Note 89 — Chapter IV · Notre Dame of Paris and Other Churches of the Capital[71]

Paul Abadie, who over-restored the cathedrals of Angoulême and Périgieux, won the competition for the national memorial basilica of the Sacré-Cœur, and began his strange Romano-Byzantine monument in 1873. He united Auvergne’s Romanesque ambulatory with the cupola church of Aquitaine. There is not sufficient contrast between his elongated dome and the tower. Nevertheless, the immense pile of white stone standing over the capital presents exotic and superb effects in sun and mist, and no one can deny that a profound religious spirit breathes in this new shrine of France, as if the prayers and sufferings of generations had already hallowed its walls. Below the basilica stands a statue of the young Chevalier de la Barre, a victim of the personal intrigue of a corrupt magistrate of Abbeville and the lax law courts of Louis XV’s time, not in any way the object of clerical hate, as the inscription on his statue would indicate. His abbess aunt was his warm defender, as was the bishop of Amiens, and on the day of his execution he received the sacraments piously. See Cruppi, Révue des Deux Mondes, March, 1895. As this mythical hero meets one in many a French city, it were well to know his real story.