of architecture. The fashions have in fact done more mis-
chief than revolutions. They have cut into the quick ;
they have attacked the osseous system of the art; they
have hacked/ hewn, mangled, murdered, the building, in
the form as well as in the symbol, in its logic not less than
in its beauty. And then, they have renewed a presump-
tion from which at least time and revolutions have been
exempt. In the name of good taste, forsooth, they have
impudently clapped upon the wounds of Gothic architecture
their paltry gewgaws of a day, their ribands of marble,
their pompoons of metal, a downright leprosy of eggs, volutes,
spirals, draperies, garlands, fringes, flames of stone, clouds
of bronze, plethoric cupids, chubby cherubs, which begins
to eat into the face of art in the oratory of Catherine de'
Medicis, and puts it to death two centuries later, writhing
and grinning in the boudoir of the Dubarry.
3 Thus, to sum up the points to which we have directed
attention, three kinds of ravages now-a-days disfigure Gothic
architecture: wrinkles and warts on the epidermis these
are the work of Time; wounds, contusions, fractures, from
brutal violence these are the work of revolutions from
n 3



102 THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE-DAME.

Luther to Mirabeau ; mutilations, amputations, dislocations
of members, restorations this is the barbarous Greek and
Roman work of professors, according to Vitruvius and
Vignole. That magnificent art which the Vandals produced,
academies have murdered. With Time and revolutions, whose
ravages are at any rate marked by impartiality and grandeur,
has been associated a host of architects, duly bred, duly
patented, and duly sworn, despoiling with the discernment
of bad taste, substituting the chicories of Louis XV. to the
Gothic lace-work, for the greater glory of the Parthenon.
This is truly the ass's kick to the expiring lion ; the old
oak throwing out its leafy crown, to be bitten, gnawed, and
torn by caterpillars.

How widely different this from the period when Robert
Cenalis, comparing Notre-Dame at Paris with the famous
temple of Diana at Ephesus, " so highly extolled by the
ancient heathen," pronounced the Gallican cathedral "more
excellent in length, breadth, height, and structure."

Notre-Dame, however, is not what may be called a com-
plete building, nor does it belong to any definite class. It
is not a Roman church, neither is it a Gothic church.
Notre-Dame has not, like the abbey of Tournus, the heavy,
massive squareness, the cold nakedness, the majestic sim-
plicity, of edifices which have the circular arch for their
generative principle. It is not, like the cathedral of Bourges,
the magnificent, light, multiform, efflorescent, highly deco-
rated production of the pointed arch. It cannot be classed
among that ancient family of churches, gloomy, mysterious,
low, and crushed as it were by the circular arch ; quite
hieroglyphic, sacerdotal, symbolical ; exhibiting in their
decorations more lozenges and zigzags than flowers, more
flowers than animals, more animals than human figures ;
the work not so much of the architect as of the bishop ;
the first transformation of the art, impressed all over with
theocratic and military discipline, commencing in the
Lower Empire and terminating with William the Conqueror.
Neither can our cathedral be placed in that other family of
churches, light, lofty, rich in painted glass and sculptures ;
sharp in form, bold in attitude ; free, capricious, unruly,
as works of art ; the second transformation of architecture,



THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE-DAME. 103

no longer hieroglyphic, unchangeable, and sacerdotal, but
artistical, progressive, and popular, beginning with the re-
turn from the Crusades and ending with Louis XI. Notre-
Dame is not of pure Roman extraction like the former,
neither is it of pure Arab extraction, like the latter.

It is a transition edifice. The Saxon architect had set up
the first pillars of the nave, when the pointed style, brought
back from the Crusades, seated itself like a conqueror upon
those broad Roman capitals designed to support circular
arches only. The pointed style, thenceforward mistress,
constructed the rest of the church ; but, unpractised and
timid at its outset, it displays a breadth, a flatness, and
dares not yet shoot up into steeples and pinnacles, as it has
since done in so many wonderful cathedrals. You would
say that it is affected by the vicinity of the heavy Roman
pillars.

For the rest, those edifices of the transition from the
Roman to the Gothic style are not less valuable as studies
than the pure types of either. They express a shade of
the art which would be lost but for them the engrafting
of the pointed upon the circular style.

