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And if we ascend the cathedral, withouta thousand barbaris little bell tohich rested upon the point of intersection of the cross-roofs, and which, no less frail and no less bold than its neighbor (also destroyed), the spire of the Sainte-Chapelle, buried itself in the sky, farther forward than the towers, slender, pointed, sonorous, carved in open work An architect of good taste amputated it (1787), and considered it sufficient to e, leaden plaster, which resembles a pot cover

'Tis thus that the es has been treated in nearly every country, especially in France One can distinguish on its ruins three sorts of lesions, all three of which cut into it at different depths; first, time, which has insensibly notched its surface here and there, and gnawed it everywhere; next, political and religious revolution, which, blind and wrathful by nature, have flung the and sculpture, burst its rose s, broken its necklace of arabesques and tiny figures, torn out its statues, sometimes because of their mitres, sorotesque and foolish, which, since the anarchical and splendid deviations of the Renaissance, have followed each other in the necessary decadence of architecture Fashions have wrought more harm than revolutions They have cut to the quick; they have attacked the very bone and fraanized, killed the edifice, in form as in the symbol, in its consistency as well as in its beauty And then they have made it over; a presumption of which neither tiuilty They have audaciously adjusted, in the naothic architecture, their aws of a day, their ribbons of -shaped ornaes, stone flay cupids, chubby- cheeked cherubiin to devour the face of art in the oratory of Catherine de Medicis, and cause it to expire, two centuries later, tortured and gri, in the boudoir of the Dubarry

Thus, to sum up the points which we have just indicated, three sorts of ravages to-day disfigure Gothic architecture Wrinkles and warts on the epidermis; this is the work of time Deeds of violence, brutalities, contusions, fractures; this is the work of the revolutions from Luther to Mirabeau Mutilations, amputations, dislocation of the joints, "restorations"; this is the Greek, Ro to Vitruvius and Vignole This nificent art produced by the Vandals has been slain by the academies The centuries, the revolutions, which at least devastate with irandeur, have been joined by a cloud of school architects, licensed, sworn, and bound by oath; defacing with the discern the ~chicorées~ of Louis XV for the Gothic lace, for the greater glory of the Parthenon It is the kick of the ass at the dying lion It is the old oak crowning itself, and which, to heap the nawed by caterpillars