If the traveller will place himself on the Pont Royal or on the Pont du Carrousel, and look towards the Cité when the tall buildings, the spire of the Sainte Chapelle and the massive grey towers of Notre Dame are ruddy with the setting sun, he will enjoy a scene of beauty not easily surpassed in Europe. Across the picture, somewhat marred by the unlovely Pont des Arts, marches the procession of the arches of the Pont Neuf with their graceful curves. Below is the little green patch of garden and the cascade of the weir; in the centre the bronze horse with its royal rider, almost hidden by the trees, stands facing the site of the old garden of the Palais, now the Place Dauphine, where St. Louis sat on a carpet judging his people, and whence Philip the Fair watched the flames that were consuming the Grand Master and his companion of the Knights Templars. To the left are the picturesque mediæval towers of the Conciergerie and the tall roof of the belfry of the Palais. Around all are the embracing waters of the Seine breaking the light with their thousand facets. The island, when seen from the east as one sails down the river, is not less imposing, for the great mother church of Notre Dame, with the graceful buttresses of the apse like folded pinions, seems to brood over the whole Cité.
As we turn southwards from the Cité across the Petit Pont we see the old Roman road, now Rue St. Jacques, rising before us, and on the annexe of the Hôtel Dieu, in the Place du Petit Pont, are inscribed their names[167] who nearly twelve centuries ago dared—
“For that sweet motherland which gave them birth,
Nobly to do, nobly to die.”
