from fragments of the path to rome*:

The German spirit is a marvel.  There lay Porrentruy.  An odd door with Gothic turrets marked the entry to the town.  To the right of this gateway a tower, more enormous than anything I remembered to have seen, even in dreams, flanked the approach to the city.  How vast it was, how protected, how high, how saved, how enduring!  I was told later that some part of that great bastion was Roman, and I can believe it.  The Germans hate to destroy.  It overwhelmed me as visions overwhelmed, and I felt in its presence as boys feel when they first see the mountains.  Had I not been a Christian, I would have worshipped and propitiated this obsession, this everlasting thing...

Never ridicule windows.  It is out or windows that many fall to their deaths.  By windows love often enters.  Through a window went the bolt that killed King Richard.  King William's father spied Arlene from a window (I have looked through it myself, but not a soul did I see washing below).  When a mob would rule England, it breaks windows, and when a patriot would save her, he taxes them.  Out of windows we walk on to lawns in summer and meet men and women, and in winter windows are drums for the splendid music of storms that makes us feel so masterly round our fires.  The windows of the great cathedrals are all their meaning.  But for windows one would have to go out-of-doors to see daylight.  After the sun, which they serve, I know of nothing so beneficent as windows. Fie upon the ungrateful man that has no window-god in his house, and thinks himself too great a philosopher to bow down to windows!  May he live in a place without windows for a while to teach him the value of windows.  As for me, I will keep up the high worship of windows till I come to the windowless grave.  Talk to me of windows!

...Remembering him and pondering upon the advantage of strict rule, I hung on to my cart, taking care to let my feet still feel the road, and so passed through the high limestone gates of the gorge, and was in the fourth valley of the Jura, with the fifth ridge standing up black and huge before me against the last of the daylight.  There were as yet no stars.

There, in this silent place, was the little village of Underseller, and I thanked the boy, withdrew from his cart, and painfully approached the inn, where I asked the woman if she could give me something to eat, and she said that she could in about an hour, using, however, with regard to what it was I was about to have, words which I do not understand.  For the French have become quite barbaric, and I was now lost indeed in one of the inner places of the world.

A cigar is, however, even in Underlevier, a cigar; and the best cost a penny.  One of these, therefore, I bought, and then I went out smoking it into the village square, and, finding a low wall, leaned over it and contemplated the glorious clear green water tumbling and roaring along beneath it on the other side; for a little river ran through the village.

As I leaned there resting and communing I noticed how their church, close at hand, was built along the low banks of the torrent.  I admired the luxuriance of the grass these waters fed, and the generous arch of the trees beside it.  The graves seemed set in a natural place of rest and home, and just beyond this churchyard was that marriage of hewn stone and water which is the source of so peculiar a satisfaction; for the church tower was built boldly right out into the stream and the current went eddying round it.  But why it is that strong human building when it dips into water should thus affect the mind I cannot say, only that I know that it is an emotion apart to see our device and structure where it is most enduring come up against and challenge that element which we cannot conquer, and which has always in it something of danger for men.  It is therefore well to put strong moldings on to piers and quays, and to make an architecture of them, and so it was a splendid thought of the Romans to build their villas right out to the sea; so they say does Venice enthrall one, but where I have most noticed this thing is at the Mont St Michel-only one must take care to shut one's eyes or sleep during all the low tide.

As I was watching that stream against those old stones, my cigar being now half smoked, a bell began tolling, and it seemed as if the whole village were pouring into the church.  At this I was very much surprised, not having been used at any time of my life to the unanimous devotion of an entire population, but having always thought of the Faith as something fighting odds, and having seen unanimity only in places where some sham religion or other glozed over our tragedies and excused our sins.  Certainly to see all the men, women, and children of a place taking Catholicism for granted was a new sight, and so I put my cigar down carefully under a stone on top of the wall and went in with them.  It was then that I saw that what they were at was vespers.

All the village sang, knowing the psalms very well, and I noticed that their latin was nearer German than French; but what was most pleasing of all was to hear from all the men and women together that very noble good night and salutation to God which begins-

Te, lucis ante terminum.

*Belloc, Hillaire. The Path to Rome.