Mary chose to put her Prodigal into the transept, and one would like to know the reason.  Was it a concession to the Bishop or the Queen?  Or was it to please the common people that these familiar picture-books, with their popular interest, like the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son, were put on the walls of the great public hall?  This can hardly be, since the people would surely have preferred the Charlemagne and Saint James to any other.  We shall never know; but sitting here in the subdued afternoon light of the apse, one goes on for hours reading the open volumes of colour, and listening to the steady discussion by the architects, artists, priests, princes, and princesses of the thirteenth century about the arrangements of this apse.  However strong-willed they might be, each in turn whether priest, or noble, or glassworker, would have certainly appealed to the Virgin and one can imagine the architect still beside us, in the growing dusk of evening, mentally praying, as he looked at the work of a finished day:  “Lady Virgin, show me what you like best!  The central chapel is correct, I know.  The Lady Blanche’s grisaille veils the rather strong blue tone nicely, and I am confident it will suit you.  The Charlemagne window seems to me very successful, but the Bishop feels not at all easy about it, and I should never have dared put it here if the Lady Blanche had not insisted on a Spanish bay.  To balance at once both the subjects and the colour, we have tried the Stephen window in the next chapel, with more red; but if Saint Stephen is not good enough to satisfy you, we have tried again with Saint Julian, whose story is really worth telling you as we tell it; and with him we have put Saint Thomas because you loved him and gave him your girdle.  I do not myself care so very much for Saint Thomas of Canterbury opposite, though the Count is wild about it, and the Bishop wants it; but the Sylvester is stupendous in the morning sun.  What troubles me most is the first right-hand bay.  The princesses would not have let me put the Prodigal Son there, even if it were made for the place.  I’ve nothing else good enough to balance the Charlemagne unless it be the Eustace.  Gracious Lady, what ought I to do?  Forgive me my blunders, my stupidity, my wretched want of taste and feeling!  I love and adore you!  All that I am, I am for you!  If I cannot please you, I care not for Heaven! but without your help, I am lost!”

Upon my word, you may sit here forever imagining such appeals, and the endless discussions and criticisms that were heard every day, under these vaults, seven hundred years ago.  That the Virgin answered the questions is my firm belief, just as it is my conviction that she did not answer them elsewhere.  One sees her personal presence on every side.  Any one can feel it who will only consent to feel like a child.  Sitting here any Sunday afternoon, while the voices of the children of the maitrise are chanting in the choir,—­your mind held in the grasp of the