cathedral architect, Jean Renoy, with whom worked
his nephew, Jehan le Bouteiller. These stone carved screens are
quite usual in the Ile de France. The finest are at Chartres, where
they go straight around the ambulatory, the whole choir being fenced
in, as it were, about the apse, by this exquisite work. This screen
is more effective, too, for being left in the natural colour of
the stone: where these sculptures are painted, as they usually
are, they suggest wood carvings, and have not as much dignity as
when the stone is fully recognized.

The Door of St. Marcel has the oldest carving on Notre Dame in
Paris. The plate representing the iron work, in Chapter IV., shows
the carving on this portal, which is the same that has Biscornette's
famous hinges. The central figure of St. Marcel himself presents
the saint in the act of reproving a naughty dragon which had had
the indiscretion to devour the body of a rich but wicked lady. The
dragon is seen issuing from the dismantled tomb of this unfortunate
person. The dragon repented his act, when the saint had finished
admonishing him, and showed his attachment and gratitude for thus
being led in paths of rectitude, by following the saint for four
miles, apparently walking much as a seal would walk, beseeching
the saint to forgive him. But Marcel was firm, and punished the
serpent, saying to him: "Go forth and inhabit the deserts or plunge
thyself into the sea;" and, as St. Patrick rid the Celtic land of
snakes, so St. Marcel seems to have banished dragons from fair
France.

[Illustration: CARVINGS AROUND CHOIR AMBULATORY, CHARTRES]

At Chartres there are eighteen hundred statues, and almost as many
at Amiens and at Rheims and Paris. One reason for the superiority
of French figure sculpture in the thirteenth century, over that
existing in other countries, is that the French used models. There
has been preserved the sketch book of a mediaeval French architect,
Vilard de Honcourt, which is filled with studies from life: and why
should we suppose him to be the only one who worked in this way?

Rheims Cathedral is the Mecca of the student of mediaeval sculpture.
The array of statues on the exterior is amazing, and a walk around
the great structure reveals unexpected riches in corbels, gargoyles,
and other grotesques, hidden at all heights, each a veritable work
of art, repaying the closest study, and inviting the enthusiast
to undue extravagance at a shop in the vicinity, whic