Others believe that the Devil, who can command the lightning, was bent on suppressing this sanctuary at any cost." "But why, then, did not the Virgin protect Her particular church more effectually ?" "You may observe that She has several times preserved it from being utterly reduced to cinders; however, it is, all the same, very strange when we remember that Chartres is the first place where the Virgin was worshipped in France.

It goes back to Messianic times, for, long before Joachim's daughter was born, the Druids had erected, in the cave which has become our crypt, an altar to the Virgin who should bear a child--_Virgini Pariturae_.

They, by a sort of grace, had intuitive foreknowledge of a Saviour whose Mother should be spotless; thus it would seem that at Chartres, above all places, there are very ancient bonds of affection with Mary.

This makes it very natural that Satan should be bent on breaking them." "Do you know," said Durtal, "that this grotto is prefigured in the Old Testament by a human structure of almost official character?
In her "Life of Our Lord," that exquisite visionary, Catherine Emmerich, tells us that there was, hard by Mount Carmel, a grotto with a well, near which Elias saw a Virgin; and it was to this spot, she says, that the Jews who expected the Advent of the Redeemer made pilgrimages many times a year.
"Is not this the prototype of the cave of Chartres and the well of the Strong Saints?
"Observe, too, on the other hand, the tendency of the thunder to fall, not on the old belfry, but on the new one.

No meteorological reason, I suppose, can account for this preference; but on carefully considering the two spires, I am struck by the delicate foliage, the slender lacework of the new spire, the elegant and coquettish grace of the whole of that side.