revolutionary fanatics, was transferred to St. Etienne du Mont. [Footnote 156: The aspect of the west front with Soufflot's "improvements" is well seen in _Les Principaux Monuments Gothiques de l'Europe_, published in Brussels, 1843.] [Illustration: SOUTH DOOR OF NOTRE DAME.] On 6th September 1764, the crypt of the new St. Genevieve being completed, the Well-Beloved laid the first stone of the church. Scarcely was the scaffolding removed after thirteen years of constructive labour, and the expenditure of sixteen millions of livres, when it became necessary to call in Soufflot's pupil Rondelet, to shore up the walls and strengthen the columns which had proved too weak to sustain the weight of the huge cupola. But before the temple was consecrated, the Revolutionists came, and noting its monumental aspect used it with admirable fitness as a Pantheon Francais for the remains of their heroes; the dome designed to cover the relics of St. Genevieve soared over the ashes of Voltaire, Mirabeau, Rousseau and Marat. Thrice has this unlucky fane been the prize of Catholic and Revolutionary reactionaries. In 1806 Napoleon I. restored it to Christian worship; in 1822 the famous inscription--"_Aux grands Hommes la Patrie reconnaissante_" was removed by Louis XVIII., and replaced by a dedication to God and St. Genevieve; in 1830 Louis Philippe, the citizen king, transferred it to secular and monumental uses, and restored the former inscription; in 1851 the perjured Prince-President Napoleon, while the streets of Paris were yet red with the blood of his victims, again surrendered it to the Catholic Church; in 1885 it was reconverted to a national Walhalla for the reception of Victor Hugo's remains. The pseudo-classic church of St. Sulpice, begun in 1665 and not completed until 1777, is a monument of the degraded taste of this unhappy time. At least three architects, Gamart, Levau and the Italian Servandoni, are responsible for this monstrous pile, whose towers have been aptly compared by Victor Hugo to two huge clarionets. The building has, however, a certain _puissante laideur_, as Michelet said of Danton, and is imposing from its very mass, but it is dull and heavy and devoid of all charm and imagination. Nothing exemplifies more strikingly the mutation of taste that has taken place since the eighteenth century than the fact that this church is the only one mentioned by Gibbon in the portion of his autobiography which refers to his first visit to Paris, where it is distinguished as "one of the noblest structures in Paris." CHAPTER XVII _Louis XVI.--The Great Revolution--Fall of the Monarchy_