Refuge for Huysmans, inspiration for Péguy, Chartres has a secret allure which escapes analysis in terms of art or religion. The psychology of architecture, once sufficiently articulate, betrays the same elusive charm which graces men in the major changes of life, the succession of bewilderment and mastery in adolescence, the éclat of a James Dean or the universal teddy-boy catching the imagination of a decade aware of its crossroads. I looked therefore at Chartres with a questing eye— would I be caught? should I resist? could I diagnose?

Chartres is not, at least in the factors which combine to achieve its rare effect, the work of one artist. Excluding the crypt, alterations, and some superimposed decorations, its creation spans three centuries, from the last signs of classical souvenirs in certain motifs of the west facade, to the realization, but not the fulness, of the gothic plan in its corona. The charm lies in a certain awareness of opposites bursting one from another with the improbability of butterfly from chrysalis, an inclination of the masculine in its romanesque to flirt with the feminine in its gothic, of the earthbound yet mystic in the one to consort with the poetic yet mathematical in the other, liaison without lust, personality hovering between sexes, like a poet’s perception and gentleness which does not disgrace his manhood.

Once the romanesque artist had conceived the corona—the ensemble of apse, ambulatory, and radiating chapels—the sensibility of the building raced there, as that of a man concentrates on one fine experience, or as features express a deep emotion.