Description from the author:
On the forehead of this patriarch of our cathedrals, next to the wrinkle, you always see a scar. Tempus edax, homo edacior, which I would readily translate as follows: “Time is blind, but man is ignorant” ...
Time, slowly and uncontrollably raising the level of Sita soil, made the staircase disappear. But, having allowed these eleven steps, which strengthened the impression of the great height of the building, to absorb the ever-increasing tide of the Parisian bridge, it returned to the cathedral, perhaps more than took away: it gave its facade a dark coloring of centuries, which transforms the monument’s advanced age into the era of the highest heyday of his beauty. (с)