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Entering the fine southern porch, we are ushered into the splendid Norman nave bordered by exceptionally high piers, rising thirty feet, and surmounted by a low triforium and clerestory. The design is rather dwarfed by thus impoverishing the upper stories.
At Le Mans everything soars as only a Gothic building, and pre-eminently a French Gothic building, can soar. The pillars, of enormous height, support the clerestory without a triforium. But the effect of the triforium is there still.
The Confessor's Chapel made, on occasion, a convenient playground for Westminster scholars, who were allowed, as late as 1829, to keep the scenes for their annual play in the triforium of the north transept.
The figures in the lower stage represent the kings of England, apostles, and saints. The interior of the nave discloses stone vaulting and Decorated architecture, with large clerestory windows, but a small triforium. The bosses of the roof, which presents an unbroken line, are seventy feet above the floor.
The interior has a clean and fresh appearance owing to the recent restorations and is chiefly remarkable for the balustraded triforium which is continued round the whole church. In many of the windows there is glass belonging to the sixteenth century and some dates as early as the fourteenth century.
In the lobby he spoke to another woman, who replied, 'Ah, oui, Monsieur l'Abbe! Two women having spoken to him, there could be no harm in a third doing likewise. 'Monsieur l'Abbe, said Paula in French, 'could you indicate to me the stairs of the triforium? and she signified her reason for wishing to know by pointing to the glimmering light above.
The external faces of the inward walls of these towers are now inclosed under the roof of William's triforium, and it may be seen that they were once exposed to the weather." The arches in St. Anselm's tower were originally set up by Ernulf, but there is reason to believe that they were rebuilt after the great conflagration.
The Norman nave is of eight bays with semicircular arches, surmounted by a triforium of rows of arches almost equal to those below, and rising from piers with clustered side-columns. It is nearly three-fourths the height of the lower stage, and this produces a grand effect. The flat roof is modern, it and the bells having been replaced after the church was burned in the last century.
All round the Norman portion of the church, below the windows, is an arcade of round arches with simple round mouldings and plain cushion capitals: in the transepts these have not intersecting heads, as in the choir and nave. The western sides of the transepts have no proper triforium, but a passage runs along in front of the windows in the triforium range.
In the north transept the moulding between the clerestory and triforium is dog-tooth. It is plain in the south transept. The arcades of the aisles are practically the same in both aisles, except for the differences noted between the east and west aisle of the south transepts. There are two rows of dog-tooth moulding round the windows in the aisles of the north transept, but only one in the south.
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