admitting poor boys to begin their studies. It receives intelligent and
pious children of every nationality, if they are supposed to show any
vocation for Holy Orders. They remain in the choir school till they are
in the third class, and are then transferred to the Seminary.

"Its funds?--are, humanly speaking, nothing, based on trust in
Providence, for it has altogether, for the maintenance of eighty pupils,
nothing but the pay earned by these children for various duties in the
Cathedral, and the profits from a little monthly magazine called 'The
Voice of the Virgin,' and finally and chiefly the charity of the
faithful. All this does not amount to a very substantial income; and
yet, to this day, money has never been lacking."

The Abbe rose and went to the window.

"Oh, the rain will not cease," said Durtal. "I am very much afraid,
Monsieur l'Abbe, that we cannot examine the Cathedral porches to-day."

"There is no hurry. Before going into the details of Notre Dame, would
it not be well to contemplate it as a whole, and let its general purpose
soak into the mind before studying each page of its parts?

"Everything lies contained in that building," he went on, waving his
hand to designate the church; "the scriptures, theology, the history of
the human race, set forth in broad outline. Thanks to the science of
symbolism a pile of stones may be a macrocosm.

"I repeat it, everything exists within this structure, even our material
and moral life, our virtues and our vices. The architect takes us up at
the creation of Adam to carry us on to the end of time. Notre Dame of
Chartres is the most colossal depository existing of heaven and earth,
of God and man. Each of its images is a word; all those groups are
phrases--the difficulty is to read them."

"But it can be done?"

"Undoubtedly. That there may be some contradictions in our
interpretations I admit, but still the palimpsest can be deciphered. The
key needed is a knowledge of symbolism."

And seeing that Durtal was listening to him with interest, the Abbe came
back to his seat, and said,--

"What is a symbol? According to Littre it is a 'figure or image used as
a sign of something else;' and we Catholics narrow the definition by
saying with Hugues de Saint Victor that a symbol is an allegorical
representation of a Christian principle under a tangible image.

"Now symbolism has existed ever since the beginning of the world. Every
religion adopted it, and in o