En ce temps là que avoys nicessité
Avoit des gens qui pour moy lors vieilloient
Du bon du cœur feust yver ou esté,
Dieu le pardont et à ceulx qui s’y emploient.
1508.’
The fourth storey, lit by four large bays, contains two great bells cast
in 1840, Marie (C., 13,228 lbs.) and Joseph, the tenor, who sounds the
Angelus throughout the year.
The fifth storey, pierced on each of its eight sides by a large bay,
contains four large bells of 1845, Anne (D., 2040 kilos.), Elizabeth
(E., 1510 kilos.), Fulbert (F., 1510 kilos.), Piat (G., 870 kilos.). The
first-named bell is always known as Anne of Bretagne. For she, when
visiting the Cathedral in 1510, was so delighted with the voice of one
of the lads singing in the choir that she begged him of the canons, and
when they granted her request she thanked them in these words:
‘Messieurs, you have given me a little voice, and I in return wish to
give you a big one.’ This she did, giving them the bell which has ever
since been called by her name. It was known also by the name of the
_Cloche des biens_, for at one season of the year it was rung for an
hour every evening to secure an abundant harvest. ‘At the first stroke
of the bell,’ wrote Sablon, in 1697, ‘all the people make the sign of
the cross and recite an Ave Maria for the products of the soil.’
The fifth storey marks the beginning of the spire, and is itself
octagonal. The transition is ingeniously concealed by the
richly-ornamented pinnacles at the four corners, which tie the
balustrade to the tower and support, each of them, three colossal
statues (John the Baptist and the eleven Apostles). Light flying
buttresses, adorned with graceful mouldings and admirable grotesques,
connect the pinnacles with the tower. Over one of the lights is a Christ
in the act of benediction.
The sixth storey, surrounded by a gallery in Flamboyant style, panels of
rich tracery and gargoyles, and pinnacles at the corners of the octagon,
contains the room of the watchmen, whose duty it was every half-hour
during the night to walk round this gallery and give the alarm when they
saw a fire in the town. A Latin inscription records that by the peculiar
grace of God this pyramid was preserved from the effects of a fire
(1674) due to the watchman’s carelessness. This good man, Gendrin by
name, finding that the hours of the night watch hung heavy on his hands,
used to amuse himself by reading. One night the candle fell and set
light to his straw mattress, and thence the flames spread rapidly to the
timber of the room. The wooden belfry was saved from destruction by the
great bravery of a workman named Claude Gauthier. A quotation from
Psalms cxxvii., outside the western door, draws the moral, ‘Except the
Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.’ It is signed F.
Foucault. But the significance of the name has died away.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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