16
THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE'DAME.
you know, burst at the bridge of Charenton, on
the day it was tried, and killed twenty-four of the
spectators. So you see I am no bad match. I
know a great many very curious tricks, wliich I
will teach your goat, for instance, to mimic the
Bishop of Paris, that cursed Pharisee, whose mills
splash the passengers all along the Pont aux
Meuniers. And then my mystery will bring me
in a good deal of hard cash, if I can get paid for
it. In short, I am wholly at your service, damsel.
My science and my learning shall be devoted to
you. I am ready to live with you in any way you
please; as husband and wife, if you think proper,
as brother and sister, if you like it better."
Gringoire paused, waiting the effect of his
address on his hearer. Her eyes were fixed on
the ground.
"Phoebus," said she in an under-tone, and then
turning to the poet—" Phcebus, what does that
mean f'
Gringoire, though unable to discover what con-
nection there could be between the subject of his
speech and this question, was not displeased to
have an opportunity of displaying his erudition.
" It is a Latin word," said he, " and means the sun."
" The sun ! " she exclaimed.
"Itis the name of a certain handsome archer,
who was a god," added Gringoire.
" A god ! " repeated the Egyptian, and there
was in her tone something pensive and impas-
sioned.
At this moment one of her bracelets, having
accidentally become loose, fell to the ground.
Gringoire instantly stooped to pick it up; when
he raised himself the damsel and the goat were
gone. He heard the sound of a bolt, upon a door
communicating no doubt with an adjoining cell,
which fastened on the inside.
" No matter, so she has left me a bed ! " said
our philosopher. He explored the cell. It con-
tained not any piece of furniture fit to lie down
upon, excepting a long coffer, and the lid of this
was carved in such a manner as to communicate
to Gringoire, when he stretched himself upon it,
a sensation similar to that experienced by Micro-
megas when he lay at his full length upon the Alps.
"Well," said he, accommodating himself to this
uncomfortable couch as well as he could, " 'tis of
no use to grumble. But at any rate this is a
strange wedding night!"
BOOK III.
Chapter L—Notre Dame.
The Church of Notre Dame at Paris is no doubt
still a sublime and majestic edifice. But, notwith-
standing the beauty which it has retained even in
its old age, one can not help feeling grief and in-
dignation at the numberless injuries and mutila-
tions wliich time and man have inflicted on the
venerable structure, regardless of Charlemagne
who laid the first stone of it and of Philip Augus-
tus who laid the last.
On the face of this aged queen of our cathedrals
we always find a sear beside a wrinkle. Tempns
edaos, homo edacim—which 1 should translate
thus :   Time is blind, man stupid.
If we had leisure to examine with the reader,
one by one, the different traces of destruction left
upon the ancient church, we should find that Time
had had much less hand in them than men and
especially professional men.
In the first place, to adduce only some capital
examples, there are assuredly few more beautiful
specimens of architecture than that facade, where
the three porches with their pointed arches ; the
plinth embroidered and fretted with twenty-eight
royal niches ; the immense centrai mullioned
window, flanked by its two lateral windows, like
the priest by the deacon and the sub-deacon ; the
lofty and light gallery of open-work arcades sup-
porting a heavy platform upon its slender pillars ;
lastly, the two dark and massive towers with their
slated penthouses—harmonious parts of a magnifi-
cent whole, placed one above another in five
gigantic stages—present themselves to the eye in
a crowd yet without confusion, with their innu-
merable details of statuary, sculpture, and carving,
powerfully contributing to the tranquil grandeur
of the whole—a vast symphony of stone, if we
may be allowed the expression ; the colossal pro-
duct of the combination of all the force of the
age, in which the fancy of the workman, chastened
by the genius of the artist, is seen starting forth
in a hundred forms upon every stone : in short, a
sort of human creation, mighty and fertile like
the divine creation, from which it seems to have
borrowed the twofold character of variety and
eternity.
What we here say of the facade must be said of
the whole church ; and what we say of the cathe-
dral of Paris must be said of all the churches of
Christendom in the middle ages. But to return to
the facade of Notre Dame, such as it appears to us
at present, when we piously repair thither to
admire the solemn and gorgeous cathedral, which,
to use the language of the chroniclers, "by its
vastness struck terror into the spectator."
That facade, as we now see it, has lost three im-
portant accessories : in the first place, the flight of
eleven steps, which raised it above the level of the
ground ; in the next, the lower range of statues
which filled the niches of the three porches, and
the upper range of twenty-eight more ancient
sovereigns of France which adorned the gallery
of the first story, commencing with Childebert and
ending with Philip Augustus, holding in his hand
" the imperial globe."
