The Churches of Paris, from Clovis to Charles X — Text and Context

the chapels of the Way of the Cross until 1830, when some senseless vandals threw them down and broke them; but the fragments were preserved, and are now in the garden of the Hôtel Cluny, a museum of fragments. The rest were replaced in the chapel, and are the fourth and fifth on each side facing the altar; all the others are new.

The pavement is modern incised stone, with incrustations of colour, representing geometrical patterns, animals, and flowers. In the apse are subjects--the _Four rivers of Paradise_, and the _Seven Sacraments_ in the form of rivers. The altar is an exact copy of the original one. Above it is the tribune and canopy where the relics were exposed, with a spiral staircase leading up to it;[8] the northern one is ancient, and was found by Alexandre Lenoir, in the Musée des Petits-Augustins, where for half a century it had been attached to the _façade_ of the Château de Gaillon, a 16th century work, now in the court of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. On one side of the apse is a very beautiful _piscina_. Part of the _baldachino_ is ancient, and the rest has been restored from old drawings.

Formerly several statues occupied places in the chapel; one, a terra-cotta Notre-Dame de Pitié, by Germain Pilon, which is now in the chapel of the military school of St. Cyr. A 16th century _jubé_, with altars attached to it, marked the nave from the chancel. The retables of these altars (now in the Louvre) were in enamel, signed and dated Léonard Limousin, 1533, and contain portraits of François I. and his second wife, Eléonore d'Autriche, sister of Charles V. and of Henri II. and Catherine de'Medici, all kneeling. The choir was filled with carved stalls of the time of Henri II. At the four corners of the altar pavement, Henri III. elevated bronze Angels upon black marble pillars. On the _retro_-altar was a silver-gilt model of the chapel, three or four feet high, executed in 1631 by Pijard, goldsmith, and guardian of the relics. This contained some of the treasures, and was considered a very fine work of art, costing some 13,000 _livres_. There is an excellent drawing of the original altar in Viollet-le-Duc's dictionary. Canon Morand tells us, in his history of the chapel, that the _ciborium_, which is usually placed in the tabernacle, was here suspended in front of the altar--probably the _retro_-altar, as in the engraving of the High Altar in the Canon's book, there is no representation of it. All the old furniture of the church has disappeared, the carved stalls, the _jubé_, the altars, and the pulpit. Upon the subject of letting, or taking money for seats or chairs in church, the Abbé waxes wrathful. Nothing is more "indécent que de vendre ou de louer des places à l'Eglise. En Angleterre et en Hollande on est assis dans les Temples sans aucun frais, et sans être interrompu par les Mandians, par les quêteurs, ou par les loueurs de chaises; en quoi les non-Catholiques nous donnent un bel exemple à suivre, si nous étions assez raisonables et assez désinterressés pour cela." This is a proof that the letting of pews which prevailed in this country some years ago was a bad departure from the free-and-open seat system of the last century; and the picture drawn of the restlessness of a French church, from the incessant perambulating of the _Suisses_, the _quêteurs_, and the chair-owners, is as true now as it was in the time of Morand.

The Canon then goes on to record the want of reverence of the congregation, how they just _half_ kneel when the bell rings; how they must needs sit, and even gossip, during the short quarter of an hour occupied by a low mass; how they take snuff and bear themselves generally, and then go out and stand about for the greater part of the day at their business.