Notre Dame, Paris 1 2

Fifteen years later I returned to Paris, conscious that I owed a debt to this lady. I left my bags at the little hotel directly across the Seine and walked to the cathedral, already swarming with early morning tour groups. I walked up the north aisle, surprised that I could not see her, for she should have been strikingly visible. Uniformed attendants were setting up barricades for a festival service. Across these I found her, small, bereft, a fraction of the size of the madonna of my memory. A few candles burned in front of her but the morning light made the stone of her robe look grey and cold.

What had happened to her? Perhaps one could say she "looked smaller" than her objective size this time because of the time of day or the commotion around her. Perhaps. But by the same token, she "looked bigger" the first time because of the dark and the candles.

The more decisive effect, though, occurred in memory, outside the trained part of my brain but intersecting with it. The art historian in me would have told you that she was about twice the height she actually is for she grew as I remembered her over the years. Moreover, she grew without my being aware of it.

I have no doubt this effect was planned, for the sculptor would have known the context she was intended for, would have known she would stand in a darkened space, surrounded by flickering candles and that she would receive the unguarded prayers of people in need. They would light candles at her feet and leave, remembering her as large and strong because the sculptor had bridged the gap between stone and heaven.

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