Chapter 4 SENLIS

THE spire of the ancient cathedral of Senlis overlooks an immense horizon. This belfry is the lightest, the most elegant, the most harmonious that Gothic art has given us. It rises with a flight so magnificent and so perfectly rhythmical that at the first glance one might think it a growth of nature; it seems to live with the same life as the heavens, the clouds and the birds. This masterly grace, this warm beauty, are, however, the work of time and of men.

An architect endowed with genius thought out this miraculous plan, proportioned with this infallible precision the elevation of the different landings, distributed the openings and the surfaces, invented the pointed turrets and the frail columns which flank the edifice, taper off its structure, precipitate its flight and make it impossible to perceive the point at which the square tower is transformed into an octagonal spire, so that the highest pyramid seems to burst forth from a long corolla. Then the centuries have painted the stones with the pale gold of lichens, and have completed the masterpiece.

The whole of Senlis seems to have been built for the glory of its spire. Streets, gardens, squares, monuments, houses, all seem to be arranged by a mysterious artist, who persists in incessantly bringing back our glance to the dominating spire, the better to reveal to us all its graces and all its magnificence, at all times and under all lights.

We wander at random about the little episcopal city: it is charming, tortuous and taciturn, with its moss-covered pavements, its deserted alleys, its flowering orchards, its shadowed promenades, its ancient houses. We discover at every step houses of earlier days which the barbarism of the men of the present time has spared: here turrets, spiral staircases, doors surmounted by old escutcheons, long half-grotesque gargoyles, mullioned windows, evoke the refined elegance of the fifteenth century; yonder, a wall decorated with pilasters and medallions, or a noble brick and stone crow-stepped fa?ade, witness the opulence of the citizenry at the time of the second Renaissance; there are admirable remains of hospitals of the thirteenth century; heavy Tuscan porches stand before beautiful h?tels of the eighteenth: and all this rich and varied architecture is an excellent commentary on the words of Jean de Jandun, the historian of Senlis: "To be at Senlis is to dwell in magnificent homes, whose vigorous walls are built, not of fragile plaster, but of the hardest and most selected stone, placed with an industrious skill, and whose cellars, surrounded by solid constructions of stone, so cool the wines during the summer season, thanks to the degree of their freshness, that the throat and the stomach of drinkers thereby experience a supreme delight."5

To the charm of the spectacle is added the charm of ancient names: the sinuous streets have retained their antique appellations. (How wise is Senlis to maintain these strange words, carved in the stone, at the corners of its streets, rather than to inscribe upon ignoble blue plates the names of all the celebrities dear to Larousse!) The beautiful houses of former days seem in some undiscoverable way to be more living when we discover them in the Street of the Red Mail, the Street of the Trellis, the Street of the White Pigeons, the Street of Tiphaine's Well, the Street of the Little Chaalis, the Impasse du Courtillet, etc.... An amusing sign which represents three scholars arguing with an ape would no longer have any flavor if we had to seek for it in some Place Garibaldi; it is delicious when found at Unicom Crossways. On the old Town Hall, an inscription continues to indicate the position of the rabbit and broom market; and it is very fine that the name of Louis Blanc or of Gambetta has not been given to the Street of the Cheese Makers, were it only out of consideration for that excellent Jean de Jandun who, decidedly, well knew how to appreciate all the merits of Senlis, for he wrote in regard to the cheeses of his native town: "The sweetest milk, a butter without admixture, fat cheeses, served in abundance to mean and minor purses, banish that furious activity of the brain which fatigues almost without exception the majority of admirers of highly spiced meats, and thus furnish the well-regulated habitude of a tranquil life and a simplicity of the dove." Fa?ades, names and souvenirs are exquisite; and one says to one's self in sauntering about Senlis that, even without the assistance of the treatment recommended by Jean de Jandun, the silent and antique grace of the little town would be sufficient to inspire in old neurasthenics "the regulated habitude of a tranquil life and a simplicity of the dove...."

