And what I say here of the façade, must be said of the entire Cathedral; and what I say of the Cathedral of Paris, must be said of all the Mediæval Christian churches. Everything in this art, which proceeds from itself, is so logical and well-proportioned that to measure the toe of the foot is to measure the giant.
Let us return to the façade of Notre-Dame, as it exists to-day when we go reverently to admire the solemn and mighty Cathedral, which, according to the old chroniclers, was terrifying: quæ mole sua terrorem incutit spectantibus.
That façade now lacks three important things: first, the flight of eleven steps, which raised it above the level of the ground; then, the lower row of statues which occupied the niches of the three porches; and the upper row[1] of the twenty-eight ancient kings of France which ornamented the gallery of the first story, beginning with Childebert and ending with Philip Augustus, holding in his hand “la pomme impériale.”
Time in its slow and unchecked progress, raising the level of the city’s soil, buried the steps; but whilst the pavement of Paris like a rising tide has engulfed one by one the eleven steps which formerly added to the majestic height of the edifice, Time has given to the church more, perhaps, than it has stolen, for it is Time that has spread that sombre hue of centuries on the façade which makes the old age of buildings their period of beauty.
But who has thrown down those two rows of statues? Who has left the niches empty? Who has cut that new and bastard arch in the beautiful middle of the central porch? Who has dared to frame that tasteless and heavy wooden door carved à la Louis XV. near Biscornette’s arabesques? The men, the architects, the artists of our day.
THE CATHEDRAL OF NOTRE-DAME.
And when we enter the edifice, who has overthrown that colossal Saint Christopher, proverbial among statues as the grand’ salle du Palais among halls, or the flèche of Strasburg among steeples? And those myriads of statues that peopled all the spaces between the columns of the nave and choir, kneeling, standing, on horseback, men, women, children, kings, bishops, warriors, in stone, wood, marble, gold, silver, copper, and even wax,—who has brutally swept them away? It was not Time!
And who has substituted for the old Gothic altar, splendidly overladen with shrines and reliquaries, that heavy marble sarcophagus with its angels’ heads and clouds, which seems to be a sample from the Val-de-Grâce or the Invalides? Who has so stupidly imbedded that heavy stone anachronism in Hercanduc’s Carlovingian pavement? Is it not Louis XIV. fulfilling the vow of Louis XIII.?
And who has put cold white glass in the place of those richly-coloured panes, which made the astonished gaze of our ancestors pause between the rose of the great porch and the pointed arches of the apsis? What would an under-chorister of the Sixteenth Century say if he could see the beautiful yellow plaster with which our vandal archbishops have daubed their Cathedral? He would remember that this was the colour with which the executioner brushed the houses of traitors; he would remember the Hôtel du Petit-Bourbon, all besmeared thus with yellow, on account of the treason of the Constable, “yellow of such good quality,” says Sauval, “and so well laid on that more than a century has scarcely caused its colour to fade;” and, imagining that the holy place had become infamous, he would flee from it.