The northern tower was badly damaged by the bombardment of September 19, 1914, which fired the scaffolding around it (_see photo, p. 9_). Two of the pinnacled niches surmounting the buttresses were decapitated, while the flames completely disfigured the statues, including that of Christ.
A large calibre shell burst in the southern tower on April 19, 1917, causing very serious damage.
[Illustration: SECOND STOREY AND UPPER STOREY OF THE TOWERS]
The second storey comprises a series of niches, surmounted by sharply pointed gables and adorned with gigantic statues, known as the _Kings' Gallery_.
The central group, consisting of seven figures, commemorates the _Baptism of Clovis_. Clovis, standing in the baptismal font; between Saint Remi, receiving the Sacred Ampulla, and Clotilda.
The balcony in front of the _Baptism of Clovis_ was formerly called the _Gloria Gallery_, as it was the custom for the choir-boys to sing the _Gloria_ there on Palm Sunday.
The upper storey of the towers, built on an octagonal plan, is flanked with four open-work turrets, one of which contains stairs leading to the platforms.
The northern tower, badly damaged by the fire of 1914, lost several of the fine colonnettes of its corner turrets in 1918.
In the same year, the pierced staircase of the southern tower was almost entirely destroyed.
At the time of the last restorations, the foundations of the spires provided for in the original plans, but which have never been built, were laid.
In the belfry of the northern tower are two magnificent deep-toned bells. One of them is modern and was cast at Le Mans, and blessed in 1849 by Cardinal Gousset. The other, one of the finest bells known, and presented to the church in 1570 by Cardinal Charles de Lorraine, is the work of the Rheims metal-founder, Pierre Deschamps.
The scaffolding fire of 1914 reached the belfry, bringing down the bells, which were broken in the fall.
The lateral façades of the Cathedral are of rare beauty. Nowhere have abutments and flying buttresses been so harmoniously employed as here. They are not merely supports, but form part of the decorative scheme of the nave, and ensure the harmony of the whole. Buttresses, finished off with pinnacles, serve as points of support for two superimposed flying-buttresses. The octagonal pinnacles are flanked with four small triangular pyramids and supported in front by two slender detached columns. Between the latter, under canopies, angels with outstretched wings carry the instruments of the Passion and various other emblems (_see photo, p. 49_).