Joan of Arc is an important figure in the drama of Rheims during the great war with England. The peasant's daughter, born on the borders of Champagne, at Domremy, a hamlet which is now a shrine, reached the height of her triumph in 1429, when she led a vast army to the gates of Rheims. "O gentle king, the pleasure of God is done," cried the white maid, as she knelt before Charles VII. after his coronation in the gorgeous cathedral. A yearning for home and the old tranquil life was in the heart of Joan; she wished to leave the tented field, and to return to her sheep-folds and pastures. But, at the battle of Compiegne, she fell into the hands of the treacherous Bastard of Vendôme, and about a year later Joan la Pucelle was burned to death. The focus of interest in Rheims is the cathedral. Notre Dame was built on the situation of a Roman basilica. Parts of the present building were first constructed in 1231, but the façade is of the fourteenth century. This magnificent front has a gorgeous portal, with pointed arches of great grace, rising to a large and handsome rose window. There are two towers over two hundred and fifty feet high, very finely decorated. A number of statues adorn this façade, on the portals and in the arch of the rose window. The figure of the Virgin is over the principal doorway, bending to receive the crown from the hands of Christ. "The three great doorways," writes Mr Henry James, in "Portraits of Places," "are in themselves a museum of imagery, disposed in each case in five close tiers, the statues in each of the tiers packed perpendicularly against their comrades. The effect of these great hollowed and chiselled recesses is extremely striking; they are a proper vestibule to the dusky richness of the interior. The cathedral of Rheims, more fortunate than many of its companions, appears not to have suffered from the iconoclasts of the Revolution; I noticed no absent heads nor broken noses." The rose windows of the transepts are exceedingly lovely, and attention should be paid to the design of the buttresses, and the very remarkable gargoyles. One of the towers contains an enormous bell. In the exterior of the south transept are several good statues. An immense nave stretches for nearly five hundred feet. This part of the edifice was repeatedly extended to make space for the great crowds that attended the imposing coronation ceremonies. Around the choir are several chapels. In numerous niches and corners are statues of interest. "The long sweep of the nave, from the threshold to the point where the coloured light-shafts of the choir lose themselves in the grey distance, is a triumph of perpendicular perspective," writes Mr Henry James.