The tribune over the sacristy door was put up by the Duchesse d'Orléans, Adélaïde, the mother of Louis Philippe, in 1778, that she might enjoy privacy when she was present at the offices. It is a noble example of the finished style of Louis XVI.
Amongst the treasures of S. Eustache are an ivory crucifix in the sacristy: a bone of the patron Saint, from the cemetery of S. Priscilla, given in 1660 by Pope Alexander VII. to Sieur Chauvin; a tooth, formerly in the church of S. Jacques-l'Hôpital; and some bones of S. Eustache and his wife and children, said to have been formerly amongst the treasures of S. Denis; but I find no record of them in Dom Millet. The frescoes in the chapel of the patron Saint were painted by M. le Hénaff, in imitation of those found in the catacombs of Rome, the painter having copied the incorrect drawing as well as the fervent feeling of the early painters.
One or two more pictures by Vouët may be seen; and in the chapel of the Redemption are the frescoes of M. Glaize, one of the few painters who seems to have understood the spirit in which a church should be decorated.
[Illustration: L'ADORATION PERPÉTUELLE AT SAINT-EUSTACHE.]
S. Eustache was a royal parish up to the great crash at the end of the last century; its domain extended from the Chaussée des Gaillons to the Rue S. Denis, and being in the centre of the great world, it was very fashionable. Hard by were the royal palaces, and the new and "magnifique bastiment de l'hostel royal dit des Tuileries lez Paris, pour ce qu'il y avoit anciennement une tuilerie audict lieu," the _chef-d'œuvre_ of Philibert Delorme, built by order of Catherine de' Medici to outrival the Château d'Anet, erected by the same great artist for the irregular queen, the lovely Diane. Not far from the Place Royale, and in the centre of a nest of hotels belonging to great and noble personages, S. Eustache became the praying-place of the living and the burial-place of the defunct notabilities. The great ministers of Henri III., Louis XIII., and Louis XIV. lived in the parish: the Duc d'Epernon, in the Rue Platrière (now Jean-Jacques-Rousseau, by reason of the sage having occupied the 4th _étage_ of No. 49, in the year 1770); Cardinal Richelieu, in the Rue St.-Honoré, au Palais-Cardinal, otherwise the modern tourist's hunting-ground, the Palais-Royal; and Mazarin, the Rue Neuve-des-Petits-Champs. The _curés_ were naturally much in vogue as confessors and directors to these high personages and their swarms of followers and appendages--men and women. One of the rectors, preaching in 1537, before the King (François I.), the Cardinal de Lorraine, brother of the Duc de Guise, the Cardinal de Tournon, and ladies and gentlemen of the court, seems to have been shaky in his theology, according to some of his hearers, but _estonnant de vérité_, quoth others. Even the royal mind itself was unquiet for several days, but upon persuasion by the Cardinals it became reassured.