Fifty years later, when the Renaissance began to mingle with this unity which was so severe and yet so varied, the dazzling luxury of its fantasies and systems, its debasements of Roman round arches, Greek columns, and Gothic bases, its sculpture which was so tender and so ideal, its peculiar taste for arabesques and acanthus leaves, its architectural paganism, contemporary with Luther, Paris, was perhaps, still more beautiful, although less harmonious to the eye, and to the thought.
Cinquante ans plus tard, lorsque la renaissance vint mêler à cette unité si sévère et pourtant si variée le luxe éblouissant de ses fantaisies et de ses systèmes, ses débauches de pleins cintres romains, de colonnes grecques et de surbaissements gothiques, sa sculpture si tendre et si idéale, son goût particulier d’arabesques et d’acanthes, son paganisme architectural contemporain de Luther, Paris fut peut-être plus beau encore, quoique moins harmonieux à l’œil et à la pensée.