The cathedral, by its vast and soaring bulk, completely dwarfs the comparatively small and mean houses of the town. They are of thatch and wood. It is of stone. They lack even a tawdry magnificence. The cathedral could gaze with contempt on royal palaces. This fact teaches even more clearly than words the enormous place occupied by the Church in the Feudal Age. It is not by its literature and learning (though these are not to be despised), but _by its sacred architecture and sculpture_ that the spirit of this era displays its power and originality. In contemplating so magnificent a fabric, it is best to remember that it is the work of men of ardent faith, profoundly convinced that in the church building there dwells continually upon the high altar God himself, invisible but ever present. Squalid dwellings may suffice for man, but not for the Creator. And since God actually takes his abode in such an edifice, every art must contribute to its splendor. Architects, sculptors, painters, jewelers, all perform their best, each rendering his homage to the Eternal. The cathedral, therefore, sums up all that is noblest in the art of the time when it is erected. [Illustration: NOTRE DAME AND THE BISHOP'S PALACE AT THE BEGINNING OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY From the restoration of M. Hoffbauer. At the left the Petit-Pont and the buildings of the archbishop's palace, destroyed in 1831; the cathedral, of which the choir and the south transept were finished only at this date; behind the cathedral, on the ground occupied to-day by a public garden, was the church of Saint-Denis du Pas, built previous to the cathedral and destroyed in 1813.]