I remember that, as we rode along, Suzanne pointed out various places of interest, but I doubt if my eyes went further afield than the gracious hand with which she pointed. Then suddenly we turned a corner and came out into the place before the cathedral. The charm of youth beside me was broken for a moment by the wonder of antiquity. How alive the old building seems with the spirits of the long dead men who built it! They say that Milan Cathedral is also Gothic. But my fellow delegate must have stood in my way. I had not seen it as for the first time I saw Notre Dame. "You can look at the façade afterwards," Suzanne said—her voice breaking the spell. "The important thing is to get the view from the top first." The twisting, worn stairs of the North Tower was one of the treasures of my memory. A strange impression—the thick masonry, our twinkling little tapers in the darkness, stray wisps of Hugo’s romance and of even older stories, the beads of moisture on the stones, the chill dank breath of very-long-ago and dominating it all, Suzanne’s two tiny and very modern tan shoes and little glimpses of her stockings. I remember the sudden glare of the first balcony. I caught a quick view down the river and wanted to stop. But Suzanne, who was "personally conducting" this tour, said we could climb higher. So we entered the darkness again and came at last to the top. I could not tell you how Paris looks from the tower of Notre Dame. I only remember how Suzanne looked. The stiff climb had shortened her breath and heightened her color. The breeze caught a stray wisp of her hair and played delightful tricks with it. And how her eyes glowed with enthusiasm. "This is my favorite spot on earth," she said. "It’s the very center of civilization. From here you can see the birthplace of almost every idea which has benefited the race, the battle-fields where every human victory was won. See! Over there on the Mont Ste. Genevieve is where Abelard shattered mediævalism and commenced the reformation. And over there in the Latin Quarter is the oldest faculty of medicine in the world. It was in one of those houses on the hillside that men dared for the first time to study anatomy with a knife. And there—further to the west—is where Voltaire lived. Nearby is the house of Diderot, where the encyclopedists met to free the human mind. And here—on the other side of the river—is the Palais Royal. See the green clump of trees. Under one of them Camille Desmoulins jumped upon a chair and made the speech which overthrew the Bastille. And there—see the gold statue of victory above the housetops—that’s all there is left of the grim old fortress. And so it goes. All the history of man’s emancipation spread out before you in brick and mortar."