Foolish Virgins;"
while the north portal depicts "St. Dionysius on His Way to Martyrdom,"
and "The Signs of the Zodiac."

A curious and unusual effect of the upper portion of this grim facade,
like a similar work at Dol-de-Bretagne, is a range of battlements which
were erected for defensive purposes in the fourteenth century. The nave
rises high above this, surmounted by a statue of St. Denis. Above the
lateral portals of the facade are two towers, that on the right rising
two stages above the embattled crest, while that on the left stops at
that level. The spire with which it was formerly surmounted was ruined
by lightning early in the nineteenth century.

The choir, with its radiating chapels, is of a Romanesque order, with
the Gothic attribute of the flying buttress in a high degree of
development.

A general restoration was carried out in the thirteenth century by the
successors of Suger, the Abbes Eudes Clement and Matthieu de Vendome, in
the best Gothic of the time; and it is to their excellently planned work
that the general fine effect of the present interior arrangements may
properly enough be accredited, though for a fact it seldom is so. A
later restoration, the removing of the ruin wrought by the Revolution,
did not succeed so well. It was not until the really great work of
Viollet-le-Duc, under Napoleon III., that this grand building finally
took on again an acceptable form.

The general interior arrangements, though to-day apparently subservient
to the common attributes of a show-house with its innumerable guides,
functionaries, and fees, are simple and impressive so far as structural
elements are concerned. As for decorations, they are mostly to be found
in that gorgeous array of monuments and tombs before mentioned. The
entrance proper, or vestibule, is of Suger's era and is gloomy and dull,
in strong contrast with the noble and impressive nave, which contains
thirty-seven enormously high windows and a handsome triforium gallery.
This portion dates from the thirteenth century, or immediately following
Suger's regime. The excellent stained glass is modern. The transepts are
mere rudimentary elements, suggested only by the interior arrangement of
the piers, and are simple and impressive.

[Illustration: _Oriflamme of St. Denis_]

[Illustration: NOTRE DAME _de PARIS_...]

VI

NOTRE DAME DE PARIS

Of all the cathedrals of France, Notre Dame de Paris is most firmly
impressed on the minds o