The promenade is charming. But neither the picturesqueness of the streets, nor the beauty of the houses, nor the piquancy of the old names, nor even the words of Jean de Jandun are worth as much as the picture which here strike the glance at every turn: the spire, always the spire of Notre Dame. It appears suddenly between two gables. It projects above the old brownish tile roofs. Above the flower-covered walls of the gardens it is framed between clumps of lilac and horse-chestnut. It overlooks the houses, it dominates the parks. The poor tower of Saint Peter, with its disgraceful lantern, sometimes accompanies it at a distance, as if to make barbarians better appreciate the grandeur and the slenderness of Notre Dame's incomparable spire.

Senlis has preserved the ruins of its royal chateau. It is a place which abounds in memories, for a great number of the kings of France, from the Carlovingians to Henri IV, came here to visit for a season. Even its ruins are not without interest. They rest upon the Roman wall, which has remained intact at this spot, and we find there a fireplace of the thirteenth century, towers, casements.... But how completely indifferent all this archaeology leaves us when we behold the spire of the cathedral emerging from the greenery of the garden! The great trees conceal all the rest of the church. We see only, mounting into the full heaven, the golden pyramid, still finer and more aspiring in the midst of all these spring greeneries. A mysterious harmony exists between the youthful boldness, the robust lightness of the human work, and the triumphant freshness of the new vegetation. Besides, the monuments of Gothic art are as marvelously suited to intimacy with nature as to familiarity with life.

This familiarity, which has so often been destroyed by foolishly clearing away the surroundings of cathedrals, proves its value to us at Senlis on the Place du Parvis-Notre-Dame. This is a rectangular space, where grass grows between the paving stones. The fa?ade of the church is framed by two rows of noble chestnuts. Behind a venerable wall rise the turret and the gable of a fifteenth-century house. One might suppose it to be the deserted and well-kept courtyard of a Flemish béguinage. In this ancient frame, in the midst of this solitude, the cathedral preserves all its youth. Here there is a perfect unison between the building and its surroundings. Not only are the trees, the walls, the houses, in harmony with the architecture, but this architecture itself remains alive, because its proportions have not been falsified. The dimensions of the square are exactly those which are needed in order that our eye may be able to discover in their beauty of propinquity the portal, the unfinished tower and the spire. All this is so perfect that its grace is eternal.

This cathedral of Senlis would be an incomparable edifice even if it did not possess its sublime spire.

The western portal is one of the most beautiful works of mediaeval sculpture. On the two sides of the porch, as on the northern door of Chartres, are arranged the kings and the prophets who foreshadowed the Saviour in the Old Testament. Vandals have mutilated these statues in olden times. In the nineteenth century other savages have restored them and have put in the place of the broken heads masterpieces of bad taste and silliness. Happily these malefactors have spared the rest of the sculptures; they have touched neither the ruins of the charming calendar, whose popular scenes unfold themselves above the kings and the prophets, nor the marvelous statuettes, still almost intact, which adorn the voussoirs of the portal, nor the bas-reliefs of the tympan where angels huddle about the dead Virgin, that some may carry to heaven her body and others her soul. As to the Coronation of the Virgin, which occupies the upper part of the tympan, it also has been respected alike by iconoclasts and by restorers. Of all the images of the Mother of God which the sculpture of the thirteenth century has left us, I know none more moving than this Virgin of Senlis. She is a peasant girl, a simple country maid, with heavy features, and resignation in her face; her unaccustomed hands can scarcely hold the scepter and the book; she is ready for all dolors and for all beatitudes, extenuated by miracles, harassed by maternity, still and always ancilla Domini, even in the midst of the glories of the coronation and of the splendors of Paradise.

