The angels above and around bear the symbols of the Passion; they are unconscious of Mary’s presence; they are absorbed in the perfections of the Son.  On the lintel just below is the Last Judgment, where Saint Michael reappears, weighing the souls of the dead which Mary and John above are trying to save from the strict justice of Christ.  The whole melodrama of Church terrors appears after the manner of the thirteenth century, on this church door, without regard to Mary’s feelings; and below, against the trumeau, stands the great figure of Christ,—­the whole Church,—­trampling on the lion and dragon.  On either side of the doorway stand six great figures of the Apostles asserting themselves as the columns of the Church, and looking down at us with an expression no longer calculated to calm our fears or encourage extravagant hopes.  No figure on this porch suggests a portrait or recalls a memory.

Very grand, indeed, is this doorway; dignified, impressive, and masculine to a degree seldom if ever equalled in art; and the left bay rivals it.  There, in the tympanum, Christ appears again; standing; bearing on His head the crown royal; alone, except for the two angels who adore, and surrounded only by the martyrs, His witnesses.  The right bay is devoted to Saint Nicholas and the Saints Confessors who bear witness to the authority of Christ in faith.  Of the twenty-eight great figures, the officers of the royal court, who make thus the strength of the Church beneath Christ, not one is a woman.  The masculine orthodoxy of Pierre Mauclerc has spared neither sex nor youth; all are of a maturity which chills the blood, excepting two, whose youthful beauty is heightened by the severity of their surroundings, so that the Abbe Bulteau makes bold even to say that “the two statues of Saint George and of Saint Theodore may be regarded as the most beautiful of our cathedral, perhaps even as the two masterpieces of statuary at the end of the thirteenth century.”  On that point, let every one follow his taste; but one reflection at least seems to force itself on the mind in comparing these twenty-eight figures.  Certainly the sword, however it may compare with the pen in other directions, is in art more powerful than all the pens, or volumes, or crosiers ever made.  Your “Golden Legend” and Roman Breviary are here the only guide-books worth consulting, and the stories of young George and Theodore stand there recorded; as their miracle under the walls of Antioch, during the first crusade, is matter of history; but among these magnificent figures one detects at a glance that it is not the religion or sacred purity of the subject, or even the miracles or the sufferings, which inspire passion for Saint George and Saint Theodore, under the Abbe’s robe; it is with him, as with the plain boy and girl, simply youth, with lance and sword and shield.