And Anna brings forth Mary, whom they dedicate to the Lord.
"Years then pass, till the time comes when the Virgin is to be betrothed.

The High Priest bids all of the children of the House of David who are of age, and not yet married, to come to the altar with a rod in their hand; and to discern which of these shall be chosen to marry the Virgin, Abiathar, the High Priest, inquires of the Most High, who repeats the prophecy of Isaiah which declares that a flower shall come out of Jesse on which the Holy Spirit shall rest.
"And immediately the rod blossoms of one of those present, Joseph the Carpenter, and a dove descends from heaven to settle on it.
"So Mary is given to Joseph, and the marriage takes place; Messiah is born, and Herod massacres the Innocents; and there the gospel of the Nativity ends, and the story is taken up by the Holy Scriptures, which follow the Life of Jesus to the hour of His last appearance on earth after His death.
"These scenes, set forth in small simple imagery, serve as a border at the bottom of the vast presentment which extends from tower to tower over all three doors.
"Here the scenes are placed which are intended to attract the crowd by plainer and more visible images; here we see the general theme of this portal in all its splendour, recapitulating the Gospels and achieving the purpose of the Church itself.
"On the left we see the Ascension of Our Lord, soaring triumphant on clouds rendered by a waving scroll held on each side, in the Byzantine manner, by two angels; while below, the Apostles with uplifted faces, gaze at this ascension pointed out to them by other angels who have descended and hover over them, their fingers extended towards the sky.
"The hollow moulding of the arch is filled up with a calendar and zodiac of stone.
"The right-hand side shows the Assumption of Our Lady, seated on a throne, sceptre in hand, and holding the Infant, who blesses the world.
Beneath are the episodes of Her life: the Annunciation, the Visitation, the Nativity, the homage of the shepherds, and the presentation of Jesus to the High Priest; and the bend of the arch, rising to a point like a mitre above the Mother, has the mouldings enriched with two lines of figures, one of archangels bearing censers, with wings closely imbricated as if with tiles, the other of personifications of the seven liberal arts, each represented by two figures--one allegorical, and the other the presentment of the inventor, or of the paragon of that art in antiquity.

This is the same scheme of expression as we see in the cathedral at Laon; the paraphrase in sculpture of scholastic theology, and a rendering in images of the text of Albertus Magnus, who, after rehearsing the perfections of the Virgin, declares that She possessed a perfect knowledge of the seven arts: grammar, rhetoric, dialectic, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music--all the lore of the Middle Ages.
"Finally, in the middle, the great doorway illustrates the subject round which the storied carving of the other doors all centres: the Glorification of Our Lord, as Saint John beheld it at Patmos; the Apocalypse, the last book of the Bible, spread open on the forefront of the basilica, above the grand entrance to the church.
"Jesus is seated, on His head the cruciform nimbus, robed in the linen talaris and draped in a mantle which hangs in a fall of close pleats; His bare feet rest on a stool, emblematical of the earth, according to Isaiah.

With one hand He blesses the world; in the other He holds the Book with the seven Seals.

About him, in the oval glory or _Vesica_, we see the Tetramorph--the four evangelical emblems with closely fretted wings: the winged cherub, the lion, the eagle, and the ox, figuring St.
Matthew, St.Mark, St.John, and St.Luke.Above are the twelve Apostles holding scrolls and books.
"And to complete the Apocalyptic vision, in the hollow mouldings of the arch are the twelve Angels and four and twenty Elders described by St.
John, in white raiment and crowned with gold, playing on musical instruments, and singing in the perpetual adoration which some few souls, dwelling isolated in the midst of the indifference of this age, still carry on.