However, the crowd once more regained its self-control. The need, not of understanding--it seemed not to care about that at first--but of seeing and grasping the entire manifestation of the phenomena mastered the force let loose in its midst. It became silent again. It gazed. And it _listened_. Yonder--I dare not say on the screen, for, in truth, so abnormal were its dimensions that the picture overflowed the frame and was propelled into the space outside--yonder, that which had impressed us as being disorder and chaos became organized in accordance with a certain rhythm which at length grew perceptible to us. The movement to and fro was that of artisans performing a well-regulated task; and the task was accomplished about an immense fabric in the course of erection. How all these artisans were clad in a fashion absolutely different from our own; and, on the other hand, the tools which they employed, the appearance of their ladders, the shape of their scaffoldings, their manner of carrying loads and of hoisting the necessary materials in wicker baskets to the upper floors, all these things, together with a multitude of further details, brought us into the heart of a period which must have been the thirteenth or fourteenth century. There were numbers of monks supervising the works, calling out orders from one end of the vast site to the other, setting out measurements and not disdaining themselves to mix the mortar, to push a wheel-barrow or to saw a stone. Women of the people, uttering their cries at the top of their voices, walked about bearing jars of wine with which they filled cups that were at once emptied by the thirsty labourers. A beggar went by. Two tattered singers began to roar a ditty, accompanying themselves on a sort of guitar. And a troop of acrobats, all lacking an arm, or a leg, or both legs, were preparing to give their show, when the scene changed without any transition, like a stage setting which is altered by the mere pressure of a button. What we now saw was the same picture of a building in process of construction. But this time we clearly distinguished the plan of the edifice, the whole base of a Gothic cathedral displaying its huge proportions. And on these courses of masonry, which had reached the lower level of the towers, and along the fronts and before the niches and on the steps of the porch, everywhere, in fact, swarmed stone-hewers, masons, sculptors, carpenters, apprentices and monks. And the costumes were no longer the same. A century or two had passed.