Page:The Bible of Amiens.djvu/183

cheerful temper, and buying some bonbons or tarts for the children in one of the charming patissiers' shops on the left. Just past them, ask for the theatre; and just past that, you will find, also on the left, three open arches, through which you can turn, passing the Palais de Justice, and go straight up to the south transept, which has really something about it to please everybody. It is simple and severe at the bottom, and daintily traceried and pinnacled at the top, and yet seems all of a piece—though it isn't—and everybody must like the taper and transparent fretwork of the flèche above, which seems to bend to the west wind,—though it doesn't—at least, the bending is a long habit, gradually yielded into, with gaining grace and submissiveness, during the last three hundred years. And, coming quite up to the porch, everybody must like the pretty French Madonna in the middle of it, with her head a little aside, and her nimbus switched a little aside too, like a becoming bonnet. A Madonna in decadence she is, though, for all, or rather by reason of all, her prettiness, and her gay soubrette's smile; and she has no business there, neither, for this is St. Honoré's porch, not hers; and grim and grey St. Honore used to stand there to receive you,—he is banished now to the north porch, where nobody ever goes in. This was done long ago, in the fourteenth-century