You reach the old tower from the new by way of the Gallery of Kings or by crossing, within, the vaulting of the nave, beneath the copper roof which has taken the place of the old wooden roof destroyed in the fire of 1836. The old roof was an immense and elaborate construction of timber known to the people as The Forest, because, one old chronicler explains, had the trees of which it was composed still been growing they would constitute a large forest by themselves; because, says another, the sight of it recalled to the people the sacred groves of the ancient Druids, who once performed their rites upon this spot. The magnificent woodwork of the belfry of the old tower was consumed in the same fire, and the huge bells that were once its boast--Mary and Gabriel--were melted down in 1793 to supply the men of reason with bullets.
The great bell of the old tower (Marie) had been re-made in 1723 and carried the inscription--
‘Marie-Anne je m’appèle Et trente mille je pèse, Celui qui bien me pèsera 34,000 trouvera.’
At the foot of the Clocher Neuf is the extremely elegant little Renaissance clock tower, which was built by Jehan de Beauce in 1520, when he had completely abandoned the Gothic style and adopted the classic manner lately introduced by the Italian artists who had followed Louis XII. and François I. into France. Partisans of pure Gothic may call it mythological, mannered, mundane, but the more catholic lover of the beautiful will not dismiss it so contemptuously. From this pavillon de l’horloge there used to run alongside the nave up to the transept some fourteenth-century buildings, which were demolished in 1860. They served as a lodging for the Sœurs-cryptes, who, when the epidemic known as the Mal des Ardents was scourging France in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, had charge of the Hôpital des Saints-Lieux-Forts, organised in the north gallery of the crypt to receive the crowds of sufferers who flocked to the shrine of Notre-Dame-de-Sous-Terre. The patients were received and nursed in this hospital for nine days and then dismissed, healed or not.[76] From the fourteenth century onwards the plague gradually decreased in intensity, cases became less and less rare, and the staff of Sisters was finally reduced to one, known as La Dame des Grottes.