four pillars that supported the
tower, near the choir. Thence I could see the whole of the building. I
gazed, and no ideas connected with it arose in my mind. I saw without
seeing the mighty maze of pillars, the great rose windows that hung like
a network suspended as by a miracle in air above the vast doorways. I
saw the doors at the end of the side aisles, the aerial galleries, the
stained glass windows framed in archways, divided by slender columns,
fretted into flower forms and trefoil by fine filigree work of carved
stone. A dome of glass at the end of the choir sparkled as if it had
been built of precious stones set cunningly. In contrast to the roof
with its alternating spaces of whiteness and color, the two aisles lay
to right and left in shadow so deep that the faint gray outlines of
their hundred shafts were scarcely visible in the gloom. I gazed at the
marvelous arcades, the scroll-work, the garlands, the curving lines, and
arabesques interwoven and interlaced, and strangely lighted, until by
sheer dint of gazing my perceptions became confused, and I stood upon
the borderland between illusion and reality, taken in the snare set for
the eyes, and almost light-headed by reason of the multitudinous changes
of the shapes about me.

Imperceptibly a mist gathered about the carven stonework, and I only
beheld it through a haze of fine golden dust, like the motes that hover
in the bars of sunlight slanting through the air of a chamber. Suddenly
the stone lacework of the rose windows gleamed through this vapor
that had made all forms so shadowy. Every moulding, the edges of every
carving, the least detail of the sculpture was dipped in silver. The
sunlight kindled fires in the stained windows, their rich colors sent
out glowing sparks of light. The shafts began to tremble, the capitals
were gently shaken. A light shudder as of delight ran through the
building, the stones were loosened in their setting, the wall-spaces
swayed with graceful caution. Here and there a ponderous pier moved as
solemnly as a dowager when she condescends to complete a quadrille at
the close of a ball. A few slender and graceful columns, their heads
adorned with wreaths of trefoil, began to laugh and dance here and
there. Some of the pointed arches dashed at the tall lancet windows,
who, like ladies of the Middle Ages, wore the armorial bearings of their
houses emblazoned on their golden robes. The dance of the mitred arcades
with the slender