aye d'Igny--were also in these
apartments, of which nothing is left but the walls. The archaeological
collections of the city were consumed in the upper apartments, as also
a whole museum, organized and classified to represent the ethnography
of la Champagne by a thousand objects tracing back the ancient
industries, the trades, the arts, and usages of this province.
Finally, the rich library founded by Cardinal Gousset, offering superb
editions and assembled in a vast paneled hall, was totally burned up
in the modern building constructed for it at the expense of the State.

After the disasters to the arts at the cathedral and the palace, we
must note also the mansions and private houses, remarkable through
their architecture and their decoration, that were demolished, burned,
and annihilated. No. 1 Rue du Marc, Renaissance mansion--damage to the
sculptured ceiling and the sculptures of the court. Two pavilions of
the Place Royale, creations of the eighteenth century, are now only
calcined walls. The same fate overtook the Gothic house, 57 Rue de
Vesle, (of which mention was made above;) the house, 40 Rue de
l'Universite, built in the eighteenth century; the house next to the
Ecu de Rheims, of the same period; the mansion at 12 Rue la Grue,
which was decorated with carved lintels and forged iron banisters; the
mansion at 19 Rue Eugene-Destenque, in the style of the Henri IV.
period, having a great stone fireplace and decorative paintings in one
gallery. Finally, in the Rue des Trois-Raisinets, the remains of the
monastery of the Franciscans, with a cloister, and the framework of a
granary of the Middle Ages.

These notes are really only observations to be completed later with
the aid of descriptions of ancient date, but they offer sure
information of the lamentable losses suffered by our unfortunate city
during the first month of its bombardment.

Paris, Jan. 20, 1915.

No. 2.

THE FIXED IDEA.

_From M. Auguste Dorchain we receive this striking observation:_

The idea of destroying the cathedral haunted them for a hundred years,
at least. Three dates, three texts, three proofs:

April, 1814, Jean-Joseph Goerres, an illustrious professor, the pious
author of a "Christian Mysticism," in four volumes, wrote, in the
Rheinische Merkur:

"Reduce to ashes that basilica of Rheims where Klodovig was anointed,
where that Empire of the Franks was born--the false brothers of the
noble Teutons; burn that cathedral!..."