o the work. The king, the pope, seigneurs, guilds of merchants and
private persons, vied with each other in making gifts. Two years were
spent in digging the foundations of the new Notre Dame, and in 1163
Pope Alexander III. is said to have laid the first stone. In 1182, the
choir being finished, the papal legate, Henri de Chateaux-Marcay,
consecrated the high altar, and in 1185 the Patriarch of Jerusalem
celebrated mass in the choir. At Sully's death, in 1196, the walls of
the nave were erect and partly roofed, and the old prelate left a
hundred livres for a covering of lead. The transepts and nave were
completed in 1235.

[Footnote 58: The relics were transferred to a new church of St.
Stephen (St. Etienne du Mont), built by the abbot of St. Genevieve as
a parish church for his servants and tenants.]

In 1240 an ingenious and sacrilegious thief, climbing to the roof to
haul up the silver candlesticks from the altar by a noose in a rope,
set fire to the altar cloth, and the choir was seriously injured.
Sully's work had been Romanesque, and choir and apse were now rebuilt
in the new style, to harmonise with the remainder of the church. By
the end of the thirteenth century the chapels round the apse and in
the nave, the Porte Rouge and the south portal were added, and the
great temple was at length completed. The choir of St. Germain des
Pres and the exquisite little church of St. Julien le Pauvre were
rebuilt at the end of the twelfth century, and the beautiful
refectory of St. Martin des Champs was created about 1220. But the
culmination of Gothic art is reached in the wondrous sanctuary that
St. Louis built for the crown of thorns, "the most precious piece of
Gothic," says Ruskin, "in Northern Europe." Michelet saw a whole world
of religion and poetry--tears of piety, mystic ecstasy, the mysteries
of divine love--expressed in the marvellous little church, in the
fragile and precious paintings of its windows.[59] The work was
completed in three years, and has been so admirably restored by
Viollet le Duc that the visitor may gaze to-day on this pure and
peerless gem almost as St. Louis left it, for the gorgeous interior
faithfully reproduces the mediaeval colour and gold. During the
Revolution it was used as a granary and then as a club. It narrowly
escaped destruction, and men now living can remember seeing the old
notices on the porch of the lower chapel--_Propriete nationale a
vendre_. All that remains of the relic