Maistre Thomas fu apres lui
De Cormont. Et apres, son filz
Maistre Regnault, qui mestre
Fist a chest point chi cheste lectre
Que l'incarnation valoit
Treize cent, moins douze, en faloit."

13. I have written the numerals in letters, else the metre would not
have come clear: they were really in figures thus, "II C. et XX,"
"XIII C. moins XII". I quote the inscription from M. l'Abbe Roze's
admirable little book, "Visite a la Cathedrale d'Amiens,"--Sup. Lib.
de Mgr l'Eveque d'Amiens, 1877,--which every grateful traveller should
buy, for I am only going to steal a little bit of it here and there. I
only wish there had been a translation of the legend to steal, too;
for there are one or two points, both of idea and chronology, in it,
that I should have liked the Abbe's opinion of.

The main purport of the rhyme, however, we perceive to be, line for
line, as follows:--

"In the year of Grace, Twelve Hundred
And twenty, the work, then falling to ruin,
Was first begun again.
Then was, of this Bishopric
Everard the blessed Bishop.
And, King of France, Louis,
Who was son to Philip the Wise.
He who was Master of the Work
Was called Master Robert,
And called, beyond that, of Luzarches.
Master Thomas was after him,
Of Cormont. And after him, his son,
Master Reginald, who to be put
Made--at this point--this reading.
When the Incarnation was of account
Thirteen hundred, less twelve, which it failed of."

In which legend, while you stand where once it was written (it was
removed--to make the old pavement more polite--in the year, I
sorrowfully observe, of my own earliest tour on the Continent, 1825,
when I had not yet turned my attention to Ecclesiastical
Architecture), these points are noticeable--if you have still a little
patience.

14. 'The work'--_i.e._, the Work of Amiens in especial, her cathedral,
was 'decheant,' falling to ruin, for the--I cannot at once say--fourth,
fifth, or what time,--in the year 1220. For it was a wonderfully
difficult matter for little Amiens to get this piece of business fairly
done, so hard did the Devil pull against her. She built her first
Bishop's church (scarcely more than St. Firmin's tomb-chapel) about the
year 350, just outside the railway station on the road to Paris;[46]
then, after being nearly herself destroyed, chapel and all, by the Frank
invasion, having recovered, and