Statues of important men
… outside the first floor windows.
I suspect they must have been switched around and replaced over the years according to the whims of many people, because they seem like such a random grab-bag with no particular pattern. There’s Rabelais (16th century writer) next to Grégoire de Tours (6th century historian and Bishop of Tours) and Malherbe (16th century poet), or Mathieu Molé (17th century statesman) with Turgot (18th century economist and statesman) and Saint Bernard (12th century abbot and a big mover and shaker in the Church’s schisms of the time).