In the third and final period of Plantagenet Gothic, the ribs ramified more and more. They had first been increased about the windows of apses, because an eight-branch vault was better suited to a square than to a curve. During the years preceding 1250, the ramification of the ribs grew very complicated. All divisions between the vault sections were eliminated, and the masonry roof appeared to be continuous, one bay melting subtly into the next--in reality a cradle vault, _à pénétrations_, carried on intercrossing, branching Gothic ribs. The construction of such stone roofs was no easy matter and comparatively few of them were built. It is interesting to note that a germ of the Angevin school when carried to England, then under the same Plantagenet rule, developed into what is a unique architectural glory, English fan tracery vaulting. Most of the monuments of Angevin art fall under the three main divisions here given. Like a beautiful hybrid, the Plantagenet stone roof passed through a continuous series of transformations, while in northern France, once a satisfactory masonry vault had been achieved, it was adhered to faithfully as a classic type until the Flamboyant, or final, phase. Frequently a Plantagenet church is extremely plain outside, in striking contrast with the aërial grace of its interior. The cause is a structural one, hence satisfactory. The thrust of a _bombé_ vault is not altogether concentrated on branching ribs, piers, and buttresses, but in part is borne by the inclosure walls. Hence these latter were made thick and pierced merely by lancet windows; with such walls there was no need of flying buttresses. When the piers were somewhat relieved of the roof load by the thick walls, they could be made exceedingly slender. There is an effect of gracious winsomeness in certain Plantagenet churches, to be described only by such words as "fairylike" and "Saracenic." The transient perfect moment of the art of northern France was seized and rendered by the curving transept at Soissons, an ideal vision of the Beyond. In southwestern France the first, fine, careless rapture nothing can recapture is to be found in St. Serge at Angers, of lesser genius than Soissons, but, like it, possessed of an enthrallment that is enduring. THE CATHEDRAL OF ANGERS.[184] A mon avis, ceux qui n'ont pas au moins le tourment religieux ignorent la moitié de la vie, et la plus belle, la moitié de la pitié. Un esprit est bien incomplet s'il ne s'élève pas jusqu'à sa destinée, et un coeur est bien faible s'il n'a que des motifs humains d'agir, de se contraindre, et de se donner ou de pardonner.--RENÉ BAZIN (born in Angers, 1850). No city in southwestern France is a more satisfactory center for a comparative study of Plantagenet Gothic than Angers--the old Black Angers of history, which owed its importance not to any pre-eminence of site, but to the powerful line whose cradle land it was.