The intelligent English traveller has of course no time to waste on any of these questions. But if he has bought his ham-sandwich, and is ready for the "En voiture, messieurs," he may perhaps condescend for an instant to hear what a lounger about the place, neither wasteful of his time, nor sparing of it, can suggest as worth looking at, when his train glides out of the station.
He will see first, and doubtless with the respectful admiration which an Englishman is bound to bestow upon such objects, the coal-sheds and carriage-sheds of the station itself, extending in their ashy and oily splendours for about a quarter of a mile out of the town; and then, just as the train gets into speed, under a large chimney tower, which he cannot see to nearly the top of, but will feel overcast by the shadow of its smoke, he _may_ see, if he will trust his intelligent head out of the window, and look back, fifty or fifty-one (I am not sure of my count to a unit) similar chimneys, all similarly smoking, all with similar works attached, oblongs of brown brick wall, with portholes numberless of black square window. But in the midst of these fifty tall things that smoke, he will see one, a little taller than any, and more delicate, that does not smoke; and in the midst of these fifty masses of blank wall enclosing 'works'--and doubtless producing works profitable and honourable to France and the world--he will see _one_ mass of wall--not blank, but strangely wrought by the hands of foolish men of long ago, for the purpose of enclosing or producing no manner of profitable work whatsoever, but one--
"This is the work of God; that ye should believe on Him whom He hath sent"!
Leaving the intelligent traveller now to fulfil his vow of pilgrimage to Paris,--or wherever else God may be sending him,--I will suppose that an intelligent Eton boy or two, or thoughtful English girl, may care quietly to walk with me as far as this same spot of commanding view, and to consider what the workless--shall we say also worthless?--building, and its unshadowed minaret, may perhaps farther mean.
Minaret I have called it, for want of better English word. Flêche--arrow--is its proper name; vanishing into the air you know not where, by the mere fineness of it. Flameless--motionless--hurtless--the fine arrow; unplumed, unpoisoned, and unbarbed; aimless--shall we say also, readers young and old, travelling or abiding? It, and the walls it rises from--what have they once meant? What meaning have they left in them yet, for you, or for the people that live round them, and never look up as they pass by?