After the fire of 1504 the cathedral chapter sought assistance from the king: "_Plaise au Roy d'avoir pitié et compassion de la paoure église de Senlis ... laquelle, par fortune et inconvénient de feu a été bruslée, les cloches fondues, et le clocher qui est grant, magnifique et l'un des singuliers du royaume, au moyen du dit feu tellement endommagé qu'il est en danger de tomber_." Royalty responded generously as the sculpture shows; at the transept's portals are to be seen the porcupine of Louis XII, the ermine of Anne of Brittany, and the salamander of Francis I.
Under the learned Bishop Guillaume Parvi, confessor to Francis I, was laid the first stone of the transept's elaborate south façade in 1521. On it worked Pierre de Chambiges, son of the noted maker of late-Gothic frontispieces, and Jean Dixieult. And when it was nearing completion in 1560 the north façade was begun, and finished by the latter master.
Effective, vivid, alertly handsome are Senlis' transept fronts. The wise traveler, even if he infinitely prefers the purer lines of early Gothic, will learn to value this florid final expansion of the national art. The renewal of builders' energy in the XV and XVI centuries was a sumptuous phase worthy of admiration. Those who are partial to English Gothic do not need to be warned against depreciating French Flamboyant work. The advice to be eclectic in travel, so as not to lose any source of artistic pleasure, is for those whose ideal of the builders' art is that of the Ile-de-France, comprised between 1150 and 1250. For such the chief interest of Senlis will be the cathedral's apse, its main façade, and the splendid tower. Let them widen their sympathies and take in the effective transept-fronts of the Flamboyant rebirth.
Senlis of the towers, of the silent squares, of the quaint names--rue des Fromages, rue du Puits-Tiphane, rue des Pigeons Blancs--a charming aristocratic little city, set in an undulating Corot-like landscape, dotted with country houses, was the very epitome of well-conditioned provincial life. Before the summer of 1914 no spot on earth seemed farther removed from violence and crime. Then came the invading hordes over the Valois land. On September 2, 1914, the Germans surrounded Senlis, which, _ville ouverte_ though it was, they proceeded to bombard. One third of the obus that fell hit the cathedral. That the guns, three miles away, were pointed on the famous tower would seem to be proved by the fact that only those houses were damaged which lay in the direct line between the German battery and Notre Dame.