The bugle cry of red, the limpid confidence of white, the repeated Hallelujahs of yellow, the virginal glory of blue, all the quivering crucible of glass was dimmed as it got nearer to this border dyed with rusty red, the tawny hues of sauces, the harsh purples of sandstone, bottle-green, tinder-brown, fuliginous blacks, and ashy greys.
As at Bourges, where the glass is of the same period, Oriental influence was visible in these windows at Chartres.

Not only had the figures the hieratic appearance, the sumptuous and barbarous dignity of Asiatic personages, but the borders, in their design and the arrangement of their colours, were an evident reminiscence of the Persian carpets which undoubtedly served as models to the painters; since it is known from the _Livre des Metiers_ that in the thirteenth century hangings copied from those which the Crusaders brought from the Levant were manufactured in France, and in Paris itself.
But, apart from the question of subjects or borders, the various colours of these pictures were, so to speak, but an accessory crowd, handmaidens whose part it was to set off another colour, namely blue--a glorious, indescribable blue, a vivid sapphire hue of excessive transparency, pale but piercing and sparkling throughout, glittering like the broken glass of a kaleidoscope--in the top-lights, in the roses of the transepts, and in the great west window, where it burned like the blue flame of sulphur, among the lead-lines and black iron bars.
Taken for all in all, with the tones of its stone-work and its windows, Notre Dame de Chartres was fair with blue eyes.

He personified Her as a sort of white fairy, a tall and slender virgin, with large blue eyes under lids of translucent rose.

This was the Mother of a Christ of the North, the Christ of a Pre-Raphaelite Flemish painter.

She sat enthroned in a Heaven of ultramarine, surrounded by these Oriental hangings of glass--a pathetic reminder of the Crusades.
And these transparent hangings were like flowers, redolent of sandal and pepper, fragrant with the subtle spices of the Magian kings; a perfumed flower-bed of hues culled at the cost of so much blood in the fields of Palestine; and here offered by the West, under the cold sky of Chartres, to the Virgin Mother in remembrance of the sunny lands where She dwelt and where Her Son chose to be born.
"Where could you find a grander shrine or a more sublime dwelling for Our Mother ?" said the Abbe as he pointed to the nave.
This exclamation roused Durtal from his reflections, and he listened as the priest went on,-- "Though this cathedral is unique as regards its width, in spite of its enormous height it cannot compare with the extravagant elevation of Bourges, Amiens, and more especially of Beauvais, where the vault of the roof rises to forty-eight metres from the ground.