Notre-Dame at Paris is a particularly curious specimen
of this variety. Every face, every stone, of the venerable
structure is a page not only of the history of the country,
but also of the history of art and science. Thus, to glance
merely at the principal details, while the little Porte Rouge
attains almost to the limits of the Gothic delicacy of the
fifteenth century, the pillars of the nave, by their bulk and
heaviness, carry you back to the date of the Carlovingian
abbey of St. Germain des Pres. You would imagine that
there were six centuries between that door-way and those
pillars. There are none, down to the alchymists themselves,
but find in the symbols of the grand porch a satisfactory
compendium of their science, of which the church of St.
Jacques de la Boucherie was so complete an hieroglyphic.
Thus the Roman abbey and the philosophical church,
Gothic art and Saxon art, the heavy round pillar, which
reminds you of Gregory VII., papal unity and schism, St.
Germain des Pres and St. Jacques de la Boucherie are
h 4



104 THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE-DA3IE.

all blended, combined, amalgamated, in Notre-Dame. This
central mother-church is a sort of chimaera among the
ancient churches of Paris ; it has the head of one, the
limbs of another, the trunk of a third, and something of
them all.

These hybrid structures, as we have observed, are not
the less interesting to the artist, the antiquary, and the his-
torian. They shew how far architecture is a primitive art,
inasmuch as they demonstrate (what is also demonstrated
by the Cyclopean remains, the pyramids of Egypt, the
gigantic Hindoo pagodas) that the grandest productions of
architecture are not so much individual as social works,
rather the offspring of nations in labour than the inventions
of genius ; the deposit left by a people ; the accumulations
formed by ages ; the residuum of the successive evapora-
tions of human society in short, a species of formations.
Every wave of time superinduces its alluvion, every gene-
ration deposits its stratum upon the structure, every indi-
vidual brings his stone. Such is the process of the beavers,
such that of the bees, such that of men. The great emblem
of architecture, Babel, is a bee-hive.

Great edifices, like great mountains, are the work of
ages. It is frequently the case that art changes while they
are still in progress. The new art takes the structure as
it finds it, incrusts itself upon it, assimilates itself to it,
proceeds with it according to its own fancy, and completes
it if it can. The thing is accomplished without dis-
turbance, without effort, without reaction, agreeably to a
natural and quiet law. Certes, there is matter for very
thick books, and often for the universal history of mankind,
in those successive inoculations of various styles at various
heights upon the same structure. The man, the artist, the
individual, are lost in these vast masses without any
author's name ; while human skill is condensed and con-
centrated in them. Time is the architect, the nation is the
mason.

To confine our view here to Christian European archi-
tecture, that younger sister of the grand style of the East,
it appears to us like an immense formation divided into
three totally distinct zones laid one upon another: the



THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE-DAME. 105

Roman * zone, the Gothic zone, and the zone of the revival,
which we would fain call the Greco- Roman. The Roman
stratum, which is the most ancient and the lowest, is occu-
pied by the circular arch, which again appears, supported
by the Greek column, in the modern and uppermost stratum
of the revival. The pointed style is between both. The
edifices belonging exclusively to one of these three strata
are absolutely distinct, one, and complete. Such are the
abbey of Jumieges, the cathedral of Ilheims, the Holy
Cross at Orleans. But the three zones blend and amal-
gamate at their borders, like the colours in the solar
spectrum. Hence the complex structures, the transition
edifices. The one is Roman at the foot, Gothic in the
middle, Greco-Roman at the top. The reason is that it
was six centuries in building. This variety is rare ; the
castle of Etampes is a specimen of it. But the edifices
composed of two formations are frequent. Such is Notre-
Dame at Paris, a building in the pointed style, the first
pillars of which belong to the Roman zone, like the porch
of St. Denis, and the nave of St. Germain des Pres. Such
too is the charming semi-gothic capitular hall of Bocher-
ville, exhibiting the Roman stratum up to half its height.
Such is the cathedral of Rouen, which would be entirely
Gothic, were it not for the extremity of its central steeple,
which penetrates into the zone of the revival. t

For the rest, all these shades, all these differences, affect
only the surface of edifices ; it is but art which has changed
its skin. The constitution itself of the Christian church is
not affected by them. There is always the same internal
arrangement, the same logical disposition of parts. Be the
sculptured and embroidered outside of a cathedral what it
may, we invariably find underneath at least the germ and
rudiment of the Roman basilica. It uniformly expands
itself upon the ground according to the same law. There
are without deviation two naves, intersecting each other in



* This is the same that is likewise called, according to countries, climates, and
species, Lombard, Saxon, and Byzantine. These four are parallel and kindred
varieties, each having its peculiar character, but all derived from the same
principle, the circular arch.

f It was precisely this part of the steeple, which was of wood, that was de-
stroyed by the fire of heaven in 1823.



