“As are those of almost all the builders of great churches,” replied the Abbe Plomb.  “It may, however, be safely assumed that during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the Benedictines of the Abbey of Tiron directed the building of our church, for that monastery had established a House at Chartres in 1117; we also know that this convent contained more than five hundred Brothers practising all the arts, and that sculptors, image-makers, stone-cutters, or workers in pierced stone, were numerous.  It would therefore seem very natural that these monks sent to live at Chartres were the men who drew the plans of Notre Dame, and employed the horde of artists whom we see represented in one of the old windows of the apse—­men in furred caps shaped like a jelly bag, who are busily carving and polishing the statues of kings.

“Their work was finished at the beginning of the sixteenth century by Jehan Le Texier, known as Jehan de Beauce, who erected the northern belfry, called the New Belfry, and the decorative work inside the church, forming the niches for the groups on the walls of the choir-aisles or ambulatory.”

“And has no one ever been able to discover the name of any one of the original architects, sculptors, or glass-makers of this Cathedral?”

“It has been the subject of much research, and I, personally, may say that I have grudged neither time nor trouble, but all in vain.

“This much we know:  At the top of the southern belfry, the Old Belfry as it is called, near the window-bay looking towards the New Belfry, this name was deciphered:  ‘Harman, 1164.’  Is it that of an architect, of a workman, or of a night watchman on the look-out at that time in the tower?  We can but wonder.  Didron, again, discovered on the pilaster of the eastern porch, above the head of a butcher slaughtering an ox, the word ‘Rogerus’ in twelfth century characters.  Was he the architect, the sculptor, the donor of this porch—­or the butcher?  Another signature, ‘Robir,’ is to be seen on the pedestal of a statue in the north porch.  Who was Robir?  None can say.

“Langlois, too, mentions a glass-worker of the thirteenth century, Clement of Chartres, whose signature he found on a window of the Cathedral at Rouen—­Clement Vitrearius Carnutensis; but it is a wide leap to infer, as some would do, that merely because this Clement was a native of Chartres, he must have painted one or more of the glass pictures in Notre Dame here.  And at any rate we have no information as to his life or his works in this city.  It may also be remarked that on a pane in our church we read Petrus Bal ...; is this the name, complete or defaced, of a donor or of a painter?  Once more we must confess ourselves ignorant.