“In sua templa furit, nullaque exire vetante
     Materia, magnamque cadens magnamque revertens
     Dat stragem late sparsosque recolligit ignes.”

Among the legends recorded on the southern portal, or the Portail de la Calende, is that of the corn-merchant; the confiscation of whose property paid, as the chronicles tell us, for the erection of this beautiful entrance.  He himself, if we may believe the same authority, was hanged in the street opposite to it, in consequence of having been detected in the use of false measures.

The original Lady-Chapel, at the east end of the cathedral, was taken down in 1302.  The present, which is considerably more spacious, is chiefly of a date immediately subsequent.  Part, however, was built in 1430, when new and larger windows were inserted throughout the church; whilst other parts were not finished till 1538, at which time the Cardinal Georges d’Amboise restored the roof of the choir, which had been injured in 1514, by the destruction of the spire.

The square central tower, which is low and comparatively plain, is the work of the year 1200.  It is itself more ancient than would be supposed from the character of its architecture; but it occupies the place of one of still greater antiquity, which was materially damaged in 1117, when the original spire of the church was struck by lightning.  This first spire was of stone, but was replaced by another of wood, which, as I have just mentioned, was also destroyed at the beginning of the sixteenth century.  A fire, arising from the negligence of plumbers employed to repair the lead-work, was the cause of its ruin.—­To remedy the misfortune, recourse was had to extraordinary efforts:  the King contributed twelve thousand francs; the chapter a portion of their revenue and their plate; collections were made throughout the kingdom; and Leo Xth authorised the sale of indulgences, a measure, which, at nearly the same period, in its more extensive adoption for the building of St. Peter’s at Rome, shook the Papacy to its foundation.  The spire thus raised, the second of wood, but the third in chronological order, is the one which is now in existence.  It was, like its predecessor, endangered by the carelessness of the plumbers, in 1713; but it does not appear to have required any material reparations till ten years ago, when a sum of thirty thousand francs was expended upon it.

From what has already been said, you will not have failed to observe that this cathedral is the work of so many different periods, that it almost contains within itself a history of pointed architecture.  To attempt a labored description of it were idle:  minute details of any one of the portals would fill a moderate volume; and a quarto of seven hundred pages, from which I have borrowed most of my dates, has already been written upon the subject by a Benedictine Monk of the name of Pommeraye, who also published the history of the Archbishops of the See[79].