The classic restraint which is the leading quality of Notre Dame was never poverty. Sculpture was lavish where it should be. At the portals the Scriptures were set forth in detail and saints were held up for the edification of the people. The signs of the zodiac were carved, as well as the personification of the seasons and the months. Pinnacle and parapet were weighted with winged beast or demon, and the useful water spouts, or gargoyles, were chiseled as crabbed images. However, one should always remember, in climbing the towers of Notre Dame, that most of the present stone monsters are modern, and it is one of the weaknesses of the restorer to overemphasize the grotesque in the art of the Middle Ages. A strange world of fabulous creatures dwell on the roof of Our Lady's church--conceptions that are half terrible and half fantastic, imaginations that are survivals of the old pagan superstitions which Christianity could not wholly extirpate. The XII and XIII centuries were not so far removed in time from the invasions of the northern Barbarians, and the Church made concessions to primitive inheritances. Artists were allowed to carve on roof or pinnacle the chimeras and vampires which through long centuries had haunted the imagination of their ancestors, provided that they expounded the truths of Christian doctrine in such principal places as portals, façades, and choir screens. Might not a mocking grotesque beside an angel be taken as emblem of the external antagonism of the animal and the spirit in man? The choir screen of Notre Dame of Paris is sculptured with the apparitions of the risen Lord, from Easter Day to the Ascension. "If Christ be not risen again, then is our preaching vain."[83] The cathedral of Paris during the first centuries of its existence was the setting of many national scenes. Here the kings of France deposited their crown and renewed their vow to be just fathers of their people. Before its altar their newborn heir was blessed. In 1182 the main altar of Notre Dame was consecrated, and three years later the patriarch of Jerusalem preached from it the Third Crusade. On the eve of both his crusades St. Louis prayed here, and in 1270, when his remains were brought back from Tunis, they rested in Notre Dame for a solemn night of chanted mourning. In Notre Dame the Duke of Bedford had his nephew, Henry VI of England, crowned as king of France. Factional hate and a foreign enemy in control caused a _Te Deum_ of rejoicing to be sung in this, the most national of French cathedrals, when the news came that Jeanne the Maid had been taken prisoner before Compiègne, in 1429, but solemn reparation was made in 1456, when, in the presence of Jeanne's mother and brothers, the bishop of Paris (a Norman, and brother of the poet Alain Chartier) opened in Notre Dame the inquest that was to lead to the Rehabilitation of the heroine of Orleans.