we also know that this convent contained more than
five hundred Brothers practising all the arts, and that sculptors,
image-makers, stone-cutters, or workers in pierced stone, were numerous.
It would therefore seem very natural that these monks sent to live at
Chartres were the men who drew the plans of Notre Dame, and employed the
horde of artists whom we see represented in one of the old windows of
the apse--men in furred caps shaped like a jelly bag, who are busily
carving and polishing the statues of kings.

"Their work was finished at the beginning of the sixteenth century by
Jehan Le Texier, known as Jehan de Beauce, who erected the northern
belfry, called the New Belfry, and the decorative work inside the
church, forming the niches for the groups on the walls of the
choir-aisles or ambulatory."

"And has no one ever been able to discover the name of any one of the
original architects, sculptors, or glass-makers of this Cathedral?"

"It has been the subject of much research, and I, personally, may say
that I have grudged neither time nor trouble, but all in vain.

"This much we know: At the top of the southern belfry, the Old Belfry as
it is called, near the window-bay looking towards the New Belfry, this
name was deciphered: 'Harman, 1164.' Is it that of an architect, of a
workman, or of a night watchman on the look-out at that time in the
tower? We can but wonder. Didron, again, discovered on the pilaster of
the eastern porch, above the head of a butcher slaughtering an ox, the
word 'Rogerus' in twelfth century characters. Was he the architect, the
sculptor, the donor of this porch--or the butcher? Another signature,
'Robir,' is to be seen on the pedestal of a statue in the north porch.
Who was Robir? None can say.

"Langlois, too, mentions a glass-worker of the thirteenth century,
Clement of Chartres, whose signature he found on a window of the
Cathedral at Rouen--_Clement Vitrearius Carnutensis_; but it is a wide
leap to infer, as some would do, that merely because this Clement was a
native of Chartres, he must have painted one or more of the glass
pictures in Notre Dame here. And at any rate we have no information as
to his life or his works in this city. It may also be remarked that on a
pane in our church we read _Petrus Bal ...;_ is this the name, complete
or defaced, of a donor or of a painter? Once more we must confess
ourselves ignorant.

"If I add to this that two of Jehan de Beauce's colleagues