mutilation in the sculpture of a fireplace--it was entirely demolished
by the bombardment and fire of Sept. 19.

Saturday, Sept. 19.--This was the day of the great destruction by the
bombs and the fires caused in the cathedral, the ancient residence of
the Archbishop, in the houses of the Place Royale, and the Ceres
quarter. On the afternoon of this day and during the night from
Saturday to Sunday, flames consumed the most precious collections of
the city, at the Archbishop's palace and in private houses, an
inventory of which it will never be possible to prepare.

The top of the cathedral burned after the scaffolding of the northern
tower of the great portal had taken fire, toward 3 o'clock in the
afternoon. The statues and sculptures of this side of the same portal
were licked by the flames and scorched through and through. The eight
bells in this tower also were caught by the flames, and the whole
thing fell down near the cross aisle of the transept. The spire of the
Belfry of the Angel, at the apse, fell, and with it disappeared the
leaden heads which decorated its base. In the interior the sculptures
and the walls of the edifice were damaged by fire in the straw which
had been strewn about for the German wounded; the great eighteenth
century tympanums of the lateral doors, west side, were damaged
likewise. The thirteenth century stained glass suffered shocks from
the air and were perforated, in the rose windows as also in the high
windows of the nave. The pictures in the transept were spared, but the
choir stalls (eighteenth century work) were consumed--at the left on
entering.

Of the adjacent palace all the buildings were attacked by the flames
and are now nothing but ruined walls, save the chapel of the
thirteenth century, of which the main part subsists intact, and the
lower hall of the King's Lodge, under the Hall of Anointment, (of the
end of the fifteenth century.) The anointment rooms on the ground
floor, reconstructed in the seventeenth century, contained a great
number of historical portraits and furniture of various periods, which
were all a prey to the flames. It was the same in the apartments of
the Archbishops, which also contained numerous pictures and different
views of the city, transported from the Hotel de Ville and intended
for the formation of a historical museum of Rheims. Precious
furniture, bronzes of great value--like the foot of the candelabra of
Saint Remi and the candelabra of the Abb