dry and uninspiring, and besides it happened so long ago.

Did it? In your stroll along the Rue Royale, among the jewellers' and
milliners' shops and Maxim's, glance up at the Madeleine, down at the
obelisk in the Place de la Concorde. Little over a hundred years ago, this
was the brief distance between life and death for those who one minute
were dancing in the "Temple of Victory," the next were laying their heads
upon the block of the guillotine.




Notre-Dame

By Victor Hugo


[Footnote: From Hugo's "Notre-Dame de Paris." Translated by A.L. Alger. By
permission of Dana, Estes & Co. Copyright, 1888.]



The church of Notre-Dame at Paris is doubtless still a sublime and
majestic building. But, much beauty as it may retain in its old age, it is
not easy to repress a sigh, to restrain our anger, when we mark the
countless defacements and mutilations to which men and time have subjected
that venerable monument, without respect for Charlemagne, who laid its
first stone, or Philip Augustus, who laid its last....

Upon the face of this aged queen of French cathedrals, beside every