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 (16^th century writer) next to Grégoire de Tours (6^th century historian and Bishop of Tours) and Malherbe (16^th century poet), or Mathieu Molé (17^th century statesman) with Turgot (18^th century economist and statesman) and Saint Bernard (12^th century abbot and a big mover and shaker in the Church’s schisms of the time).