The daily morning journal and courier., 1906-11-07
A SAD OLD CHURCH.
The Fine Interior of St. Denis Cathe
 dral Now Virtually a Museum


 dral Now Virtually Museum. When place and street in front are empty, St. Denis carries off its fallen fortunates with something of dignity. But as I last saw it. on a spring day. when the new conscrlpts of the year had gathered just outside, dancing, singing, buying big paper rosettes, not one with athought 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 1 Of duty. It looked to me torlorn, with its one melancholy western tower; with 1 the restorer's work half done on the 1 exterior half done, but that 1t should be is exceptional in France, where res- toration is so often overdone-with the long, rank uncut grass in the inclosure to the north of the nave; with the mean houses shutting in the east end. And where care has been given, it is to mark it more unmistakably as the monument historique, the mere survi- val, its real life long since spent.
 The fine Interior, so like and so unlike Westminster Abbey, has virtually be- come museum; the royal tombs, reached by that picturesque wide stair way to the ambulatory, suggest in their neat rows so many specimens, la belled and catalogued. One cannot see without emotion tomhs like that of the good King Dagobert-gceat, too, though best remembered for the flair of the brooches In the song of Louis XII, Henry II, Francis I, with their beautiful sculptures; of the last of the Bourbons, with their bfftar memories But to follow the saerlsaa as he drones out the story learned by lis boredom with the whole business of royalty, alive or dea1 is 10 see in St. Denis nothing sAye the show place for tourists.
 And this is the church that not even Notre Dame can outrigll in the sane tity or sp1endor of it's pass, its site chosen by the holy mar who was first bishop, first martyr, first saint of Par is; the building founded by Ste Gene vieve, whose first chapel over his grave grew eventually into the church of which the Abbe Sugar, made the first experiment with the pain2ed arch on s7 large a scale-the first great Gothic church; St. Denis, he shrine ot the or ifiamme of France; he Louvre, pr Yer sailles, of dead royalty.
 And so it remains, only a Louvre or a Versailles shaken bv the storm of liberty, equality and fraternity. Patri- lots of 1793 had no rnore use for dead royalty in it's tomb than living royalty lin its palaces. And after Patriotism has been down among the, t9mbs 1um- maging had played ball with the skeletons of kings-haying to stop tc hold it's nose when that worst of old enemies, Louis XIV appeared, suffering 8 relapse into loyalty before the em- balmed body of that old favorite, Hen- ny IV-after royal bones and { roya ashes had been dumped into one un- royal common grave after royal todmbs had been broken andyreyal statues mu. tilated, there was not much left of St [ Denis. But, defaced rQofless, a haunt of birds of prey it was at least an elo. quent monument to the hatred of the third estate for kings and priests. Af- ter the tombs-or so much of them as could be-were brought back by Louis lXVIIT, after new noses and hands ant draperies were found for the poor, dis. honored effigies, after tie building was lroofed in, It's walls mended and every. thing generally put to rights by indefa tigable Violette-ie-Duc, St. Denis was doomed to awake no feeling stronger than curiosity in the tourist. It is the irony of fate that royalty, dead forev. CT in France, should rest not in tht Icaupital, nor in the cathedral, but ir the parish church--to this rank has St Denis been degraded-df a busy indus trial suburb, the headquarters of anar, chists, where the people who killed il are too busy to remember, much less tC resent, the presence of it's tomb among them.
 There may be other places of interes in the suburb of St. Denis. I have looked for them, I am content witt my last impression of lt-with wide streets of dull shops and electric trans with groups of conscripts, with gaun factories, with chimneys belchlne smoke and with the sad old church the asst resting place of the royalty France sacrificed a century ago tha just such a busy industrial town migh live and prosper.-Cehtury Magazine.