On the south angle of the Clocher Vieux there is an angel carrying a sun-dial, of whom one would gladly know more. There is an angel-dial on the corresponding part of the S. Laurence Church at Genoa, and one which much resembles this, and may have been by the same hands, is at the south corner of the cloister at Laon. Our angel stands with bare feet on a bracket, and above his head is a ‘Heavenly Jerusalem’--a daïs showing a city with turrets and windows. He is clad in a long tunic covered by a mantle which fits close to his long, thin body. His hands are intended to support a disc on which a sun-dial was traced. His arms are outspread. Clearly the present dial traced on a heavy square stone, with the date 1578, which covers his breast, was an addition of that year, but does not mark the date of the angel. For though the smile which lurks about his fair monastic countenance is scarce angelic, and may suggest rather the disquieting, seraphic types of the Renaissance, yet the whole figure, with its simple and successful treatment of the hair and draperies, is redolent of the Byzantine style, which we shall trace in the family of kings and queens grouped beneath the Porche Royal. To that family he must belong.
You will move gladly into the porch to study its beautiful twelfth-century sculpture, for whilst you have been looking at this angel you will have learnt that round the south-west corner of the Cathedral, as about the Abbey in Old Palace Yard in Westminster, the wind never ceases to blow, and often blows a hurricane. Before the Hôtel-Dieu, which was quite close to the Clocher Vieux, was destroyed, the gusts of wind were so violent that the passage called _L’Âne qui vielle_ had the reputation of being impassable. One Canon Brillon, a hundred years ago, wrote a poem in which he related that ‘On a time Wind and Discord were travelling over the plains of La Beauce and suddenly turned in the direction of the Cathedral. Arrived at the foot of the towers, Discord left his companion, asking him to wait near _L’Âne qui vielle_ whilst he went into the Chapter-house. Contentious business detained him there so long that the Wind is still waiting, waiting for him outside;
As I struggle through Old Palace Yard I often wonder whether it is in the House of Commons or in the Chapter-house of the Abbey that Discord is so busily engaged, for the wind here, as in Chartres and at Kill-Cannon Corner at Lincoln, is always waiting outside, a truly Gothic draught![62]