122
MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES
impersonal ; and she rather abruptly ordered her architect at Chartres
to go back to the old arrangement.   The apse at Paris was hardly
covered with its leading be-
fore the architect of Chartres
adopted a totally new plan,
which, according to Viollet-
le-Duc, does him little credit,
but which was plainly im-
posed on him, like the twelfth-
century portal. Not only had
it nothing of the mathemati-
cal correctness and precision
of the Paris scheme, easy to
understand and imitate, but it
carried even a sort of violence
— a wrench — in its system,
as though the Virgin had
said, with her grand Byzan-
tine air: — I will it!
"At Chartres," said Viol-
let-le-Duc, "the choir of the Cathedral presents a plan which does
no great honour to its architect. There is want of accord between
the circular apse and the parallel sides of the sanctuary; the spac-
ings of the columns of the second collateral are loose (lâches); the
vaults quite poorly combined; and in spite of the great width of
the spaces between the columns of the second aisle, the architect had
still to narrow those between the interior columns."
The plan shows that, from the first, the architect must have delib-
erately rejected the Paris scheme; he must have begun by narrowing
the spaces between his inner columns; then, with a sort of violence,
he fitted on his second row of columns; and, finally, he showed his
motive by constructing an outer wall of an original or unusual shape.
Chartres