Italians were sent for from Milan to wash the grand old stone of Berchères a sickly yellow; the noble simplicity of the piers, capitals and soffits of the arches disappeared beneath a mess of stucco, gilding and sham marble. The choir was treated like an eighteenth century drawing-room. The old tapestry hangings, five of which are happily preserved in the Museum, were removed, and in their place eight mediocre bas-reliefs in glaring white marble were substituted by Bridan, two of which have been removed to the Bishop’s Palace. The old paving of the choir, on which S. Louis and a thousand other illustrious pilgrims had knelt, was also removed, and an utterly unsuitable pavement of black and white marble laid down in its stead. In order to throw light upon the atrocious transformation that had been wrought, several of the priceless thirteenth-century windows were taken out and plain glass substituted. To such an extent was this done, indeed, that in 1786 we find a canon of the Cathedral gravely complaining that there was too much light, and asking for a curtain to be drawn across the window! But the Revolution surprised these canons seated in their new stalls ere the curtains had yet been made to hide the results of their pious Paganism. They were sent to the scaffold, and their church was converted into a Temple of Reason amid scenes of abominable profanity and vile orgy.
The group of the Assumption was preserved by the presence of mind of an architect, by name Morin, who placed a red cap of liberty on the Virgin’s head and a lance in her hand. It might have been more reasonable to destroy it. For anything more detestably out of place than this soulless mass of Carrara marble in the old Gothic sanctuary it is impossible to discover without going to Westminster Abbey. It is the work of Antoine Bridan, the King’s sculptor, and the Chapter were so pleased with it that they settled a pension on him and his wife, and cheerfully destroyed more windows in order to throw more light upon the monument.
Vandals, alas, are of all time and of all countries. Even the beautiful Clôture, the great horse-shoe wall
[Illustration: Ambulatory, Chartres Cathedral.
which, chiselled like a silver bowl, encloses the choir, has been and continues to be horribly defaced and defiled by the ignorant vandalism of impious idiots and pious pilgrims, whose zeal has eaten them up and moves them to write or scratch their names upon the walls of this exquisite though unequal work.