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And I have told him, told our friend, that he should attend the first morning Mass in the crypt, and he will see what a welcome our Mother gives her visitors." "Chartres is a marvellous place," said the Abbé Gévresin, "with its two black Madonnas Notre Dame of the Pillar, above in the body of the church, and Notre Dame de Sous-Terre below, in the vault over which the basilica is built.
Indeed, She effects more moral than physical cures. Notre Dame de Fourvières at Lyon, Notre Dame de Sous-Terre at Chartres, Notre Dame des Victoires at Paris, to mention only three. "Wherefore this difference? None can understand, and probably none will ever know.
"Philip Augustus and Isabella of Hainault, Blanche of Castille and Saint Louis, Philippe de Valois, Jean le Bon, Charles V., Charles VI., Charles VII., Charles VIII. and Anne de Bretagne; then François I., Henri III. and Louise de Vaudemont, Catherine de' Medici; Henri IV., who was crowned in this Cathedral, Anne of Austria, Louis XIV., Maria Leczinska, and so many others all the nobility of France; and Ferdinand of Spain, and Léon de Lusignan, the last King of Armenia, and Pierre de Courtenay, Emperor of Constantinople all kneeling like the poor folks of to-day, and like them beseeching Notre Dame de Sous-Terre."
Any other view of the cloister is to regard it as a citizen's home, and that is absurd. My apprehensions, my antagonism, my compromises, are disgraceful! "Yes; but where can I find the necessary strength to brush myself clean from this dust of the soul?" And at last, when he felt himself bruised by these alternating desires and fears, he took refuge with Notre Dame de Sous-Terre.
They seated themselves in the gloom of the side aisle of the choir, where the dark-toned windows were still further obscured by a poorly executed wooden niche, in which the Virgin, as dark as her namesake in the crypt, Notre Dame de Sous-Terre, stood on a pillar, hung round with bunches of metal hearts and little lamps on coronas, from the roof.
As he turned, with his back to the altar, he could see the low aisle in retreating perspective, and at the end, as in a tunnel, the light of day unluckily, for it allowed him to discern certain hideous paintings of scenes commemorating the ecclesiastical glories of Chartres: the visit paid to the cathedral by Mary de' Medici and Henri IV.; Louis XIII. and his mother; Monsieur Olier offering to the Virgin the keys of the Seminary of Saint Sulpice with a dress of gold brocade; Louis XIV. at the feet of Notre Dame de Sous-Terre; by the grace of heaven, the remaining frescoes seemed extinct; at any rate, they lay in shadow.
The great thing is that you leave a town just like any other town, to inhabit the very home of the Virgin. Just think! Notre Dame de Sous-Terre is the most ancient chapel to Mary in all France; think! you will live near Her, with Her, and She will load you with mercies!" "And after all," the Abbé went on, "this exile cannot interfere with any of your schemes in art.
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