A few years were still to pass ere
sacrilegious hands despoiled it on a religious pretext:--the catholic
church must pay, even with the molten gold of her sanctuaries, the
price of her defence in the civil war. At present, it was such a
treasure-house of medieval jewellery as we have to make a very
systematic effort even to imagine. The still extant register of its
furniture and sacred apparel leaves the soul of the ecclesiologist
athirst.
And it had another very remarkable difference from almost all Gothic
churches: there were no graves there. Its emptiness in this respect
is due to no revolutionary or Huguenot desecration. Once indeed,
about this very time, a popular military leader had been interred
with honour, within the precinct of the high altar itself. But not
long afterwards, said the reverend canons, resenting on the part of
their immaculate patroness this intrusion, the corpse itself, ill at
ease, had protested, lifting up its hands above [30] the surface of
the pavement, as if to beg interment elsewhere; and Gaston could
remember assisting, awakened suddenly one night, at the removal of
the remains to a more ordinary place of sepulture.
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