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Solitary and quiet in his life, he had the imprudence to attack Viollet-le-Duc, then all-powerful. He reproached him with trying to reestablish buildings in their primitive plan, as they had been, or as they might have been, at the beginning. Philippe Dechartre, on the contrary, wished that everything which the lapse of centuries had added to a church, an abbey, or a castle should be respected.
Denis, together with many other monuments which had no real place there; but, being housed in the crypt, they were further clipt to suit their fresh surroundings. Finally, when the Basilica was restored under Viollet-le-Duc, the tombs were replaced as nearly as possible in their old positions; but several intruders from elsewhere are still interspersed among them.
As a general thing, I do not favor the fashion of attributing moral qualities to buildings; I shrink from talking about tender porticos and sincere campanili; but I find I cannot get on at all without imputing some sort of morality to Saint- Sernin. As it stands to-day, the church has been completely restored by Viollet-le-Duc.
Viollet-le-Duc is the authority for the statement that the apse and transept, chapels, choir, and two doorways of the west façade were quite complete before the influence of the perfected Gothic of the Isle of France was even felt. One Enguerrand was the chief designer of the new church, assisted by Jean d'Andeli as master mason.
A later restoration, the removing of the ruin wrought by the Revolution, did not succeed so well. It was not until the really great work of Viollet-le-Duc, under Napoleon III., that this grand building finally took on again an acceptable form.
Since then all sorts of other schemes have been tried by Viollet-le-Duc, Guimet, Lamoureux, Melchior de Vogüé and Julien Goujon, Gabriel Parisot, Colonne and Milliet, Deville, Lagoanère, Corneille, Gailhard, and Carré; but none of them achieved any success. At the moment, a new attempt is being made; and this time the thing seems to show every sign of being a success.
These facts I derive from a source no more recondite than a pamphlet by M. Viollet-le-Duc a very luminous description of the fortifications, which you may buy from the accomplished custodian.
The great French churches of the Middle Ages witness Nôtre Dame d'Amiens with its inviting ambulatory were places of municipal debate, and their sculpture was, to borrow the bold metaphor of Viollet-le-Duc, a political "liberty of speech" at a time when the chisel of the sculptor might say what the pen of the scrivener dared not, for fear of the common hangman, express.
Position of Beziers S. Nazaire The Albigenses Their tenets Albigensian "consolation" Crusade against them The storming of Beziers Massacre Cathedral of Beziers Girls' faces in the train Similar faces at Narbonne, in Cathedral and Museum Narbonne a Roman colony All the Roman buildings destroyed Caps of liberty Christian sarcophagi Children's toys of baked clay Cathedral unfinished Archiepiscopal Palace Unsatisfactory work of M. Viollet-le-Duc In trouble with the police Taken for a German spy My sketch-book gets me off.
Thirty-one years later, having passed into the hands of the King of France, it was again besieged by the young Raymond de Trincavel, the last of the viscounts of Beziers; and of this siege M. Viollet-le-Duc gives a long and minute account, which the visitor who has a head for such things may follow, with the brochure in hand, on the fortifications themselves.
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