These cathedral attics are of grim appearance. One could almost lose one’s self in the labyrinths of rafters, squares, traverse beams, superposed joists, traves, architraves, girders, madriers, and tangled lines and curves. One might imagine one’s self to be in the skeleton of Babel. The place is as bare as a garret and as wild as a cavern. The wind whistles mournfully through it. Rats are at home there. The spiders, driven from the timber by the odour of chestnut, make their home in the stone of the basement where the church ends and the roof begins, and low down in the obscurity spin their webs in which you catch your face. One respires a mysterious dust, and the centuries seem to mingle with one’s breath. The dust of churches is not like the dust of houses; it reminds one of the tomb, it is composed of ashes. The flooring of these colossal garrets has crevices in it through which one can look down into the abysm, the church, below. In the corners that one cannot explore are pools of shadow, as it were. Birds of prey enter through one window and go out through the other. Lightning is also familiar with these high, mysterious regions. Sometimes it ventures too near, and then it causes the conflagration of Rouen, of Chartres, or of St. Paul’s, London. My guide the beadle preceded me. He looked at the dung on the floor, and tossed his head. He knew the bird by its manure, and growled between his teeth: “This is a rook; this is a hawk; this is an owl.” “You ought to study the human heart,” said I. A frightened bat flew before us. While walking almost at hazard, following this bat, looking at this manure of the birds, respiring this dust, in this obscurity among the cobwebs and scampering rats, we came to a dark corner in which, on a big wheelbarrow, I could just distinguish a long package tied with string and that looked like a piece of rolled up cloth. “What is that?” I asked the beadle. “That,” said he, “is Charles X.’s coronation carpet.” I stood gazing at the thing, and as I did so--I am telling truthfully what occurred--there was a deafening report that sounded like a thunder-clap, only it came from below. It shook the timber-work and echoed and re-echoed through the church. It was succeeded by a second roar, then a third, at regular intervals. I recognised the thunder of the cannon, and remembered the gun I had seen in the square. I turned to my guide: “What is that noise?” “The telegraph has been at work and the cannon has been fired.” “What does it mean?” I continued. “It means,” said the beadle, “that a grandson has just been born to Louis Philippe.” The cannon announced the birth of the Count de Paris. These are my recollections of Rheims. RECOUNTED BY EYE-WITNESSES I. THE EXECUTION OF LOUIS XVI. II. THE ARRIVAL OF NAPOLEON I IN PARIS IN 1815. I. THE EXECUTION OF LOUIS XVI.