For a quarter of an hour nothing was clearly defined; then the real
things asserted themselves. In the middle of the swords, which were in
fact mosaic of glass, the figures stood out in broad daylight. In the
field of each window with its pointed arch bearded faces took form,
motionless in the midst of fire; and on all sides, in the thicket of
flames, as it were the burning bush of Horeb where God showed His glory
to Moses, the Virgin was seen in an unchangeable attitude of imperious
sweetness and pensive grace, mute and still, and crowned with gold.

She was, indeed, many; She came down from the empyrean to lower levels,
to be closer to Her flock, and at last found a place where they might
almost kiss Her feet, at the corner of an aisle that was always in
gloom; but there She wore a different aspect.

She stood forth in the middle of a window, like a tall, blue plant, and
the garnet-red foliage was supported by black iron rods.

Her colour was slightly coppery, almost Chinese, with a long nose and
rather narrow eyes; on the head there was a black coif, and She looked
steadily before Her, while the lower part of the face with its short
chin, the mouth rather drawn by two grave lines, gave it an expression
of suffering that was even a little morose. And here again, under the
immemorial name of Notre Dame de la belle Verrière, she held an infant
in a dress of raisin-purple, a child barely visible in the mixture of
dark hues all about it.

In short, She to whom all appealed was there; everywhere under the
forest roof of this cathedral the Virgin was present. She seemed to have
come from all the ends of the earth, under the semblance of every race
known in the Middle Ages: black as an African, tawny as a Mongolian,