106 THE HUiVCHBACK OF N0TRE-DA3IK.

the form of a cross, and the upper extremity of which
rounded into an apsis, forms the chancel ; and two ailes for
processions and for chapels, a sort of lateral walking-
places, into which the principal nave disgorges itself by the
intercolumniations. These points being settled, the number
of the chapels, porches, towers, pinnacles, is varied to in-
finity, according to the caprice of the age, the nation, and
the art. Accommodation for the exercises of religion once
provided and secured, architecture does just what it pleases.
As for statues, painted windows, mullions, arabesques, open
work, capitals, basso-relievos it combines all these devices
agreeably to the system which best suits itself. Hence the
prodigious external variety in those edifices within which
reside such order and unity. The trunk of the tree is un-
changeable, the foliage capricious.



CHAPTER II.

BIRD'S EYE VIEW OF PARIS.

We have just attempted to repair for the reader the ad-
mirable church of Notre- Dame at Paris. We have briefly
touched upon most of the beauties which it had in the
fifteenth century, and which it no longer possesses ; but
we have omitted the principal, namely the view of Paris
then enjoyed from the top of the towers.

It was in fact when, after groping your way up the dark
spiral staircase with which the thick wall of the towers is
perpendicularly perforated, and landing abruptly on one of
the two lofty platforms deluged with light and air, that a
delightful spectacle bursts at once upon the view a
spectacle sui generis, of which some conception may easily
be formed by such of our readers as have had the good for-
tune to see one of the few Gothic towns still left entire,
complete, homogeneous, such as Nuremberg in Bavaria,
Vittoria in Spain, or even smaller specimens, provided they



THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTBE-DAME. 107

are in good preservation, as Vitre in Bretagne, and Nord-
hausen in Prussia.

The Paris of three hundred and fifty years ago, the
Paris of the fifteenth century, was already a gigantic city.
We modern Parisians in general are much mistaken in
regard to the ground which we imagine it has gained.
Since the time of Louis XI. Paris has not increased above
one third ; and certes it has lost much more in beauty than
it has acquired in magnitude.

The infant Paris was born, as every body knows, in that
ancient island in the shape of a cradle, which is now called
the City. The banks of that island were its first enclosure ;
the Seine was its first ditch. For several centuries Paris
was confined to the island, having two bridges, the one on
the north, the other on the south, and two tetes-de-ponts,
which were at once its gates and its fortresses the Grand
Chatelet on the right bank and the Petit Chatelet on the
left. In process of time, under the kings of the first dy-
nasty, finding herself straitened in her island and unable to
turn herself about, she crossed the water. A first enclosure
of walls and towers then began to encroach upon either
bank of the Seine beyond the two Chatelets. Of this
ancient enclosure some vestiges were still remaining in the
past century ; nothing is now left of it but the memory
and here and there a tradition. By degrees the flood of
houses, always propelled from the heart to the extremities,
wore away and overflowed this enclosure. Philip Augustus
surrounded Paris with new ramparts. He imprisoned the
city within a circular chain of large, lofty, and massive
towers. For more than a century the houses, crowding
closer and closer, raised their level in this basin, like water
in a reservoir. They began to grow higher; story was
piled upon story ; they shot up, like any compressed liquid,
and each tried to lift its head above its neighbour's, in
order to obtain a little fresh air. The streets became
deeper and deeper, and narrower and narrower: every
vacant place was covered and disappeared. The houses at
length overleaped the wall of Philip Augustus, and merrily
scattered themselves at random over the plain, like pri-
soners who had made their escape. There they sat them-



