f the
works at the cathedral during the period of its finishing, and in
repeated examination of the old tapestried designs, the story shaped
itself at last.

Towards the middle of the thirteenth century [55] the cathedral of
Saint Etienne was complete in its main outlines: what remained was the
building of the great tower, and all that various labour of final
decoration which it would take more than one generation to accomplish.
Certain circumstances, however, not wholly explained, led to a somewhat
rapid finishing, as it were out of hand, yet with a marvellous fulness
at once and grace. Of the result much has perished, or been
transferred elsewhere; a portion is still visible in sumptuous relics
of stained windows, and, above all, in the reliefs which adorn the
western portals, very delicately carved in a fine, firm stone from
Tonnerre, of which time has only browned the surface, and which, for
early mastery in art, may be compared with the contemporary work of
Italy. They come nearer than the art of that age was used to do to the
expression of life; with a feeling for reality, in no ignoble form,
caught, it might seem, from the ardent and full-veined existence then
current in these actual streets and houses.

Just then Auxerre had its turn in that political movement which broke
out sympathetically, first in one, then in another of the towns of
France, turning their narrow, feudal institutions into a free,
communistic life--a movement of which those great centres of popular
devotion, the French cathedrals, are in many instances the monument.
Closely connected always with the assertion of individual freedom,
alike in [56] mind and manners, at Auxerre this political stir was
associated also, as cause or effect, with the figure and character of a
particular personage, long remembered. He was the very genius, it
would appear, of that new, free, generous manner in art, active and
potent as a living creature.

As the most skilful of the band of carvers worked there one day, with a
labour he could never quite make equal to the vision within him, a
finely-sculptured Greek coffin of stone, which had been made to serve
for some later Roman funeral, was unearthed by the masons. Here, it
might seem, the thing was indeed done, and art achieved, as far as
regards those final graces, and harmonies of execution, which were
precisely what lay beyond the hand of the medieval workman, who for his
part had largely at command a ser