What I rediscover in Saint-Eustache, less austere than its grand sister of the Middle Age, but with a sweetness which is itself noble, is the determination of the architect to subordinate everything to the effect of simplicity, to the total effect. On each side of the nave the columns cutting the side wall are disposed fanwise in order to hide the light of the lateral windows. One sees nothing but the stone, and yet there is no effect of heaviness; one could not make anything lighter. This is because the color of the stone is admirably varied by the diversity of the flutings that line the columns. The main fluting marks the outline, and the others, less emphatic, shading off, give it a velvet-like quality. The light throws a golden haze between the great columns, among the deep gorges, and is, on the other hand, channeled, streaked by the little nerves that impel it upward toward the vaults. By this effect of lightness the building seems to rise; it is an assumption. It is no longer the forest of trees that one finds here, but the forest of creepers. These vertiginous columns are like fine, delicate vines. Above the altar the great lights of the windows, with their beautiful glass, harmonize well with the general color. The light, at once abundant and restrained, has the coolness which the Renaissance recaptured from Greece. This church welcomes one as with an immense smile; it has the sweetness of Christ holding out his hands: "Suffer the little children to come unto me." Intelligence has planned it, but it is the heart that has modeled it. If we enter Saint-Eustache at nightfall, we could almost believe ourselves in a Gothic building. The Renaissance did not bring about such profound transformations in architecture as people think. There is a heavy Italian Renaissance element that is altogether alien to us; but in the true French Renaissance the Celtic taste was not betrayed: it was modified with a certain grace and elegance. Grace is an aspect of strength. A nation no more escapes from its racial quality than a man from his temperament. The Celtic mingled with the Roman produced the Romance, out of which the Gothic sprang directly--the Romance, that is to say, the Roman which has passed through the spirit of the Franks. It has the severity, the Roman qualities, united with the imagination of the Barbarians, since we have agreed so to call them. The Romance of the second epoch has already sprung forth; it rises during the eleventh and twelfth centuries and goes to make the Gothic. The Gothic elevates and magnifies the Romance. It detaches the buttresses, even to the point of separating them from the walls, in order to carry them further out to sustain the height of the nave.