The portals,especially the middle one,are extremely interesting;they are covered with curious early sculptures.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 titillation 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,however,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 resurrection,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 shyness;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 preservation;they bear no superficial signs of restoration,and appear scarcely to have suffered from the centuries.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 everything 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 Ilook 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 addition 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 perpendicular 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 support,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.The structure supporting the arch has the girth of a largeish house,and contains chambers with whose uses I am unacquainted,but to which the deep pulsations of the cathedral,the vibration of its mighty bells,and the roll of its organtones must be transmitted even through the great arm of stone.
The archiepiscopal palace,not walled in as at Tours,is visible as a stately habitation of the last century,now in course of reparation in consequence of a fire.
From this side,and from the gardens of the palace,the nave of the cathedral is visible in all its great length and height,with its extraordinary multitude of supports.The gardens aforesaid,accessible through tall iron gates,are the promenade the Tuileries of the town,and,very pretty in themselves,are immensely set off by the overhanging church.It was warm and sunny;the benches were empty;I sat there a long time,in that pleasant state of mind which visits the traveller in foreign towns,when he is not too hurried,while he wonders where he had better go next.The straight,unbroken line of the roof of the cathedral was very noble;but I could see from this point how much finer the effect would have been if the towers,which had dropped almost out of sight,might have been carried still higher.The archiepiscopal gardens look down at one end over a sort of esplanade or suburban avenue lying on a lower level,on which they open,and where several detachments of soldiers (Bourges is full of soldiers)had just been drawn up.
The civil population was also collecting,and I saw that something was going to happen.I learned that a private of the Chasseurs was to be "broken"for stealing,and every one was eager to behold the ceremony.Sundry other detachments arrived on the ground,besides many of the military who had come as a matter of taste.One of them described to me the process of degradation from the ranks,and I felt for a moment a hideous curiosity to see it,under the influence of which I lingered a little.But only a little;the hateful nature of the spectacle hurried me away,at the same time that others were hurrying forward.As I turned my back upon it I reflected that human beings are cruel brutes,though I could not flatter myself that the ferocity of the thing was exclusively French.In another country the concourse would have been equally great,and the moral of it all seemed to be that military penalties are as terrible as military honors are gratifying.
