They seem to follow with their silent lips the noiseless priests as they perform that ritual order of Notre-Dame de Chartres, which rejoiced the Gothic soul of Gaston de Latour; a year-long dramatic action, in which everyone had and knew his part--the drama or mystery of redemption, to the necessities of which the great church had shaped itself. For all those various ‘offices’ which, in pontifical, missal and breviary, devout imagination had elaborated from age to age with such a range of spiritual colour and light and shade, with so much poetic tact in quotation, such a depth of insight into the Christian soul, had been joined harmoniously together, one office ending only where another began, in the perpetual worship of this mother of churches. And Notre-Dame had also its own picturesque peculiarities of ‘use,’ and was proud of its maternal privilege therein.[77] You notice the rich tones of the masonry, made richer by the jewelled lights of those rare windows; you notice in the centre of the nave the mysterious maze traced upon the pavement, the scene in old times of much devotional exercise,--la Lieue, it is vulgarly termed, for the miniature pilgrimages, along the line of white stones, with prayers at stated intervals, as once at Reims, Amiens, Arras, and Bayeux, earned many indulgences, and took the place of a journey to Jerusalem. This, with the exception of that at S. Quentin, is the only remaining instance of a labyrinth in the French churches. Above you, around you, tower the piers and vaulting of the nave-- ‘Heavy as nightmare, airy light as fern, Imagination’s very self in stone. Solemn the lift of high-embowered roof; Solemn the deepening vault.’