But until we
realise to ourselves more completely the lives of warriors in mediaeval
days, we shall never understand how chivalry and the worship of beauty
entered into their hearts and lives, and was to them the highest and
noblest of virtues; nor shall we comprehend their ready acceptance of
the adoration of the Virgin as the one true religion.
In such a building as the cathedral at Rouen, it is impossible to forget
the people who once trod its pavement; memories that not all the modern
paraphernalia and glitter can obliterate. If we visit the cathedral
after vespers, when the candles in the Lady-chapel look like
glowworm-lights through the dark aisles, we are soon carried back in
imagination to mediaeval days. The floor of the nave is covered with
kneeling figures of warriors, each with a red cross on his breast; the
pavement resounds to the clash of arms; there is a low chorus of voices
in prayer, a sound of stringed instruments, a silence--and then, an army
of men rise up and march to war. There is a pause of six hundred years,
and another procession passes through these aisles; the pavement
resounds to less martial footsteps,--they are not warriors, they are
'Cook's excursionists'!
Let us now leave the cathedral, and see something more of the town.
It is a fine summer's afternoon, in the middle of the week, the air is
soft and quiet; the busy population of Rouen seem, with one consent, to
rest from labour, and the Goddess of Leisure tells her beads.
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