and in ruins, like Jumièges, like St. Bertin, like Villers,
like Holyrood, like Montrose Abbey, like the temple of
Paestum, like the hypogeum of Thebes, becomes almost an
element, and possesses the virginal and religious grandeur
of a savannah or of a forest. There something of the real
Presence is to be found.

Such places are truly holy; man has meditated and
communed with himself therein. What they contained of
truth has remained and become greater. The ~à-pcu-prês~
has no longer any voice. Extinct dogmas have not left their
ashes; the prayer of the past has left its perfume. There
is something of the absolute in prayer, and because of this,
that which was a synagogue, that which was a mosque, that
which was a pagoda, is venerable. A stone on which that
great anxiety that is called prayer has left its impress is
never treated with ridicule by the thinker. The trace left
by those who have bowed down before the infinite is always
imposing.

In strolling about the cathedral I had climbed to the
triforium, then under the arched buttresses, then to the top
of the edifice. The timber-work under the pointed roof is
admirable; but less remarkable than the "forest" of
Amiens. It is of chestnut-wood.

These cathedral attics are of grim appearance. One
could almost lose one's self in the labyrinths of rafters,
squares, traverse beams, superposed joists, traves,
architraves, girders, madriers, and tangled lines and curves. One