The Cathedral Thief

My love for Damien was of the childish sort, and was based on nothing tangible and real. I did not know him. Not really. We hardly ever talked of anything important, and there was nothing in the way he behaved that would have led me to believe that he shared my feelings in any way. But I liked the way he smiled at me, and he possessed two qualities that made him almost perfect in my opinion. The first, was that Damien was an artist. He looked at the way in a manner that was different from yours or mine. The second was that despite the fact that I was only fifteen, Damien Sorel did never, ever treat me like a child, which was what everyone else around me was doing. To my mother, there was very little difference between Chat or I, apart from the fact that I was supposed to look after Chat when mother was away, and not the other way round. To Madame Odette, we were both as annoying and as silly. But Damien was different. To Damien, I was an adult like the others.

There was a third thing about Damien that I’ll always, always be grateful for. He introduced me to what was to become the second – and everlasting – great love of my life: the cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris.

I first fell in love with Notre-Dame on a drawing that Damien had done of it – and I weight my words when I use the expression ‘falling in love’, because that was exactly how it felt… like a punch directly to my heart. Damien did not take long to realize that I was particularly fascinated by it, and on one quiet afternoon, when mother had come home early from the tailor’s shop in which she was now working, and was looking after Chat, he took me to see the cathedral.

It was a cloudy afternoon. It had rained earlier that day, but now everything was dry and there was nothing left of the rain, except the smell of muddy soil that hung in the air still. There was not much sunshine, and yet the air was agreeably warm. And Damien Sorel was taking me somewhere. I couldn’t have felt any more special.

On paper, Notre-Dame de Paris was beautiful. In reality, it was a wonder. From afar, it was a clear and sturdy shape that stood tall in the middle of the surrounding buildings. From a close, it was a marvel of details. Only just the central portal, with its wonderful statues, had me fascinated for a long moment. I could not, by far, recognize all of the saints that had been depicted there, but there was something about the simplicity of their faces that particularly appealed to me. I would have been perfectly content to just stay there and examine every single detail of the many statues that ornamented the three portals. But Damien insisted that we went inside.

The inside of the cathedral was very, very different from of the small church of my hometown. It was higher, so much higher than I had expected. And it had tainted-glass windows. My old church didn’t have that. But here the light just flooded in, colors playing on the walls and pillars.

After we had explored the inside, Damien took me inside of the towers, from where there was the most breath-taking view on the city.

We stopped for a long time near one of the gargoyles that seemed to stand guarding the tower. It had an arched back through which the spine was visible, claw hands, sharp teeth and pointed ears, and one single horn in the middle of his forehead. It was beautifully frightening.

“Gargoyles are meant to guard Notre-Dame,” Damien told me in a hushed voice. “Some say they come to life when night falls.”

“Is it true?” I asked.

“Absolutely,” he replied, and he seemed so sure of himself that I believed him.

Shortly after, we returned home, but I did so with the feeling that I had just spent the most wonderful moment of my life. All week that followed, I was walking on a cloud. Nothing could bring me down. All I had to do was think of that moment, and nothing of the outside world could reach me.

It was almost by accident, then, that I learned, a few days later, that the very same gargoyle that we had admired, had been stolen.