[Illustration: WORKSHOPS AND FOUNDATIONS OF THE CITY BARRACKS IN 1864-1865 _Photographed by Richebourg, 29 Quai de L'Horloge_] It is therefore by the Old City that our walks should commence. We shall come across some rare vestiges of the primitive Lutecia. On several occasions, behind the apse of Notre-Dame, fragments of ramparts have been found, and some of the stones forming these antique defences are discovered to have been taken from the arenas constructed by the Romans. The benches of the circus had contributed to check the Norman invasion; does not the wall of Pericles on the Acropolis contain broken fragments of antique marble statues?... But the glory of the City is Notre-Dame! Let us follow the winding, picturesque Rue Chanoinesse, where the great Balzac lodged Madame de la Chanterie, and, at No. 18, let us climb the tottering staircase of the Dagobert Tower, an old and precious débris of the canonical buildings that once enclosed the Cathedral of Paris. A few dozen worn-down steps will bring us to a narrow platform whence we shall behold an admirable sight. [Illustration: VIEW OF NOTRE-DAME _J. C. Nattes, del._] Notre-Dame, radiantly beautiful, rises, like a large stone flower, from a mass of flat roofs, grey or blue, and the majestic outlines of its towers stand out in their immensity against the horizon. Beneath every caprice of the hour or light, whether the sun gilds this splendour or its carvings are mantled in snow, while a carpet of spotless flakes stretches below, whether the flaming sky frames its violet bulk in melting gold or the storm wraps it in its copper clouds, ever the noble Cathedral appears in its shining beauty and unsurpassed grandeur. The elegant spire that completes it shoots clearly and proudly into the air, and flights of crows whirl, with shrill cawings, round the blossoming roofs of the Paris Basilica. Over there, above a dazzling view of carvings, chimneys, gables, bridges, steeples, and streets, the far-off azures melt into soft tints, and finally mingle, on the horizon, in a vague colouring; the beasts of the Apocalypse, which the talented artists of times gone by poised on the tower balustrades, bend grimacingly and jeeringly over the vast Paris that feverishly lives and moves below! It is one of the noblest sights of the Tower that our enchanted eyes have just gazed upon. On the other side, it is the Seine, a silver streak furrowed with boats and barges; then, further on, the noble outlines of the old Paris, and, marking its profiles on the low clouds, in the foreground, Saint-Gervais and Saint-Protais, an antique and precious sanctuary of the sixteenth century, one of the few remaining that preserve the secret charm of those country churches in which the soul feels itself, within the demi-obscurity of their chapels, more devout, more touched, and closer to the infinite, beneath the painted windows darkened by the dust of centuries and the smoke of incense.