This is the condition to which, in 1905, one of the most precious monuments of Gothic architecture which exists in France is abandoned. And the vandals are not satisfied with secularizing the buildings, with tarring the capitals and with dooming the paintings to certain destruction.
By overloading the edifice they endanger its safety.
The War Department is not responsible for all this vandalism. It has been assigned a Gothic hall in which to store its provisions. It has used it as well as it knew how; it has applied to it the rules which are common to all military buildings; it is not the guardian of monuments of the past.
This guardianship belongs to the Bureau of Historic Monuments; its responsibility is to take notice of and to save the refectory of Saint-Jean-des-Vignes.
It is not possible to conceal the difficulties of the attempt. The Minister of War will consent to abandon this edifice only if he is furnished another provision storehouse in Soissons itself. So a new building must be put up. Who will pay for it? The city of Soissons, interested in the preservation of a "precious monument of the arts," as the prefect of 1805 said, doubtless will not refuse to contribute to the expense. But the state must come to its aid.
When, tomorrow, at some public sale, there shall be put up at auction some primitive of more or less certain authenticity, a hundred thousand francs will be spent to hang it in a room of the Louvre, and there will be glorification over the acquisition. Would it not be wiser and safer to preserve the paintings of the fourteenth century which decorate the refectory of Saint-Jean-des-Vignes, whose authenticity, I believe, no one will ever dare to contest? With the same stroke, a magnificent bit of architecture will be saved. Who knows if we may not even see other mediaeval paintings appear from under the whitewash?... In short, we shall have saved a precious work of Gothic art for France. And future centuries will draw a parallel between the house-wrecking bishop who destroyed the church of Saint-Jean-des-Vignes and the pious undersecretary of state who protected the refectory of the Joannist canons. [24]
XIII. BETZ
At the bottom of a valley,