S. Malard and S. Solemnis, S. Lubin and S. Martin fill the fifth and sixth. The seventh and eighth, which are now in a deplorable condition, once illustrated the lives of S. Denis and S. Clement, the pope and martyr. S. Gregory and S. Sylvester fill the ninth, the Virgin and Child, with the donor kneeling below, the tenth.
The eleventh traces the history of the parents of the Virgin. Joachim and Anna are repelled by the priest, Anne by her servant. Joachim feeds his flocks; an angel appears to him and also to S. Anne, who goes out and meets her husband at the gates of Jerusalem. She gives birth to Mary, who presents herself at the Temple and marries Joseph.
The twelfth window portrays further scenes in the life of the Virgin—the Annunciation, Visitation, Birth of Christ, Adoration of the Magi, the Presentation and Death of Mary.
The windows of the choir, with the exception of those in the apse, are of thirteenth-century glass. In them the patriarchs, prophets and personages of the Old Testament are shown, to the number of forty, carrying palms in their hands, and speaking, apparently, to each other.
The six apsidal windows contain the most brilliant glass in the abbey. They are as remarkable, so M. l’Abbé Clerval observes, for elegance of design as for vivacity of colouring. Each of them holds four life-size figures of bishops or apostles surrounded with rich architectural ornamentation; whilst the heads, divided into three quatrefoils, give scenes of martyrdom and an angel bearing a crown for the martyred saints below.
The grisailles of the triforium were replaced in the early part of the nineteenth century by some glass painted in 1527 by Robert Pinaigrier, which had been saved from the adjacent Church of S. Hilaire, destroyed during the Revolution. Unfortunately they have been arranged with extraordinary indifference to their meaning, and pieces of glass have been stuck in pell-mell according as they happened to suit the shape of the window or convenience of the glazier. The result is that windows which, both in colouring and design, were quite exceptionally good have been deprived of all the charm of their design and much of the effect of their colour.
The lower series of windows of the church are for the most part modern. They represent chiefly scenes from the Gospel story of the life of Christ and come from the hand of M. Lorin, the glass-painter of Chartres, whose atelier is in the Rue de la Tannerie.
Leaving the study of the glass you should now go to the apsidal chapel dedicated to the Conception. This chapel has been restored and polychromed by M. Paul Durand, and contains a statue of the Virgin by Bridan and the tombstone of Simon de Beron, Canon of Chartres in the twelfth century. But it is the magnificent Limoges enamels of Leonard Limousin, 1547, which we wish to see. They are ranged round the walls of the chapel, and in order to see them you must ring the bell near the chapel railings and summon the attendant.
These enamels, which are of extraordinary beauty and size (24 x 10⅝), exquisite in colour and shading, and are in perfect preservation, come from the chapel of the famous Château d’Anet, which Diane de Poitiers built, voulant une œuvre toute Française, and of which Henri II. wrote to his Queen—
‘S’il vous souvient, Madame, d’avoir lu
En quelque livre élégante et eslu
Le dessein rare et la description
De quelque lieu beau en perfection
Je vous supply imaginer et croire
Que c’est d’Annet le pourtraict et l’histoire.’