Part 13 (1/2)

26. HAGGAI.

Inside {A. The houses of the princes, _ornees de porch lambris_. i. 4.

{B. The heaven is stayed from dew. i. 10.

To the {C. The Lord's temple desolate. i. 4.

front {D. ”Thus saith the Lord of Hosts.” i. 7.

27. ZECHARIAH.

A. The lifting up of iniquity. v. 6-9.

B. The angel that spake to me. iv. 1.

28. MALACHI.

A. ”Ye have wounded the Lord.” ii. 17.

B. This commandment is to _you_. ii. 1.

[Footnote 60: See the Septuagint version.]

41. Having thus put the sequence of the statues and their quatrefoils briefly before the spectator--(in case the railway time presses, it may be a kindness to him to note that if he walks from the east end of the cathedral down the street to the south, Rue St. Denis, it takes him by the shortest line to the station)--I will begin again with St.

Peter, and interpret the sculptures in the quatrefoils a little more fully. Keeping the fixed numerals for indication of the statues, St.

Peter's quatrefoils will be 1 A and 1 B, and Malachi's 28 A and 28 B.

1, A. COURAGE, with a leopard on his s.h.i.+eld; the French and English agreeing in the reading of that symbol, down to the time of the Black Prince's leopard coinage in Aquitaine.[61]

[Footnote 61: For a list of the photographs of the quatrefoils described in this chapter, see the appendices at the end of this volume.]

2, B. COWARDICE, a man frightened at an animal darting out of a thicket, while a bird sings on. The coward has not the heart of a thrush.

2, A. PATIENCE, holding a s.h.i.+eld with a bull on it (never giving back).[62]

[Footnote 62: In the cathedral of Laon there is a pretty compliment paid to the oxen who carried the stones of its tower to the hill-top it stands on. The tradition is that they harnessed themselves,--but tradition does not say how an ox can harness himself even if he had a mind. Probably the first form of the story was only that they went joyfully, ”lowing as they went.” But at all events their statues are carved on the height of the tower, eight, colossal, looking from its galleries across the plains of France. See drawing in Viollet le Duc, under article ”Clocher.”]

2, B. ANGER, a woman stabbing a man with a sword. Anger is essentially a feminine vice--a man, worth calling so, may be driven to fury or insanity by _indignation_, (compare the Black Prince at Limoges,) but not by anger. Fiendish enough, often so--”Incensed with indignation, Satan stood, _unterrified_--” but in that last word is the difference, there is as much fear in Anger, as there is in Hatred.

3, A. GENTILLESSE, bearing s.h.i.+eld with a lamb.

3, B. CHURLISHNESS, again a woman, kicking over her cup-bearer.

The final forms of ultimate French churlishness being in the feminine gestures of the Cancan.

See the favourite prints in shops of Paris.

4, A. LOVE; the Divine, not human love: ”I in them, and Thou in me.” Her s.h.i.+eld bears a tree with many branches grafted into its cut-off stem: ”In those days shall Messiah be cut off, but not for Himself.”

4, B. DISCORD, a wife and husband quarrelling. She has dropped her distaff (Amiens wool manufacture, see farther on--9, A.)

5, A. OBEDIENCE, bears s.h.i.+eld with camel. Actually the most disobedient and ill-tempered of all serviceable beasts,--yet pa.s.sing his life in the most painful service. I do not know how far his character was understood by the northern sculptor; but I believe he is taken as a type of burden-bearing, without joy or sympathy, such as the horse has, and without power of offence, such as the ox has. His bite is bad enough, (see Mr. Palgrave's account of him,) but presumably little known of at Amiens, even by Crusaders, who would always ride their own war-horses, or nothing.

5, B. REBELLION, a man snapping his fingers at his Bishop.