Time, raising" by a Blow and irresistible progress
the level of the city, occasioned tho removal of the
steps ; but if this rising tide of the pavement of
Paris has swallowed up, one after another, those
eleven steps which added to the majestic height
of the edifice, Time has given to the church more
perhaps than it has taken away : for it is Time
that has imparted to the facade that somber hue
of antiquity wliich makes the old age of buildings
the period of their greatest beauty.
But who has thrown down the two ranges of
statues ?—who has left the niches empty ?—who
has inserted that new and bastard pointed arch in
the middle of the beautiful central porch ?—who
has dared to set up that tasteless and heavy door
of wood, carved in the style of Louis XV, beside
the arabesques of Biscornette ?—The men, the
architects, the artists, of our days.
And, if we step within the edifice, who has
thrown down that colossal St. Christopher, pro-
verbial among statues for the same reason as the
great hall of the palace among halls, and the
steeple of Strasburg among steeples ? who has
brutally swept away those myriads of statues
wliich peopled all the intercolumniations of the
nave and the choir, kneeling, standing, on horse-
back, men, women, children, kings, bishops,
soldiers, of stone, marble, gold, silver, copper, and
even wax ?   Not Time most assuredly.
And who has substituted to the old Gothic altar,
splendidly encumbered with shrines and reliqu-
aries, that heavy sarcophagus of marine with its
cherubs and its clouds, looking for all the world
like a stray specimen of the Val de Grace or the
Invalides ? who has stupidly inserted that clumsy
anachronism of stone in the Carlovingian pave-
ment of Hercandus ? Is it not Louis XIV fulfill-
ing the vow of Louis XIII ?
And who has put cold white glass instead of
those deeply colored panes, which caused the as-
tonished eyes of our ancestors to pause between
the rose of the great porch and the pointed arches
of the chancel ? What would a sub-chorister of
the sixteenth century say on beholding the yellow
plaster with which our Vandal archbishops have
bedaubed their cathedral? He would recollect
that this was the color with which the executioner
washed over the houses of criminals ; he would
recollect the hotel of the Petit-Bourbon, thus be-
plastered with yellow on account of the treason of
the Constable. " and a yellow of so good quality,"
saith Sauvai, "and so well laid on, that more than
a century hath not yet faded its color ;" he would
imagine that the sacred fane has become infam-
ous, and flee from it as fast he could.
And if we go up into the. cathedral without
pausing over the thousand barbarisms of all
kinds, what has been done with that charming
little belfry, which stood over the point of inter-
section of the transept, and which, neither less
light nor less bold than its neighbor the steeple of
the Holy Chapel (likewise destroyed) rose, light,
elegant, and sonorous, into the air, overtopping
the towers. It was amputated (1787) by an archi-
tect of taste, who deemed it sufficient to cover the
wound with that large plaster of lead, which
looks, for all the world, like the lid of a sauce-
pan.
It is thus that the wonderful art of the middle
ages has been treated in almost every country,
especially in France. In its ruins we may dis-
tinguish three kinds of injuries, which have
affected it in different degrees : in the first place
Time, which has here and there chapped and
every where worn its surface; in the next, revo-
lutions, political and religious, which, blind and
furious by nature, have rushed tumultuously upon
it, stripped it of its rich garb of sculptures and
carvings, broken its open work and its chains of
arabesques and fanciful figures, torn down its
statues, sometimes on account of their miters, at
others on account of their crowns; lastly, the
fashions, more and more silly and grotesque, which
since the splendid deviations of the regeneration
have succeeded each other in the necessary decline
of architecture. The fashions have in fact done
more mischief than revolutions. They have cut
into the quick; they have attacked the osseous sys-
tem of the art; they have hacked, hewn, mangled,
murdered, the building, in the form as well as in
the symbol, in its logic not less than in its beauty.
And then, they have renewed—a presumption from
whicli at least time and revolutions have been
exempt. In the name of good taste, forsooth, they
have impudently clapped upon the wounds of
Gothic architecture their paltry gewgaws of a day,
their ribands of marble, their pompons of metal,
a downright leprosy of eggs, volutes, spirals,
draperies, garlands, fringes, flames of stone, clouds
of bronze, plethoric cupids, chubby cherubs, which
begins to eat into the face of art in the oratory of
Catherine de Mo .els, and puts it to death two cen-
turies later, writing and grinning in the boudoir
of the Dubarry.
