We went inside after a time because it was threatening dusk and we had to make our train for Paris. I shall never forget the vast space within those wondrous doors--the world of purple and gold and blue in the windows, the blaze of a hundred and more candles upon the great altar, the shrines with their votive offerings of flaming tapers, the fat waddling mothers in bunchy skirts, the heavy priests with shovel hats and pig-like faces, the order of attendant sisters in blue collars and flaring linen headgear, the worshipful figures scattered here and there upon the hard stone floor on their knees. The vast space was full of a delicious incense; faint shadows were already pooling themselves in the arches above to blend into a great darkness. Up rose the columns, giant redwoods of stone, supporting the far-off roof; the glory of pointed windows, the richness of foliated decorations, the worshipfulness of graven saints set in shrines whose details seemed the tendrils of spring. Whatever the flower, the fruit, the leaf, the branch, could contribute in the way of artistic suggestion had here been seized upon. Only the highest order of inspiration could have conceived or planned or executed this delicious dream in stone. A guide, for a franc or two, took us high up into the organ-loft and out upon a narrow balustrade leading about the roof. Below, all France was spread out; the city of Amiens, its contour, was defined accurately. You could see some little stream, the Somme, coming into the city and leaving it. Wonderful figures of saints and devils were on every hand. We were shown a high tower in which a treaty between France and Spain had been signed. I looked down into the great well of the nave inside and saw the candles glowing like gold and the people moving like small bugs across the floor. It was a splendid confirmation of the majesty of man, the power of his ideals, the richness and extent of his imagination, the sheer ability of his hands. I would not give up my fleeting impression of Amiens for anything that I know. * * * * * As we came away from the cathedral in the dusk we walked along some branch or canal of the Somme, and I saw for the first time the peculiar kind of boat or punt used on French streams--a long affair, stub-pointed at either end. It was black and had somewhat the effect of a gondola. A Frenchman in baggy corduroy trousers and soft wool cap pulled over one ear was poling it along. It contained hay piled in a rude mass. It was warm here, in spite of the fact that it was the middle of January, and there was a feeling of spring in the air. Barfleur informed me that the worst of winter in Paris appeared between January fifteenth and the middle of March, that the spring did not really show itself until the first of April or a little later.