A de long aux tours haut montées
Trente-quatre sont comptées;
Le tout fondé sur pilotis,
Aussi vrai que je te le dis.
[10] A “toise” is something over six feet.
The curiosity of these lines excuses the inaccurate statements, comparatively trifling, conveyed in them. Notre Dame, unlike most mediæval churches on the Continent, is almost painfully clean. The gaudy shrines which render some of the most splendid of Italian churches almost grotesque are absent from Notre Dame. The broom and the duster have been too freely used: all that is not appropriate has been too sedulously banished.
In the old floor, amongst a multitude of other interesting memorials of the dead, the tombstones of the following were to be found: Philippe (son of Louis VI. and Archdeacon of Paris), d. 1161; Prince Geoffrey of England, d. 1186; Queen Isabelle of Hainault, d. 1189; the dauphin, Louis (son of Charles VI.), d. 1415; Louise (mother of François I.), d. 1531; and Louis XIII. (his viscera only), 1643. Amongst the more famous ecclesiastics were the following: Eudes de Sully (1208); Etienne II. (1279); Cardinal Aymeric de Magnac (1348); Bishop Pierre d’Orgemont (1409); and Dumoulin, Patriarch of Antioch (1447). In addition there were three Archbishops of Paris who died during the seventeenth century, and Renaud, Archbishop of Sens (d. 1616). The substitution of squares of marble for the tombstones of these historic personages admits of absolutely no defence.
Let us now consider the Roof. Mr. Charles Herbert Moore thus describes it in his Development and Character of Gothic Architecture:—
“Here is a vast nave (completed except the extreme west end by about the year 1196), so admirably roofed with stone that the work has lasted intact for seven hundred years, and will probably, if not wantonly injured, last for centuries to come. These vaults are sexpartite.... The diagonal ribs are round-arched, while the transverse and longitudinal ribs are pointed. The intermediate transverse ribs are, however, pointed but slightly; and to bring their crowns up to the level of the intersections of the diagonals they are considerably stilted. The crowns of the main transverse ribs are a little lower than those of the diagonals, and those of the longitudinals are lower still. The vaults have, therefore, a distinctly domical form. These various adjustments, by greater or less pointing, stilting, and even by the retention of the round arch where it will serve best, exhibit the flexibility of the Gothic system in an interesting and instructive manner.” Mr. Moore, after some further details, continues:—“In the vaults of Paris, as in all Gothic vaults, the shells consist of successive courses of masonry which are slightly arched from rib to rib over each triangular cell. The beds of these successive courses are not parallel, but are variously inclined according as the mason found necessary or convenient in developing the concave and winding surfaces engendered by the forms and positions of the ribs to which they had to be accommodated. These courses of masonry have here in Paris, as they have in most Gothic vaults, a considerable inclination near the springing from the longitudinal rib upward toward the diagonal, and they become gradually more level as they approach the crown of the vault, where they are more nearly parallel. But perfectly parallel they can hardly ever be, since each course forms a portion of a surface that is concaved in all directions.” Mr. Moore adds that in the earliest and finest Gothic vaultings this masonry is composed of small stones perfectly faced and closely jointed; and the vaulting of Paris, especially that of the choir, is a model of careful and finished workmanship.