In mediæval reckoning that mountainous, central province of France which was called Auvergne was counted in Languedoc. Therefore, to place the cathedral of Clermont in this general group of Midi Gothic is permissible. It is a daughter of Amiens, of the northern French type, and yet it belongs in a marked degree to its own volcanic region of mountains and storms. In it is the endurance and sturdy individuality of Auvergne, the inmost heart of France, where the Romanesque work may be said to be indigenous, so directly does it derive from the local traditions of Rome grafted on those of Gaul, and scarcely touched by those of Byzantium. The chief Gothic church of Clermont has in it much of Romanesque austerity. The black lava of which it is built sets it apart among French cathedrals. "A pious fear of God makes itself felt in this spot," wrote a son of Clermont, Gregory of Tours, of the cathedral governed by Bishop Sidonius Apollinaris, Gallo-Roman and "last zealot for Latin letters." And though not a stone of the present edifice is of historian Gregory's day, one often murmurs in its precincts, "_Terribilis est locus iste_," and one often experiences in this abode of Jehovah the Lord, _un frisson d'âme à la Pascal_. In Clermont, where even the serene Gothic art could not free itself of the fire-torn mountains around, the somber soul of Pascal first experienced religion. That he should overstress the fall of man and original sin, what wonder? But Jansenist in temperament though he was--overwhelmed by man's nothingness and God's grandeur--the mystic Pascal was no rigid pessimist. Cathedral and man of genius both preach the resurrection after the fall, both have the upward surge of hope, even as the fearful summit of the Puy-de-Dôme, standing over Clermont, outsoars the storm clouds hiding its base, to rear its head in sunlight. For all its soberness, the cathedral of Clermont has the true Gothic sweep of the spirit _au-delà_. Happy the traveler who first approaches it at sunset, coming slowly across the mountain-walled plain, out of the Forez hills of rushing torrents where is set the Chaise Dieu. The cathedral crowns the foothill around which has settled the city, and as it stands silhouetted against a bluish haze of mountain--the extinct crater, the Puy-de-Dôme--it fulfills the ideal of a church crowning a city.[207] Seen from the town, the massed volcanic hills are sufficiently near for their woods and villages to add picturesque details to the ever-changing views, yet not so close that they hang oppressively over the city. Other views of the cathedral can be gained from the foothills around Royat, whose small, sturdy church was fortified to bar the valley into the huge mountain behind it.