Taine in his Carnets de Voyage says of Bordeaux: "It is a sort of second Paris, gay and magnificent ... amusement is the main business."
Bordeaux does not change. It has ever been advanced, and always a centre of gaiety. Its fêtes and functions quite rival those of the capital itself,—at times,—and its opera-house is the most famed and magnificent in France, outside of Paris.
It is a city of enthusiastic demonstrations. It was so in 1814 for the Bourbons, and again a year later for the emperor on his return from Elba.
In 1857 it again surpassed itself in its enthusiasm for Louis Napoleon, when he was received in the cathedral, under a lofty dais, and led to the altar with the cry of "Vive l'empereur;" while during the bloody Franco-Prussian war it was the seat of the provisional government of Thiers.
Here the Gothic wave of the North has produced in the cathedral of St. André a remarkably impressive and unexpected example of the style.
In the general effect of size alone it will rank with many more important and more beautiful churches elsewhere. Its total length of over four hundred and fifty feet ranks it among the longest in France, and its vast nave, with a span of sixty feet, aisleless though it be, gives a still further expression of grandeur and magnificence.
It is known that three former cathedrals were successfully destroyed by invading Goths, Saracens, and warlike Normans.
Yet another structure was built in the eleventh century, which, with the advent of the English in Guienne, in the century following, was enlarged and magnified into somewhat of an approach to the present magnificent dimensions, though no English influence prevailed toward erecting a central tower, as might have been anticipated. Instead we have two exceedingly graceful and lofty spired towers flanking the north transept, and yet another single tower, lacking its spire, on the south.
The portal of the north transept—of the fourteenth century—is an elaborate work of itself. It is divided into two bays that join beneath a dais, on which is a statue of Bertrand de Goth, who was Pope in 1305, under the name of Clement V. He is here clothed in sacerdotal habits, and stands upright in the attitude of benediction.
At the lower right-hand side are statues of six bishops, but, like that of Pope Clement, they do not form a part of the constructive elements of the portal, as did most work of a like nature in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, but are made use of singly as a decorative motive.