ach, is hammering the skull
of a wretch who struggles, grinding his teeth, while the devil bites his
legs with the end of his tail that bears a serpent's head. Another
monster, with a crushed face and pendant breasts, a man's face in his
stomach and wings springing from his loins, has clasped a priest in his
arms and is pitching him head foremost into a cauldron boiling over the
flames from a dragon's mouth blown up with bellows by two of the devil's
slaves. And in this cauldron sit two figures symbolical of slander and
lust, a monk and a woman writhing and weeping, for enormous toads are
gnawing at the tongue of one and at the heart of the other.

On the other side of Saint Michael the scene is different; a chubby,
smiling angel is playing with a child whom he has perched on one of his
fellow-angels' shoulders, and the infant delightedly waves a bough;
behind him slowly marches a representative group of saints--a woman, a
king, a cenobite, conducted by Saint Peter towards a doorway leading to
a sanctum where sits Abraham, an old man with a cloth spread over his
knees full of little heads all rejoicing--the souls that are saved.

And Durtal, as he recalled the features of Saint Michael and his angels,
perceived that they were the brethren in art of the Saint Anne, Saint
Joseph, and the angel of the great portal at Reims. They were all of the
same peculiar type--a young and yet old countenance, a long sharp nose
and pointed chin; only here, perhaps, a little rounder, a little less
angular than at Reims.

This sort of family likeness gave support to a theory that the same
sculptors or their pupils had worked on the carvings of those two
cathedrals, but not at Chartres, where no similar type is to be seen;
though a certain striking resemblance exists between other statues in
the north porch and some figures, of a different class however, on the
facade at Reims.

"Anyone of these hypotheses may be correct, though there is no chance of
proving their truth, for we can discover no information with regard to
the schools of art of the period," said Durtal to himself, as he turned
his attention to the left-hand bay of the south porch, dedicated to the
martyrs.

There, in the archway of the door, dwelt, side by side, Saint Vincent
the deacon, of Spain; Saint Denys the bishop; Saint Piat the priest; and
Saint George the warrior; all four victims of the ingenious cruelty of
the infidels.

Saint Vincent in his long gown hung a