Strasburg among steeples? And those myriad statues which peopled every
space between the columns of the choir and the nave, kneeling, standing,
on horseback, men, women, children, kings, bishops, men-at-arms--of stone,
of marble, of gold, of silver, of copper, nay even of wax--who brutally
swept them away? It was not the hand of Time.

And who replaced the old Gothic altar, with its splendid burden of shrines
and reliquaries, by that heavy marble sarcophagus adorned with clouds and
cherubs, looking like a poor copy of the Val-de-Grace or the Hotel des
Invalides? Who was stupid enough to fasten that clumsy stone anachronism
into the Carlovingian pavement of Hercandus? Was it not Louis XIV.,
fulfilling the vow of Louis XIII.?

And who set cold white panes in place of that stained glass of gorgeous
hue, which led the wondering gaze of our fathers to roam uncertain 'twixt
the rose-window of the great door and the ogives of the chancel? And what
would a precentor of the sixteenth century say if he could see the fine
coat of yellow wash with which our Vandal archbishops have smeared their
cathedral? He would remember that this was the color with which the
executioner formerly painted those buildings judged "infamous;" he would
recall the hotel of the Petit-Bourbon, bedaubed with yellow in memory of
the Constable's treason; "a yellow of so fine a temper," says Sauval, "and
so well laid on, that more than a hundred years have failed to wash out
its color." He would fancy that the sacred spot had become accursed, and
would turn and flee.

And if we climb higher in the cathedral, without pausing to note a
thousand barbarous acts of every kind, what has become of that delightful
little steeple which rested upon the point of intersection of the
transept, and which, no less fragile and no less daring than its neighbor,