Invalides? Who stupidly sealed that heavy
anachronism of stone in the Carlovingian pavement of Hercandus? Was it
not Louis XIV., fulfilling the request of Louis XIII.?

And who put the cold, white panes in the place of those windows, "high
in color," which caused the astonished eyes of our fathers to hesitate
between the rose of the grand portal and the arches of the apse? And
what would a sub-chanter of the sixteenth century say, on beholding
the beautiful yellow wash, with which our archiepiscopal vandals have
desmeared their cathedral? He would remember that it was the color with
which the hangman smeared "accursed" edifices; he would recall the
Hotel du Petit-Bourbon, all smeared thus, on account of the constable's
treason. "Yellow, after all, of so good a quality," said Sauval, "and so
well recommended, that more than a century has not yet caused it to lose
its color." He would think that the sacred place had become infamous,
and would flee.

And if we ascend the cathedral, without mentioning a thousand barbarisms
of every sort,--what has become of that charming little bell tower,
which rested upon the point of intersection of the cross-roofs,
and which, no less frail and no less bold than its neighbor (also
destroyed), the spire of the Sainte-Chapelle, buried itself in the sky,
farther forward than the towers, slender, pointed, sonorous, carved
in open work. An architect of good taste amputated it (1787), and
considered it sufficient to mask the wound with that large, leaden
plaster, which resembles a pot cover.

'Tis thus that the marvellous art of the Middle Ages has been treated in
nearly every country, especially in France. One can distinguish on
its ruins three sorts of lesions, all three of which cut into it at
different depths; first, time, which has insensibly notched its surface
here and there, and gnawed it everywhere; next, political and religious
revolution, which, blind and wrathful by nature, have flung themselves
tumultuously upon it, torn its rich garment of carving and sculpture,
burst its rose windows, broken its necklace of arabesques and tiny
figures, torn out its statues, sometimes because of their mitres,
sometimes because of their crowns; lastly, fashions, even more grotesque
and foolish, which, since the anarchical and splendid deviations of
the Renaissance, have followed each other in the necessary decadence
of architecture. Fashions have wrought more harm than revolutions. They
have cu