108 THE HUNCHBACK CF NOTRE-DAME.

selves down at their ease and carved themselves gardens out
of the fields. So early as 13()'7 the suburbs of the city
had spread so far as to need a fresh enclosure, especially on
the right bank : this was built for it by Charles V. But
a place like Paris is perpetually increasing. It is such
cities alone that become capitals of countries. They are
reservoirs, into which all the geographical, political, moral,
and intellectual, channels of a country, all the natural in-
clined planes of its population, discharge themselves ; wells
of civilisation, if we may be allowed the expression, and
drains also, where all that constitutes the sap, the life, the
soul, of a nation is incessantly collecting and filtering, drop
by drop, age by age. The enclosure of Charles V. conse-
quently shared the same fate as that of Philip Augustus.
So early as the conclusion of the fifteenth century it was
overtaken, passed, and the suburbs kept travelling onward.
In the sixteenth, it seemed to be visibly receding more and
more into the ancient city, so rapidly did the new town
thicken on the other side of it. Thus, so far back as the
fifteenth century, to come down no further, Paris had
already worn out the three concentric circles of walls
which, from the time of Julian the Apostate, lay in em-
bryo, if I may be allowed the expression, in the Grand and
Petit Chatelet. The mighty city had successively burst its
four mural belts, like a growing boy bursting the garments
made for him a year ago. Under Louis XI. there were still
xx> be seen ruined towers of the ancient enclosures, rising
at intervals above this sea of houses, like the tops of hills
from amidst an inundation, like the archipelagoes of old
Paris submerged beneath the new.

Since that time Paris has, unluckily for us, undergone
further transformation, but it has overleaped only one more
enclosure, that of Louis XV., a miserable wall of mud and
dirt, worthy of the king who constructed it and the poet
by whom it was celebrated:

Le mur murant Paris rend Paris murmurant

In the fifteenth century Paris was still divided into three
totally distinct and separate cities, each having its own
physiognomy, individuality, manners, customs, privileges,



THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE-DAME. 109

and history: the City, the University, and the Ville.
The City, which occupied the island, was the mother of
the two others, and cooped up between them, like reader,
forgive the comparison like a little old woman between
two handsome strapping daughters. The University co-
vered the left bank of the Seine from the Tournelle to the
Tower of Nesle, points corresponding the one with the
Halle aux Vins, and the other with the Mint, of modern
Paris. Its inclosure encroached considerably upon the
plain where Julian had built his baths. It included the
hill of St. Genevieve. The highest point of this curve of
walls was the Papal Gate, which stood nearly upon the site
of the present Pantheon. The Ville, the most extensive
of the three divisions, stretched along the right bank. Its
quay ran, with several interruptions indeed, along the
Seine, from the Tower of Billy to the Tower du Bois, that
is to say from the spot where the Grenier d'Abondance
now stands to that occupied by the Tuileries. These four
points, at which the Seine intersected the inclosure of the
capital, the Tournelle and the Tower of Nesle on the left,
and the Tower of Billy and the Tower du Bois on the
right, were called by way of eminence " the four towers of
Paris." The Ville penetrated still further into the fields
than the University. The culminating point of the in-
closure of the Ville was at the gates of St. Denis and St.
Martin, the sites of which remain unchanged to this day.

Each of these great divisions of Paris was, as we have
observed, a city, but a city too special to be complete, a
city which could not do without the two others. Thus
they had three totally different aspects. The City, pro-
perly so called, abounded in churches ; the Ville contained
the Palaces ; and the University, the Colleges. Setting
aside secondary jurisdictions, we may assume generally, that
the island was under the bishop, the right bank under the
provost of the merchants, the left under the rector of the
University, and the whole under the provost of Paris, a
royal and not a municipal officer. The City had the ca-
thedral of Notre-Dame, the Ville the Louvre and the
Hotel de Ville, and the University the Sorbonne. The
Ville contained the Halles, the City the HoteLDieu, and



110 THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE-DAME.

the University the Pre aux Clercs. For offences com-
mitted by the students on the left bank in their Pre aux
Clercs they were tried at the Palace of Justice in the island,
and punished on the right bank at Montfaucon : unless the
rector, finding the University strong and the king weak,
chose to interfere : for it was a privilege of the scholars to
be hung in their own quarter.

Most of these privileges, be it remarked by the way, and
some of them were more valuable than that just mentioned,
had been extorted from different sovereigns by riots and
insurrections. This is the invariable course the king
never grants any boon but what is wrung from him by the
people.

In the fifteenth century that part of the Seine compre-
hended within the inclosure of Paris contained five islands :
the He Louviers, then covered with trees, and now with
timber, the He aux Vaches, and the Isle Notre-Dame,
both uninhabited and belonging to the bishop [in the seven-
teenth century these two islands were converted into one,
which has been built upon and is now called the Isle of
St. Louis] ; lastly the City, and at its point the islet of the
Passeur aux Vaches, since buried under the platform of the
Pont Neuf. The city had at that time five bridges ; three
on the right, the bridge of Notre-Dame and the Pont au
Change of stone, and the Pont aux Meuniers of wood ; two
on the left, the Petit Pont of stone, and the Pont St. Mi-
chel of wood ; all of them covered with houses. The
University had six gates, built by Philip Augustus ; these
were, setting out from the Tcurnelle, the gate of St. Victor,
the gate of Bordelle, the Papal gate, and the gates of St.
Jacques, St. Michel, and St. Germain. The Ville had six
gates, built by Charles V. that is to say, beginning from
the Tower of Billy, the gates of St. Antoine, the Temple,
St. Martin, St. Denis, Montmartre, and St. Honore All
these gates were strong and handsome too, a circumstance
which does not detract from strength. A wide, deep ditch,
supplied by the Seine with water, which was swollen by
the floods of winter to a running stream, encircled the foot
of the wall all round Paris. At night the gates were closed,



THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE-DAME. Ill

the river was barred at the two extremities of the city by
stout iron chains, and Paris slept in quiet.

A bird's eye view of these three towns, the City, the
University, and the Ville, exhibited to the eye an inextri-
cable knot of streets strangely jumbled together. It was
apparent, however, at first sight that these three fragments
of a city formed but a single body. The spectator per-
ceived immediately two long parallel streets, without break
or interruption, crossing the three cities, nearly in a right
line, from one end to the other, from south to north, per-
pendicularly to the Seine, incessantly pouring the people of
the one into the other, connecting, blending, them together
and converting the three into one. The first of these
streets ran from the gate of St. Jacques to the gate of St.
Martin ; it was called in the University the street of St.
Jacques, in the City rue de la Juiverie, and in the Ville,
the street of St. Martin : it crossed the river twice by the
name of Petit Pont and Pont Notre- Dame. The second,
named rue de la Harpe on the left bank, rue de la Baril-
lerie in the island, rue St. Denis on the right bank, Pont
St. Michel over one arm of the Seine, and Pont au Change
over the other, ran from the gate of St. Michel in the Uni-
versity to the gate of St. Denis in the Ville. Still, though
they bore so many different names, they formed in reality
only two streets, but the two mother-streets, the two great
arteries of Paris. All the other veins of the triple city
were fed by or discharged themselves into these.

Besides these two principal diametrical streets crossing
Paris breadthwise and common to the entire capital, the
Ville and the University had each its chief street running
longitudinally parallel with the Seine, and in its course in-
tersecting the two arterial streets at right angles. Thus
in the Ville you might go in a direct line from the gate of
St. Antoine to the gate of St. Honore ; and in the Uni-
versity from the gate of St. Victor to the gate of St. Ger-
main. These two great thoroughfares, crossed by the two
former, constituted the frame upon which rested the mazy
web of the streets of Paris, knotted and jumbled together
in every possible way. In the unintelligible plan of this
labyrinth might moreover be distinguished, on closer ex-



112 THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE-DAME.

amination, two clusters of wide streets, which ran, expand-
ing like sheaves of corn, from the bridges to the gates.
Somewhat of this geometrical plan subsists to this day.

What then was the aspect of this whole, viewed from the
summit of the towers of Notre- Dame in 1482 ? That is
what we shall now attempt to describe. The spectator, on
arriving breathless at that elevation, was dazzled by the
chaos of roofs, chimneys, streets, bridges, belfries, towers,
and steeples. All burst at once upon the eye the carved
gable, the sharp roof, the turret perched upon the angles
of the walls, the stone pyramid of the eleventh century,
the slated obelisk of the fifteenth, the round and naked
keep of the castle, the square and embroidered tower of the
church, the great and the small, the massive and the light.
The eye was long bewildered amidst this labyrinth of
heights and depths in which there was nothing but had its