6. I have never been able to make up my mind which was really the best way of approaching the cathedral for the first time. If you have plenty of leisure, and the day is fine, and you are not afraid of an hour's walk, the really right thing to do is to walk down the main street of the old town, and across the river, and quite out to the chalk hill[44] out of which the citadel is half quarried--half walled;--and walk to the top of that, and look down into the citadel's dry 'ditch,'--or, more truly, dry valley of death, which is about as deep as a glen in Derbyshire, (or, more precisely, the upper part of the 'Happy Valley' at Oxford, above Lower Hincksey,) and thence across to the cathedral and ascending slopes of the city; so, you will understand the real height and relation of tower and town:--then, returning, find your way to the Mount Zion of it by any narrow cross streets and chance bridges you can--the more winding and dirty the streets, the better; and whether you come first on west front or apse, you will think them worth all the trouble you have had to reach them. [Footnote 44: The strongest and finally to be defended part of the earliest city was on this height.] 7. But if the day be dismal, as it may sometimes be, even in France, of late years,--or if you cannot or will not walk, which may also chance, for all our athletics and lawn-tennis,--or if you must really go to Paris this afternoon, and only mean to see all you can in an hour or two,--then, supposing that, notwithstanding these weaknesses, you are still a nice sort of person, for whom it is of some consequence which way you come at a pretty thing, or begin to look at it--I _think_ the best way is to walk from the Hotel de France or the Place de Perigord, up the Street of Three Pebbles, towards the railway station--stopping a little as you go, so as to get into a cheerful temper, and buying some bonbons or tarts for the children in one of the charming patissiers' shops on the left. Just past them, ask for the theatre; and just past that, you will find, also on the left, three open arches, through which you can turn, passing the Palais de Justice, and go straight up to the south transept, which has really something about it to please everybody. It is simple and severe at the bottom, and daintily traceried and pinnacled at the top, and yet seems all of a piece--though it isn't--and everybody _must_ like the taper and transparent fretwork of the fleche above, which seems to bend to the west wind,--though it doesn't--at least, the bending is a long habit, gradually yielded into, with gaining grace and submissiveness, during the last three hundred years. And, coming quite up to the porch, everybody must like the pretty French Madonna in the middle of it, with her head a little aside, and her nimbus switched a little aside too, like a becoming bonnet. A Madonna in decadence she is, though, for all, or rather by reason of all, her prettiness, and