Over the spot that marked the miraculous image's first resting-place in the Haute Ville the oft-destroyed cathedral has grown, and although, after many vicissitudes, the Holy Statue was finally destroyed during the eighteenth century Reign of Terror, many are the pilgrimages still made to the solitary relic of the holy image—a hand that was cut off prior to the burning, which is preserved in a gilt heart, suspended from the new statue.
The fame of its miracles spread abroad so widely that not only did kings and princes hasten to pay homage, but some unscrupulous priests at St. Cloud attracted large numbers of pilgrims by trafficking in the public faith and maintaining that they were in possession of the miraculous statue. Hence the name of the Bois de Boulogne in Paris, and the fact that the image is known as Our Lady of Boulogne-sur-Mer.
Beyond Notre Dame runs the Calais—St. Omer road which has seen so much bloody traffic in the past and may see so much more in a few days.
Guns, ammunition convoys and ambulances rumble along it ceaselessly by day and night, pausing only to answer the challenge of the sentries posted at intervals at every cross-road of importance. The ruined Jesuit monastery lies along this road, alive with wounded Indians, who, when convalescent, are shifted into the outlying tents that form the Convalescent Depot.
Only about one mile away on the same road stands the Colonne de la Grande Armée, that huge Doric column surmounted by the figure of Napoleon, erected to commemorate the expedition against England and commenced 110 years ago, when Marshal Soult (as the inscription on the base tells us) laid the first stone in the presence of the whole army.
Walking townwards one comes across the fisher village built in tier upon tier of squalid, unsanitated streets, as odorous as the Naples of ten years ago—and as picturesque; and pinnacled by St. Pierre-des-Marins, whose lofty fourteenth century Gothic spire is one of the few architectural beauties to be found here, and whose interior, so full of votive offerings, witnesses the toll of matelot lives exacted yearly by the sea from those who would snatch their living from her.
Crowning all stands the revered Calvary to which all wise fishermen pray as they sail in and out of the harbour.
"THE REVERED CALVARY TO WHICH ALL WISE FISHERMEN PRAY"
From here the panorama of the whole place is laid bare, the jetées, the coast, the Gare Maritime, the Bassin Loubet, the River Liane winding in and out of the valley and losing itself finally in the mists; and nearer, the gay flower-market and the Halle des Poissons, where the vendors, almost as soon as the nets of herrings are unladen, are rid of what fish they can get in these troublous times, when every man who is not fighting is trawling for mines.