Friday, Sept. 4.—The bombardment, which took place suddenly from half-past 9 till quarter-past 10 in the morning, caused some accidents to the cathedral, more or less notable from the point of view of art, (some stained glass more or less ancient, some slight scratches to the statues;) at the Church of Saint-Rémi (ancient stained glass, tapestry of the sixteenth century, pictures of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, altar screen, statues, south portal, and vault of transept) and at the Museum of Fine Arts, Rue Chanzy, 8, (salle Henry Vasnier broken in by a shell, about twenty modern pictures damaged.) Besides, among the houses struck, the Gothic house, 57 Rue de Vesle, suffered mutilation in the sculpture of a fireplace—it was entirely demolished by the bombardment and fire of Sept. 19.
Saturday, Sept. 19.—This was the day of the great destruction by the bombs and the fires caused in the cathedral, the ancient residence of the Archbishop, in the houses of the Place Royale, and the Cérès quarter. On the afternoon of this day and during the night from Saturday to Sunday, flames consumed the most precious collections of the city, at the Archbishop's palace and in private houses, an inventory of which it will never be possible to prepare.
The top of the cathedral burned after the scaffolding of the northern tower of the great portal had taken fire, toward 3 o'clock in the afternoon. The statues and sculptures of this side of the same portal were licked by the flames and scorched through and through. The eight bells in this tower also were caught by the flames, and the whole thing fell down near the cross aisle of the transept. The spire of the Belfry of the Angel, at the apse, fell, and with it disappeared the leaden heads which decorated its base. In the interior the sculptures and the walls of the edifice were damaged by fire in the straw which had been strewn about for the German wounded; the great eighteenth century tympanums of the lateral doors, west side, were damaged likewise. The thirteenth century stained glass suffered shocks from the air and were perforated, in the rose windows as also in the high windows of the nave. The pictures in the transept were spared, but the choir stalls (eighteenth century work) were consumed—at the left on entering.
Of the adjacent palace all the buildings were attacked by the flames and are now nothing but ruined walls, save the chapel of the thirteenth century, of which the main part subsists intact, and the lower hall of the King's Lodge, under the Hall of Anointment, (of the end of the fifteenth century.) The anointment rooms on the ground floor, reconstructed in the seventeenth century, contained a great number of historical portraits and furniture of various periods, which were all a prey to the flames. It was the same in the apartments of the Archbishops, which also contained numerous pictures and different views of the city, transported from the Hôtel de Ville and intended for the formation of a historical museum of Rheims. Precious furniture, bronzes of great value—like the foot of the candelabra of Saint Rémi and the candelabra of the Abbaye d'Igny—were also in these apartments, of which nothing is left but the walls. The archaeological collections of the city were consumed in the upper apartments, as also a whole museum, organized and classified to represent the ethnography of la Champagne by a thousand objects tracing back the ancient industries, the trades, the arts, and usages of this province. Finally, the rich library founded by Cardinal Gousset, offering superb editions and assembled in a vast paneled hall, was totally burned up in the modern building constructed for it at the expense of the State.
After the disasters to the arts at the cathedral and the palace, we must note also the mansions and private houses, remarkable through their architecture and their decoration, that were demolished, burned, and annihilated. No. 1 Rue du Marc, Renaissance mansion—damage to the sculptured ceiling and the sculptures of the court. Two pavilions of the Place Royale, creations of the eighteenth century, are now only calcined walls. The same fate overtook the Gothic house, 57 Rue de Vesle, (of which mention was made above;) the house, 40 Rue de l'Université, built in the eighteenth century; the house next to the Ecu de Rheims, of the same period; the mansion at 12 Rue la Grue, which was decorated with carved lintels and forged iron banisters; the mansion at 19 Rue Eugène-Destenque, in the style of the Henri IV. period, having a great stone fireplace and decorative paintings in one gallery. Finally, in the Rue des Trois-Raisinets, the remains of the monastery of the Franciscans, with a cloister, and the framework of a granary of the Middle Ages.
These notes are really only observations to be completed later with the aid of descriptions of ancient date, but they offer sure information of the lamentable losses suffered by our unfortunate city during the first month of its bombardment.
Paris, Jan. 20, 1915.
No. 2.
THE FIXED IDEA.
From M. Auguste Dorchain we receive this striking observation: