One of the comic papers must, however, be exempted from these generalisations. _Le Rire_, _Le Journal Amusant_, _La Vie Parisienne_ and the scores of cheaper imitations may depend for their living on the one joke; but _L'Assiette au Beurre_ is more serious. _L'Assiette au Beurre_ is first and foremost a satirist. It chastises continually, and its whip is often scorpions. Even its lighter numbers, chiefly given to ridicule, contain streaks of savagery.
At the end of the brief Rue de Lutèce is the great Hôtel Dieu, the oldest hospital in Paris, having been founded in the seventh century; and to the left of it is one of the Paris flower markets, where much beautiful colour may be seen very formally and unintelligently arranged. Gardens are among those things that we order (or shall I say disorder?) better than the French do.
Pagan Origins and Christian Predecessors--The Beginnings of Notre Dame--Victor Hugo--The Dangers of Renovation--Old Glass and New--A Wedding--The Cathedral's Great Moment--The Hundred Poor Girls and Louis XVI.--The Revolution--Mrs. Momoro, Goddess of Reason--The Legend of Our Lady of the Bird--Coronation of Napoleon--The Communards and the Students--The Treasures of the Sacristy--Three Hundred and Ninety-seven Steps--Quasimodo and Esmeralda--Paris at our Feet--The Eiffel Tower--The Devils of Notre Dame--The Precincts--Notre Dame from the Quai.
If the Ile de la Cité is the eye of Paris, then, to adapt one of Oliver Wendell Holmes' metaphors, Notre Dame is its pupil. It stands on ground that has been holy, or at least religious, for many centuries, for part of its site was once occupied by the original mother church of Paris, St. Etienne, built in the fourth century; and close by, in the Place du Parvis, have been discovered the foundations of another church, dating from the sixth century, dedicated to Sainte Marie; while beneath that are the remains of a Temple of Apollo or Jupiter, relics of which we shall see at the Cluny. The origin of Notre Dame, the fusion of these two churches, is wrapped in darkness; but Victor Hugo roundly states that the first stone of it was laid by Charlemagne (who reigned from 768 to 814, and whose noble equestrian statue stands just outside), and the last by Philip Augustus, who was a friend of our Richard Coeur de Lion. The more usual account of the older parts of the Notre Dame that one sees to-day is that the first stone of it was laid in 1163, in the reign of Louis VII., by Pope Alexander III., who chanced then to be in Paris engaged in the task of avoiding his enemies, the Ghibellines, and that in almost exactly a hundred years, in the reign of Saint Louis, it was completed. (I say completed, but as a matter of fact it is not completed even yet, for each of the square towers was designed to carry a spire, and I remember seeing at the Paris Exhibition of 1889 a number of drawings of the cathedral by young architects, with these spires added. It is, however, very unlikely that they will ever sprout, and I, for one, hope not.)