Peninsula enterprise. [volume] (Accomac, Va.) 1881-1965, 1906-09-29
A SAD OLD CHURCH.
Fine Interior of st. Denis Cathedral
Now Virtually u Museum.


Now Virtually n Museum.
When place and street in front are
empty, st. Denis carries off its fallen
fortunes with something Of dignity.
But as / last saw it, on spring day,
when the new conscripts of the year
had gathered just outside, dancing,
singing, buying big paper rosettes, not
one with thought or a glance to fling
TO it, the church struck me as being
only in the way, useless, out Of gear
with the new life that had grown up
about it, preserved entirely from sense
Of duty.
The fine interior, so like and so I'M
like Westminster Abbey, has virtually
become a museum. The royal tomDs,
reached by that picturesque wide stair
way to the ambulatory, suggest in
their neat rows so many specimens,
labeled and catalogued. One cannot
see without emotion tOmbs like that
of the good King DagObert-great, too,
though best remembered for the af-
fair of the breeches in the song-of
Louis Nil, Henry H., Francis l., with
their beautiful sculptures; of the last
of the Bourbons, with their bitter
memories. But to follow the sacristan
as he drones out the story learned by
heart and repeated until his very voice
betrays his boredom with the whole
business of royalty, alive or dead, is
to see in st. Denis nothing save the
show place for tourists.
And this is the church that not even
Notre Dame can Outrival in the sancti-
ty or splendor of Its past, its site cho-
sen by the holy man who was first
bishop. first martyr, first saint of Paris;
the building founded by Ste. Gene
We've. whose first chapel over his grave
grew eventually into the church OF
which the Able Sugar made the first
experiment with the pointed arch on
so LARGE a scale-the first great Gothic
church: St Denis, the shrine OF the
orlhamb of France, the Louvre or
Versailles of dead royalty.
And so it remains. only Louvre or
q Versailles, shaken by the storms of
liberty, equality and fraternity. Pa
triots of 1893 had no more use for
dead royalty in its tomb than living
royalty in its palaces. And after pa
triotism has been down among the
tombs rummaging," had played ball
with the skeletons of kings, having to
stop to hold its nose when that worst
of old enemies, Louis Nv, appeared,
suffering q relapse into loyalty before
the embalmed body of that old favOrite,
Henry ", after royal bones and royal
ashes had been dumped into one I'M
royal common grave, after royal tombs
had been broken and royal statues mu-
tilated, there was not much left of st.
Denis. But, defaced, rOOfleSS, haunt
of birds of prey, it was at least an
eloquent monument to the hatred Of
the third estate for kings and priests.
After the tombs, or so much Of them
as could be. were brought back by
Louis XVIII.. after new noses and
hands and draperies were found for the
poor dishOnOred effigies, after the
building was rooted in, its walls mend
ed and everything generally put to
rights by indefatigable Violet lie Due,
st. Denis was doomed to awake no
feeling stronger than curiosity in the
tourist. 1t is the irony of fate that
ROYALTY, dead forever in France, should
rest not in the capital nor in the cathe-
dral but in the parish church-to this
rank has st. Denis been degraded-of
busy industrial suburb the headquar-
tiers Of anarchists, where the people
who killed it are too busy to remember,
much less to resent, the presence Of Its
tomb among them.
There may be other places of interest
in the suburb of st. Denis. l never
looked for them. 1 am content with
my last impression of it-with wide
streets of dull shops and electric trans,
with groups of cOnscripts, with gaunt
factories. with chimneys belching
smoke and with the sad old church, the
last resting place of the royalty France
sacrificed q century ago that just such
a busy industrial town might live and
prosper-Century Magazine.