Probably the finest and most pleasing impression of the whole structure is that obtained of the interior, with its pillars of nave and choir, of the massive order made familiar in the Rhine churches. A reasonable share of twelfth to sixteenth century glass is still left as its portion, and the general arrangement of the choir, prolonged, as it is, well into the nave, gives a certain majesty to this portion of the church which is perhaps not warranted when we take into consideration that it must perforce dwarf the nave itself. The arrangement, though not common, is by no means an unusual one, and it is recalled also, that it is so employed at Reims.
Situated near the frontier, Châlons-sur-Marne has ever been subject to that inquietude which usually befalls a border city. German influences have ever been noticeable, and, even to-day, the significant fact is to be noted that a curé will hear confessions in German, and that services are held in that tongue on "Saturdays in St. Joseph's Chapel."
The Episcopal Palace, behind the cathedral, contains a collection of some sixty paintings, the gift, in 1864, of the Abbé Joannes.
VIII
ST. DIÉ
St. Dié gets its name, by the corruption of Dieudonné, from St. Deodatus, who founded a monastery here in the seventh century. It was built, as was many another great cathedral, in accordance with the custom of erecting a church over the body or relic of a saint whom it was especially desired to honour; usually one of local importance, a patron or a devotee.
The town is perhaps the most inaccessible and "out-of-the-way" place which harbours a cathedral in all northern France. We might perhaps except St. Pol-de-Leon and Tréguier in Brittany, neither of which is on a railway, whereas St. Dié is, but at the very end. When you get there and want to go on, not back, you simply journey on foot, or awheel if you can find a conveyance, and take up with another "loose end" of railway some fifteen miles away, which will take you southward, should you be going that way. If not, there appears to be nothing for it, but to retrace your steps whence you came.
The cathedral (locally "La Grande Eglise," it only having been made a cathedral so recently as 1777) has a fine Romanesque nave of the eleventh century, with choir and aisles of good Gothic, after the accepted Rhine manner of building.
The portal, of red sandstone, is of inferior thirteenth-century workmanship, with statues of Faith and Charity on either side. The façade is flanked by two square towers.