Thus, to sum up the points to which we have di-
rected attention, three kinds of ravages now-a-
days disfigure Gothic architecture : wrinkles and
warts on the epidermis—these are the work of
time; wounds, contusions, fractures, from brutal
violence—these are the work of revolutions from
Luther to Mirabeau; mutilations,  amputations,
dislocations of members, restorations—this is the
barbarous Greek and Boman work of professors
according to Vitruvius and Vignole. That mar?'
nificent art which the Vandals produced academies
have murdered. With Time and revolutions'
whose ravages are at any rate marked by im-
partiality and grandeur, has been associated a
host of architects, duly bred, duly patented and
duly sworn, despoiling with the discernment of
bad taste, substituting the chicories of Louis XV
to the Gothic lace-work, for the greater glory of
the Parthenon. This is truly the ass's kick to the
expiring lion; the old oak throwing out its leafy
crown, to be bitten, gnawed, and torn by cater-
pillars.
How widely different this from the period when
Bobert Cenalis, comparing Notre Dame at Paris
with the famous temple of Diana at Ephesus, "so
highly extolled by the ancient heathen," pro-
nounced the Gallican Cathedral " more excellent
in length, breadth, height, and structure."
Notre Dame, however, is not what may be called
a complete building, nor does it belong to any
definite class. It is not a Boman church, neither
is it a Gothic church. Notre Dame has not, like
the abbey of TournuD, the heavy, massive square-
ness, the cold nakedness, the majestic simplicity
of edifices which have tho circular arch for their
generative principle. It ic not, like the Cathedral
of Bourges, tho magnificent, light, multiform,
efflorescent, highly decorated production of the
pointed arch. It can not be classed among that
ancient family of churches, gloomy, mysterious,
low, and crushed as it were by the circular arch;
quite hieroglyphic, sacerdotal, symbolical; exhibit-
ing in their decorations more lozenges and zigzags
than flowers, more flowers than animals, more
animals than human figures; the work not so
much of the architect ao oi the bishop; the first
transformation of the art, impressed all over with
theocratic and military discipline, commencing in
the Lower Empire and terminating with William
the Conqueror. Neither can our cathedral be
placed in that other family of churches, light,
lofty, rich in painted glass and sculptures; sharp
in form, bold in attitude; free, capricious, unruly,
as works of art; the second transformation of
architecture, no longer hieroglyphic, unchange-
able, and sacerdotal, but artistical, progressive and
popular, beginning with the return from the
Crusades and ending with Louis XI. Notre Dame
is not of pure Boman extraction like the former,
neither is it of pure Arab extraction, like the
latter.
It is a transition edifice. The Saxon architect
had set up the first pillars of the nave, when the
pointed style, brought back from the Crusades,
seated itself like a conqueror upon those broad
Boman capitals designed to support circular
arches only. The pointed style, thenceforward
mistress, constructed the rest of the church; but,
unpracticed and timid at its outset, it displays a
breadth, a flatness, and dares not yet shoot up
into steeples and pinnacles, as it has since done in
so many wonderful cathedrals. You would say
that it is affected by the vicinity of the heavy Bo-
man pillars.
For the rest, those edifices of the transition from
the Boman to the Gothic style are not less valuable
as studies than the pure types of either. They ex-
press a shade of the art which would be lost but
for them—the engrafting of the pointed upon the
circular style.
Notre Dame at Paris is a particularly curious
specimen of this variety. Every face, every stone,
of the venerable structure is a page not only of
the history of the country, but also of the history
of art and science. Thus, to glance merely at the
principal details, while the little Porte Bouge
attains almost to the limits of the Gothic delicacy
of the fifteenth century, the pillars of the nave, by
their bulk and heaviness, carry you back to the
date of the Carlovingian abbey of St. Germain des
Près. You would imagine that there were six
centuries between that door-way and those pillars.
There are none, down to the alchymists them-
selves, but find in the symbols of the grand porch
a satisfactory compendium of their science, ot
which the church of St. Jacques de la Boucherie
was so complete an hieroglyphic. Thus the Bo-
man abbey and the philosophical church, Gothic
art and Saxon art; the heavy round pillar, which
reminds you of Gregory VII, papal unity and
schism, St. Germain des Près and St. Jacques de
la Boucherie—are all blended, combined, amalga-
mated, in Notre Dame. This central mother-
church is a sort of chimera among the ancient
churches of Paris; it has the head of one, the
limbs of another, the trunk of a third, and some-
thing of them all.                                              ,
These hybrid structures, as we have observed,
are not the less interesting to the artist, the anti-
quary, and the historian. They show how far
architecture is a primitive art, inasmuch as they
demonstrate (what is also demonstrated bytne
Cyclopean remains, the pyramids of Egypt, tne
gigantic Hindoo pagodas) that the grandest pro-
ductions of architecture are not so much indi-
vidual as social works, rather the offspring oi
nations in labor than the inventions of genius,
the deposit left by a people; the accumulations
formed by ages; the residuum of tlie successive
evaporations of human society—in short, a species
of formations. Every wave of time superinduce»
its alluvion, every generation deposits its stratum
upon the structure, every individual brings ni»