Hundreds of swallows had constructed their nests under the borders of trefoil, and even in the hollows of the bell-turrets and the pinnacles, and they were continually brushing their wings against the flying buttresses and the piers which they inhabited.
There were also the wood-pigeons of the elms in the Bishop's garden, who held themselves up proudly on the borders of the terraces, going slowly, as if walking merely to show themselves off.

Sometimes, half lost in the blue sky, looking scarcely larger than a fly, a crow alighted on the point of a spire to smooth its wings.

The old stones themselves were animated by the quiet working of the roots of a whole flora of plants, the lichens and the grasses, which pushed themselves through the openings in the walls.

On very stormy days the entire apse seemed to awake and to grumble under the noise of the rain as it beat against the leaden tiles of the roof, running off by the gutters of the cornices and rolling from story to story with the clamour of an overflowing torrent.
Even the terrible winds of October and of March gave to it a soul, a double voice of anger and of supplication, as they whistled through its forests of gables and arcades of roseate ornaments and of little columns.

The sun also filled it with life from the changing play of its rays; from the early morning, which rejuvenated it with a delicate gaiety, even to the evening, when, under the slightly lengthened-out shadows, it basked in the unknown.
And it had its interior existence.