ay; affording, by her position, a graphical
comment upon the Anglo-Saxon version of the text, in which it is said,
that she _tumbled_ before King Herod."[101] Four turrets flank the
central portal: one of them only is now capped by a spire: the pinnacles
of the remaining three were swept away by a storm which traversed
Normandy for a considerable extent, on the twenty-fifth of June, 1683,
marking its progress with a devastation that is scarcely to be
conceived.[102]

The spire of the central tower, however vaunted and admired by the
French themselves, looks to an unprejudiced eye mean and shabby; and
principally from its being made of wood, which ill accords with the
apparent solidity of the rest of the building.

The entrances to the transepts, however inferior in splendor to the
grand western front, are still not such as to disgrace it; and,
considered attentively as to their sculptured medallions, they are even
more curious. The northern one is approached through a passage lined
with rows of the meanest houses, formerly the shops of transcribers and
calligraphists; and hence the singular gate-way that incloses the court,
passes commonly under the name of _Le Portail des Libraires_. The
opposite transept, (see _plate forty-nine_,) is called _Le Portail de la
Calende_, an appellation borrowed from the _Place de la Calende_, upon
which it opens; and which, though in reality far from spacious, appears
altogether so by comparison. On each side of the entrances to both the
transepts, is a lofty square tower, "such as are usually seen only in
the western front of a cathedral; the upper story perforated by a
gigantic window, divided by a single mullion or central pillar, not
exceeding one foot in circumference, and nearly sixty feet in height.
These windows are entirely open; and the architect never intended they
should be glazed. An extraordinary play of light and shade results from
this construction."[103] The rose windows, which are placed as well over
the entrances of the transepts, as over the greater one to the west, are
no less magnificent in their dimensions, than beautiful in their
patterns, and gorgeous in their colors. Much of the stained glass of the
cathedral is also very rich.

Mr. Dibdin, in his splendidly-illustrated Tour,[104] remarks with much
justice, that "a person, on entering the church by the western door,
cannot fail to be struck with the length and loftiness of the nave, and
with the lightness of