The high altar as originally arranged had brass bars at the sides from which hung draperies. Behind it was another altar, that of the Holy Trinity, or _les ardents_ raised so that it could be seen above the first one. Steps led up to this, and between them was a depository called the _conditoire_, where all the sacred vessels used at mass were kept. There was no tabernacle; as in most churches in the old times, the host was enclosed in a ciborium which hung in front of the altar. A figure in alabaster of the Virgin surmounted the _autel des ardents_. Above all were three rows of _châsses_, one above the other, as it were upon shelves, containing relics of S. Gendulphe, S. Séverin, S. Germain, bishop of Paris, S. Justin, S. Lucain, S. Ursula's young friends, and other martyrs. The reliquary of S. Marcel was behind the high altar, resplendent in gold and pearls and precious stones, an elaborate and beautiful work of art, by, said tradition, S. Éloi, the bishop of Noyon; but unfortunately, it was too valuable to escape the melting-pot, and its 436 marcs worth of gold found their way into coin of the Republic. [Illustration: STEPS IN THE LITTLE CLOISTER.] The church was rich in glass up to the year 1741, when a demon in human shape, one Levieil, the author of a treatise upon the art of glass-painting, set to work to re-adorn Notre-Dame. He describes the matter himself; what he found and what he transformed. In the choir and the apse the windows were ornamented with colossal figures 18 ft. high, representing bishops, vested and bearing pastoral staves, without the usual crook termination. A border of lozenge-shapen coloured glass framed the figures and filled up the divisions of the compartments. These windows Levieil dated no later than 1182, and he adds that there were many fragments of much older glass, probably emanating from the ancient basilicas, which preceded the present church, interspersed between the _grisaille_ of the 12th century. In the tribune of the choir were windows given by a little personage whose effigy knelt at the bottom of one, Michel de Darency by name, chaplain of Saint-Ferréol, who died in 1358. The abbot Suger also gave some of the glass in the tribune, resembling that of his own church, S. Denis, which is so rich in resplendent sapphire blue. In some of the chapels were subjects such as _the Beheading of S. John Baptist_, a king and queen, possibly Philippe le Bel and Jeanne de Navarre, kneeling. All this, or most of it, was improved away, or re-arranged into floriated borders and armorial bearings upon white glass. A little remains of the 14th century: some small Angels holding the instruments of the Passion, a Pelican and its chicks, a Christ draped in red, and a little figure of the Virgin. This is all in the _chevet_. But the glory of the church is the glass of the rose-windows, which continue the subjects portrayed upon the sculpture of the doors over which they are placed. In the