Here the medallions relate chiefly
to scripture-history; but the sculpture is greatly corroded by the
weather, and the more delicate parts are nearly obliterated; besides
which, as well here, as at the other entrances, the Calvinists, in 1562,
and, more recently, the Revolutionists, have been most mischievously
destructive, mutilating and decapitating without mercy. The spirit,
indeed, of the French reformers, bore a near resemblance to the
proceedings of John Knox and his brethren: the people embraced the new
doctrine with turbulent violence. There was in it nothing moderate,
nothing gradual: it was not the regular flow of public opinion,
undermining abuses, and bringing them slowly to their fall; but it was
the thunderbolt, which--
"In sua templa furit, nullaque exire vetante
Materia, magnamque cadens magnamque revertens
Dat stragem late sparsosque recolligit ignes."
Among the legends recorded on the southern portal, or the _Portail de la
Calende_, is that of the corn-merchant; the confiscation of whose
property paid, as the chronicles tell us, for the erection of this
beautiful entrance.
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