Durtal was wondering--what potent necromancer could evoke the spirits of these royal doorkeepers, compel them to speak, and enable us to overhear the colloquy they perhaps hold when in the evening they seem to withdraw behind the curtain of shadow?
What have they to say to each other--they who have seen Saint Bernard, Saint Louis, Saint Ferdinand, Saint Fulbert, Saint Yves, Blanche of Castille--so many of the Elect walking past on their way into the starry gloom of the nave?
Did they cause the death of their companions, the five other statues that have vanished for ever from the little assembly?
Do they listen, through the closed doors, to the wailing breath of heart-broken psalms, and the roaring tide of the organ?
Can they hear the inane exclamations of the tourists who laugh to see them so stiff and so lengthy?
Do they, as many saints have done, smell the fetor of sin, the foul reek of evil in the souls that pass by them?
Why, then, who would dare to look at them?
And still Durtal looked at them, for he could not tear himself away; they held him fast by the undying fascination of their mystery; in short, he concluded, they are supra-terrestrial under the semblance of humanity.

They have no bodies; it is the soul alone that dwells in the wrought sheath of their raiment; they are in perfect harmony with the cathedral, which, divesting itself of its stones, soars in ecstatic flight above the earth.
The crowning achievement of mystical architecture and statuary are here, at Chartres; the most rapturous, the most superhuman art which ever flourished in the flat plains of La Beauce.
And now, having contemplated the whole effect of this facade, he went close to it again to examine its minutest accessories and details, to study more closely the robes of these sovereigns; then he observed that no two were alike in their drapery.

Some flowed without any broken folds, in ridge and furrow like the fall of rippling water; others hung closely gathered in parallel flutings like the ribs on stems of angelica, and the stern material lent itself to the needs of the dressers, was soft in the figured crape and fustian and fine linen, heavy in the brocade and gold tissue.

Every texture was distinct; the necklaces were chased bead by bead; the knots of the girdles might be untied, so naturally were the strands entwined; the bracelets and crowns were pierced and hammered and adorned with gems, each in its setting, as if by practised goldsmiths.
And in many cases the pedestal, the statue, and the canopy were all carved out of one block, in one piece.

What were the men who executed such work?
It is probable that they lived in convents, for art was not at that time cultivated or practised but in the precincts of God.