The church of the twelfth century, to which this doorway belongs, was finished in the thirteenth, burned in the fourteenth, rebuilt in the fifteenth, and again ruined by fire at the beginning of the sixteenth. It is possible to discover in the cathedral of today the traces of these various reconstructions. But, however interesting it may be to follow, upon the stones of the monuments, the history of their vicissitudes, I will spare you this somewhat austere amusement. Continuous archaeology is tiresome.

I stop at the sixteenth century. It was at this period that the church took the form and the aspect which it has preserved to our time.

Original

In 1505, the Bishop Charles de Blanchefort, together with the chapter, addressed the following request to the King: "May it please the King to have pity and compassion on the poor church of Senlis... which, by fortune and inconvenience of fire, in the month of June, 1504, was burned, the bells melted, and the belfry which is great, magnificent and one of the notable of the kingdom, by means of the said fire in such wise damaged that it is in danger of falling." Louis XII showed himself favorable to the request. Nobles, citizens and merchants contributed to the work. The spire was made firm. The walls of the nave were raised, the vaulting was reconstructed, the transept was built, and there were constructed at the north and south sides those two finely chiseled portals which give to Notre Dame de Senlis so much elegance and sumptuousness. How, without diminishing the pure beauty of the old cathedral, the architects of the Renaissance should have been able to give it this luxurious attire, this festal clothing; how, without damage to the ancient edifice, they should have been able to envelop it with all these laces and jewels of stone, slender columns, balustrades, carved copings, pierced lanterns, is a miracle of taste and ingenuity. The French builders of the first half of the sixteenth century often produced such prodigies; but nowhere, I believe, has the success been as complete as at Senlis.

In the interior, even though the nave is very short and the choir very deep, the same impression of unity. Nevertheless, the balustrades in Renaissance style, which garnish the upper galleries, shock us for a moment. The discrepancy in the styles is more visible inside the edifice. Outside the light envelops all and softens the contrasts; the sun creates harmony.

The chapels are poorly decorated. The architects and clergy have there rivaled each other in bad taste. They have broken open the apse to add to it a chapel of the Virgin, which breaks all the lines of the monument inside and out. Two statues of the thirteenth century, one representing Saint Louis and the other Saint Levain, have been ridiculously colored, so that one would take them today for products of the Rue Bonaparte. A pretty Virgin of the fourteenth century would have been better off without the new gilding which has been inflicted on it.....

At the end of the church, I read on one of the pillars the following inscription: "Nicolas Jourdain, administrator of this parish, deceased January 30, 1799.-This church owes to him its restoration and its embellishment. The grateful parishioners have erected this monument to him.-Marie Fran?oise Truyart, his spouse, equally benefactress of this church, deceased January 17, 1811.-Pray for their souls."

Who was M. Jourdain? What embellishments does the church of Senlis owe to him? I would have liked to know. X looked for the sacristan, that he might tell me, and also that he might allow me to enter the sacristy, where one may see the Dance of Fools on a capital. But the sacristan of Notre Dame de Senlis dwells very far from his church, on the banks of the Nonette, in the place called the Asses' Backs; he goes home before eleven o'clock in the morning to get his lunch, and is never seen again at the cathedral, according to the bell-ringer, before four o'clock in the afternoon. So I returned at four o'clock. The sacristan was still eating breakfast at the Asses' Backs.... So I shall never know anything about either M. Nicolas Jourdain nor Marie Fran?oise Truyart, his wife.

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On the other bank of the Nonette, turn about. A little bridge over a little river; some orchards, still pink and white with their last flowers; a street which climbs through the town, whose roofs and uneven gables are outlined softly against a sky of pale blue; remnants of ramparts starred with golden flowers; great clumps of verdure rising everywhere among the rosy roofs, and finally the great belfry dominating all, the little town, the little valley, the fields which rise and fall to the horizon. Behold, and if you are "one of us," you will recognize the most perfect, the most elegant, the finest, the best arranged of all the landscapes of the world. Here is France, the France of Fouquet, the France of Corot.

And I must also, before leaving Senlis, announce that this truly aristocratic town has not a single statue in its squares.

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