The Embossed And Crocketed Cupolas
Which Crown The Towers Of Saint Gatien Are Not Very
Pure In Taste; But, Like A Good Many Impurities, They
Have A Certain Character.
The interior has a stately
slimness with which no fault is to be found, and
which in the choir,
Rich in early glass and surrounded
by a broad passage, becomes very bold and noble.
Its principal treasure, perhaps, is the charming little tomb
of the two children (who died young) of Charles VIII. and
Anne of Brittany, in white marble, embossed with sym-
bolic dolphins and exquisite arabesques. The little
boy and girl lie side by side on a slab of black marble,
and a pair of small kneeling angels, both at their head
and at their feet, watch over them. Nothing could be
more perfect than this monument, which is the work
of Michel Colomb, one of the earlier glories of the
French Renaissance; it is really a lesson in good taste.
Originally placed in the great abbey-church of Saint
Martin, which was for so many ages the holy place of
Tours, it happily survived the devastation to which
that edifice, already sadly shattered by the wars of
religion and successive profanations, finally succumbed
in 1797. In 1815 the tomb found an asylum in a
quiet corner of the cathedral.
I ought, perhaps, to be ashamed to acknowledge,
that I found the profane name of Balzac capable of
adding an interest even to this venerable sanctuary.
Those who have read the terrible little story of "Le
Cure de Tours" will perhaps remember that, as I
have already mentioned, the simple and childlike old
Abbe Birotteau, victim of the infernal machinations
of the Abbe Troubert and Mademoiselle Gamard, had
his quarters in the house of that lady (she had a
speciality of letting lodgings to priests), which stood
on the north side of the cathedral, so close under its
walls that the supporting pillar of one of the great
flying buttresses was planted in the spinster's garden.
If you wander round behind the church, in search of
this more than historic habitation, you will have oc-
casion to see that the side and rear of Saint Gatien
make a delectable and curious figure.
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