborate
sculptures, full of ingenuous intention and of the
reality of early faith, are in a remarkable state of pre-
servation; they bear no superficial signs of restoration,
and appear scarcely to have suffered from the centu-
ries. They are delightfully expressive; the artist had
the advantage of knowing exactly the effect he wished
to produce.
The interior of the cathedral has a great simplicity
and majesty, and, above all, a tremendous height. The
nave is extraordinary in this respect; it dwarfs every-
thing else I know. I should add, however, that I am,
in architecture, always of the opinion of the last
speaker. Any great building seems to me, while I
look at it, the ultimate expression. At any rate, during
the hour that I sat gazing along the high vista of
Bourges, the interior of the great vessel corresponded
to my vision of the evening before. There is a tranquil
largeness, a kind of infinitude, about such an edifice:
it soothes and purifies the spirit, it illuminates the
mind. There are two aisles, on either side, in addi-
tion to the nave, - five in all, - and, as I have said,
there are no transepts; an omission which lengthens
the vista, so that from my place near the door the
central jewelled window in the depths of the perpen-
dicular choir seemed a mile or two away. The second,
or outward, of each pair of aisles is too low, and the
first too high; without this inequality the nave would
appear to take an even more prodigious flight. The
double aisles pass all the way round the choir, the
windows of which are inordinately rich in magnificent
old glass. I have seen glass as fine in other churches;
but I think I have never seen so much of it at once.
Beside the cathedral, on the north, is a curious
structure of the fourteenth or fifteenth century, which
looks like an enormous flying buttress, with its sup-
port, sustaining the north tower. It makes a massive
arch, high in the air, and produces a romantic effect
as people pass under it to the open gardens of the
Archeveche, which extend to a considerable distance
in the rear of the church.
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