Was it, then, no longer the field of other days, that everything in it so astonished her and affected her senses in so unusual a way?
Or, rather, was not she herself so changed that, for the first time, she appreciated the beauty of the coming into life of trees and plants?
But the Cathedral at her right, the enormous mass which obstructed the sky, surprised her yet more.

Each morning she seemed to see it for the first time; she made constant discoveries in it, and was delighted to think that these old stones lived and had lived like herself.

She did not reason at all on the subject, she had very little knowledge, but she gave herself up to the mystic flight of the giant, whose coming into existence had demanded three centuries of time, and where were placed one above the other the faith and the belief of generations.

At the foundation, it was kneeling as if crushed by prayer, with the Romanesque chapels of the nave, and with the round arched windows, plain, unornamented, except by slender columns under the archivolts.

Then it seemed to rise, lifting its face and hands towards heaven, with the pointed windows of its nave, built eighty years later; high, delicate windows, divided by mullions on which were broken bows and roses.