y the Cathedral was within a
little of completion. St. Ouen hardly suggested yet the building that
appears to-day.

As I have said, it was during the English occupation that the nave was
begun. The beautiful central tower was only finished by Antoine
Bohier, who did much to make perfect the building that we see to-day
as the fifth church on the same site. It received its name from St.
Ouen, who was buried in the second church in 689. The monastery which
was added to the third church was under the rule of Nicolas de
Normandie, son of the second Duke Richard, in 1042. This was destroyed
by the usual fire, and the rebuilding was assisted by the Empress
Matilda and Richard Coeur de Lion. The little remnant of beautiful
Romanesque called the Tour aux Clercs, probably formed the northern
apse of its transept. When this church in turn was burnt in the same
fire that destroyed the original churches of St. Godard and St.
Laurent, the monks fled to Bihorel with what could be rescued of their
archives and their "treasure." At last, Abbe Jean Roussel, called Marc
d'Argent, started the noble fabric that, mutilated as it is, is still
one of the finest monuments of later "Gothic" in existence. His first
meeting of architects and master-masons was called in 1321, and then
was in all likelihood decided the outlines of that mighty plan which
took a century and a half to approach completion--and well-nigh half a
hundred architects.

From the ancient refuge of his monks, the land on which their feudal
justice was administered, from the slopes above Bihorel, Marc d'Argent
looked down and watched the first walls and buttresses of his Abbey
rise from the soil. In that valley the quarries from which he drew his
stone could still be seen scarce twenty years ago, with huge blocks of
stone, rough-hewn nearly five centuries before, still resting upon
mouldering rollers. He gathered funds from the Abbey Forests (which
gave their timbers too) and from the generous donations of the pious.
After twenty-one years of work, in which all his monks assisted the
masons, he had spent about five million francs (in modern values), and
by 1339 had finished the choir and chapels, the huge pillars beneath
the central tower, and part of the transept. Of the first real "Maitre
d'oeuvre," as so often happens in the tale of the Cathedrals,
nothing is known. But the monks carved the clear keen features of his
face upon the funeral stone, 7-1/2 feet high and 4 feet b