Notre-Dame de Paris (Oxford World's Classics)

by Hugo, Victor

  1 (Histoire gallicane, liv. II, period III, f0.130, p. 1) [V. H.]

  1 This is the same that is also called, according to place, climate, and type, Lombard, Saxon, and Byzantine. These are four sisters, parallel architectures, each with its own particular character, but all deriving from the same principle, the round arch: Fades non omnibus una/Non diversa tamen, qualem … [They do not all have one face, nor yet a different one …].*

  2 That part of the spire which was timber is precisely that which was consumed by lightning in 1823. [V. H.]

  1 We have seen with grief mixed with indignation that they are thinking of enlarging, recasting, reshaping, that is, destroying this admirable palace. The architects of our day are too heavy-handed to touch these delicate works of the Renaissance. We still hope that they will not dare to do so. Besides, to demolish the Tuileries now would not merely be an assault brutal enough to make a drunken Vandal blush, it would be an act of betrayal. The Tuileries is no longer just a masterpiece of sixteenth-century art, it is also a part of nineteenth-century history. The palace no longer belongs to the king, but to the people. Leave it as it is. Our revolution has twice marked its brow. On one of its two façades it has the cannonballs of 10 August, on the other those of 29 July. It is sacred. Paris, 7 April 1831. (Note to the 5th ed.)

  1 Hugo II de Bisuncio (1326–32). [V. H.]

  1 This comet, against which Pope Calixtus, uncle of Borgia, ordered public prayers, is the same as will reappear in 1835. [V. H.]

  1 Estate Accounts, 1383 [V. H.]