De Cormont. Et après, son filz
Maistre Regnault, qui mestre
Fist a chest point chi cheste lectre
Que l'incarnation valoit
Treize cent, moins douze, en faloit."
13. I have written the numerals in letters, else the metre would not have come clear: they were really in figures thus, "II C. et XX," "XIII C. moins XII". I quote the inscription from M. l'Abbé Rozé's admirable little book, "Visite à la Cathédrale d'Amiens,"—Sup. Lib. de Mgr l'Evêque d'Amiens, 1877,—which every grateful traveller should buy, for I am only going to steal a little bit of it here and there. I only wish there had been a translation of the legend to steal, too; for there are one or two points, both of idea and chronology, in it, that I should have liked the Abbé's opinion of. [Pg 99] The main purport of the rhyme, however, we perceive to be, line for line, as follows:—
"In the year of Grace, Twelve Hundred
And twenty, the work, then falling to ruin,
Was first begun again.
Then was, of this Bishopric