The choir and transept are of the best of thirteenth-century building, while the nave and side aisles are of the century following. Two towers, which flank the magnificent façade, rise for nearly two hundred and fifty feet, and are the work of Jacquemin de Commercy in the fifteenth century. Adjoining the right aisles are the very beautiful Gothic cloisters of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. They form a rectangular enclosure, 225 feet by 165 feet, and are made up of twenty-four sections of four arches, each with clustered columns.
A fine sculptured altarpiece, "The Adoration of the Shepherds," is in the Chapelle de la Creche, entered from the cloister.
The present Hôtel-de-Ville was formerly the bishop's palace.
VII
ST. ETIENNE, CHÂLONS-SUR-MARNE
Chalons is perhaps first of all famed as the scene of Attila's great defeat in the fifth century, one of the world's fifteen decisive battles.
The Cathedral of St. Etienne is not usually considered to be a remarkable structure; but it is thoroughly typical and characteristic of a locale, which stamps it at once with a mark of genuineness and sincerity. Of early primitive Gothic in the main, it shares interest to-day with the four other churches of the city, not overlooking Notre Dame de l'Epine, some five miles distant to the northward, one of the most perfectly designed and appointed late Gothic churches which the world has ever known. It has been called a "miniature cathedral," using the term, it may be supposed, in the sense of referring only to a magnificently ornate church. It is indeed worth a pilgrimage thither to see this true gem of architecture in a wholly undefiled countrified setting.
The Cathedral at Châlons-sur-Marne follows somewhat the traditions of the German manner of building, at least so far as a certain plainness and lack of ornate decoration in the main body of the church is concerned; likewise in the arrangement of its towers, which lie to the eastward of the transepts; and further with respect to its decidedly Teutonic arrangement of the rounded columns, or, more properly, pillars, of its nave.
In general this thirteenth-century church is in the best style of its era; but the west front presents an incongruous seventeenth-century addition in the whilom classical style of that day, bad as to its art, and apparently badly welded into conjunction with the older portion. The aisles and clerestory windows are of the later decorated period of Gothic, and present, whether viewed from without or from within, an exceedingly fine appearance.