OUR LADY OF PARIS OUR LADY OF THE SOUL

She watched us from the top of her 69 meters and eight centuries before being ravaged by a terrible fire.

All eyes were raised on the basilica, dazed, all the lips murmured slowly, stunned:

"All eyes had risen to the top of the church. What they saw was extraordinary.

On the top of the highest gallery, higher than the central rose window, there was a great flame that rose between the two spiers with whirlwinds of sparks, a large, disordered flame, and rose between the two spiers with swirling whirlpools. sparks, a great, disorderly and furious flame, whose wind at times carried away a rag in the smoke. (...)

Above the flame, the enormous towers, each of which showed two raw and sliced ​​sides, one all black, the other all red, seemed to be still larger with all the immensity of the shade they projected into the sky. "(Book III).

Hugolian words to heal our distress in the face of this terrible tragedy that is killing us all.

The dark and romantic Gérard de Nerval had also devoted a few verses in a poem (1830), evoking the premonitory end of this Great Lady.

"But in a thousand years time will falter

Like a wolf makes an ox, this heavy carcass,

Will twist his nerves of iron, and then a dull tooth

Will sadly gnaw his old rock bones! "

Let's leave the last word to novelist Ken Follett: "Miraculously, a good part of the cathedral has survived. Even part of the vault has survived. The builders of the Middle Ages were even better than we thought.»