![]() ~ Tempus edax, homo edacior~ which I should be glad to translate thus: time is blind, man is stupid. On the face of this aged queen of our cathedrals, by the side of a wrinkle, one always finds a scar. But, beautiful as it has been preserved in growing old, it is difficult not to sigh, not to wax indignant, before the numberless degradations and mutilations which time and men have both caused the venerable monument to suffer, without respect for Charlemagne, who laid its first stone, or for Philip Augustus, who laid the last. The church of Notre-Dame de Paris is still no doubt, a majestic and sublime edifice. ![]() In introducing it in Book 3 he describes the edifice - "human intelligence," he says, "is summed up and totalised": Victor Hugo's legendary book of that name has the great cathedral as a character.
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