As the priests put it, firing on the church was "expres." The cathedral dominates not only the city but the countryside.

It rises from the plain as Gibraltar rises from the sea, as the pyramids rise from the desert.

And at a distance of six miles, as you approach from Paris along the valley of the Marne, it has more the appearance of a fortress than a church.

But when you stand in the square beneath and look up, it is entirely ecclesiastic, of noble and magnificent proportions, in design inspired, much too sublime for the kings it has crowned, and almost worthy of the king in whose honor, seven hundred years ago, it was reared.

It has been called "perhaps the most beautiful structure produced in the Middle Ages." On the west facade, rising tier upon tier, are five hundred and sixty statues and carvings.