Compare these flying buttresses with the later and lighter but less pleasing ones of the choir, or with the almost impudent development of the use of them in the Abbey Church of S. Père, and, without any doubt, you perceive in what direction lay the ambition of the transitional architect. These buttresses of the nave will be best seen from the galleries of the roof, with their graceful balustrading, along which you pass, when, under the guidance of a verger from the Maison-des-Clercs, you make your ascent of the _clochers_, starting from a door near the north entrance and the sacristy. Passing, then, along these galleries, you come to the Clocher Neuf, with its Flamboyant spire, the work of Jehan de Beauce (1507-1513); built after the spire of timber and lead, which replaced the one destroyed in 1194, had been destroyed itself in 1506. It was raised 4 feet by Claude Augé in 1690, so that the present height of the Clocher Neuf is 378 feet, that of the Clocher Vieux being 350. Augé, in the following year, added the enormous bronze vase on the top; the cross above that was placed in position in 1854. There is a vane in the form of a sun (Jesus, the Sun of Justice, the Light of the World) upon this cross, corresponding to the moon on the old spire (Mary, ‘clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet.’--Rev. xii.) The third storey of the Clocher Neuf into which the gallery brings us is the beginning of the Flamboyant work of Jehan de Beauce. An elegant balustrade connects the parts of the different date. On the south wall of the _Chambre des Sonneurs_, as the third storey is called, is graven in Gothic, but now scarce legible characters, an inscription in six quatrains, in which the clocher tells us the history of the disaster of 1506, and the event of its rebuilding by Jehan de Beauce, the skilful mason, just as the bronze vase above relates in Latin prose the further history of the spire down to 1690, and the name of the bronze-founder, Ignace Gabois. ‘Je fus jadis de plomb et boys construit, Grant, hault et beau, de somptueux ouvraige, Jusques ad ce que tonnerre et oraige M’a consumé, dégâté et détruit. Le jour sainte Anne vers six heures de nuyt En l’année mil cinq cens et six. Je fu brulé démoly et recuyt Et avec moy de grosses cloches six. Après Messieurs en plain Chappitre assis Ont ordonné de pierre me reffaire A grant voultes et pilliers bien massifs Par Jehan de Beausse, maçon qui le sut faire. L’An dessu dist après pour l’euvre faire Assouar firent le vint quatrième jour Du moys de mars pour le premier affaire Première pierre et aultres sans ce jour. Et en avril huitiesme jour exprès René d’Illiers évesque de regnon Pardist la vie au lieu duquel après Feust Erard mis par postulacion.