It is a very beautiful church of the second order of importance,with a charming mousecolored complexion and a pair of fantastic towers.There is a commodious little square in front of it,from which you may look up at its very ornamental face;but for purposes of frank admiration the sides and the rear are perhaps not sufficiently detached.The cathedral of Tours,which is dedicated to Saint Gatianus,took a long time to build.Begun in 1170,it was finished only in the first half of the sixteenth century;but the ages and the weather have interfused so well the tone of the different parts,that it presents,at first at least,no striking incongruities,and looks even exceptionally harmonious and complete.There are many grander cathedrals,but there are probably few more pleasing;and this effect of delicacy and grace is at its best toward the close of a quiet afternoon,when the densely decorated towers,rising above the little Place de l'Archeveche,lift their curious lanterns into the slanting light,and offer a multitudinous perch to troops of circling pigeons.The whole front,at such a time,has an appearance of great richness,although the niches which surround the three high doors (with recesses deep enough for several circles of sculpture)and indent the four great buttresses that ascend beside the huge rosewindow,carry no figures beneath their little chiselled canopies.The blast of the great Revolution blew down most of the statues in France,and the wind has never set very strongly toward putting them up again.The embossed and crocketed cupolas which crown the towers of Saint Gatien are not very pure in taste;but,like a good many impurities,they have a certain character.The interior has a stately slimness with which no fault is to be found,and which in the choir,rich in early glass and surrounded by a broad passage,becomes very bold and noble.
Its principal treasure,perhaps,is the charming little tomb of the two children (who died young)of Charles VIII.and Anne of Brittany,in white marble,embossed with symbolic dolphins and exquisite arabesques.The little boy and girl lie side by side on a slab of black marble,and a pair of small kneeling angels,both at their head and at their feet,watch over them.Nothing could be more perfect than this monument,which is the work of Michel Colomb,one of the earlier glories of the French Renaissance;it is really a lesson in good taste.
Originally placed in the great abbeychurch of Saint Martin,which was for so many ages the holy place of Tours,it happily survived the devastation to which that edifice,already sadly shattered by the wars of religion and successive profanations,finally succumbed in 1797.In 1815the tomb found an asylum in a quiet corner of the cathedral.
I ought,perhaps,to be ashamed to acknowledge,that I found the profane name of Balzac capable of adding an interest even to this venerable sanctuary.