"In point of fact," said Durtal to himself as he stood dreaming on the market-place, "no one exactly knows what was the origin of the Gothic forms of a cathedral.

Archaeologists and architects have exhausted hypotheses and systems in vain; they seem to agree in attributing the Romanesque to Oriental parentage, and that in fact maybe proven.

That the Romanesque should be an offshoot of the Latin and Byzantine styles, and be, as Quicherat defines it, 'the style which has ceased to be Roman and is not yet Gothic, though it already has something of the Gothic,' I am ready to admit; and indeed, on examining the capitals, and studying their outline and drawing, we perceive that they are Assyrian or Persian rather than Roman or Byzantine and Gothic; but as to discovering the paternity even of the pointed and flamboyant styles, that is quite another thing.

Some writers assert that the pointed arch based on an equilateral triangle existed in Egypt, Syria, and Persia; others regard it as descended from Saracen and Arab art; nothing certainly is provable.
"Again, it must be clearly stated that the pointed equilateral arch, which some persons still suppose to be the distinctive characteristic of an era in architecture, is not so in fact, as Quicherat has very clearly demonstrated, and, since him, Lecoy de la Marche.

The study of archives has, on this point, completely overset the hobbies of architects, and demolished the twaddle of the Bonzes.