So we went to take another view of Notre Dame; the very same Notre
Dame whose bells in the good old days could be rung by the waving of
Michael Scott's wand:—
"Him listed but his wand to wave
The bells should ring in Notre Dame."
I had been over it once before with Mrs. C., and sitting in a dark corner, with my head against a cold, stone pillar, had heard vespers, all in the most approved style of the poetic. I went back to it now to see how it looked after the cathedrals of Germany. The churches of France have suffered dreadfully by the whirlwind spirit of its revolutions. At different times the painted glass of this church has been shattered, and replaced by common, till now there is too much light in it, though there are exquisite windows yet remaining. These cathedrals must have painted glass; it is essential; the want of it is terrible; the dim, religious light is necessary to keep you from seeing the dirty floors, hanging cobwebs, stacks of little, old rush-bottomed chairs, and the prints where dirty heads and hands have approached too near the stone pillars. As I sat hearing vespers in Notre Dame the first time, seeing these all too plainly, may I be forgiven, but I could not help thinking of Lucifer's soliloquy in a cathedral in the Golden Legend:—
"What a darksome and dismal place!
I wonder that any man has the face
To call such a hole the house of the Lord
And the gate of heaven—yet such is the word.
Ceiling, and walls, and windows old,
Covered with cobwebs, blackened with mould;
Dust on the pulpit, dust on the stairs,
Dust on the benches, and stalls, and chairs."
* * * * *
However, Notre Dame is a beautiful church; but I wish it was under as good care as Cologne Cathedral, and that instead of building Madeleines and Pantheons, France would restore and preserve her cathedrals—those grand memorials of the past. I consider the King of Prussia as not only a national benefactor, but the benefactor of the world. Cologne, when finished, will be the great epic of architecture, and belong, like all great epics, to all mankind.
Well, Madame M. and I wandered up and down the vast aisles, she with her lively, fanciful remarks, to which there was never wanting a vein both of shrewdness and good sense.
When we came out of Notre Dame, she chattered about the place. "There used to be an archbishop's palace back of the church in that garden, but one day the people took it into their heads to pull it down. I saw the silk-bottomed chairs floating down the Seine. They say that somebody came and told Thiers, 'Do you know the people are rummaging the archbishop's palace?' and he shrugged his shoulders and said, 'Let 'em work.' That's the say, you know; mind, I don't say it is true! Well, he got enough of it at last. The fact is, that with, the French, destructiveness is as much developed as constructiveness, and they are as good at one as the other."
As we were passing over one of the bridges, we saw a flower market, a gay show of flowers of all hues, and a very brisk trade going on about them. Madame told me that there was a flower market every day in the week, in different parts of the city. The flower trade was more than usually animated to-day, because it is a saint's fête, the fête of St. Louis, the patron of Paris.
The streets every where showed men, women, and children, carrying their pots of blooming flowers. Every person in Paris named Louis or Louise, after this saint, has received this day little tokens of affection from their friends, generally bouquets or flowers. Madame Belloc is named Louise, and her different friends and children called and brought flowers, and a beautiful India China vase.