THE events recorded in the last chapter, culminating in the coronation of Henri Quatre in the Cathedral of the town which, as the Huguenot King, he had besieged three years before, are the last in which Chartres played a part of real importance in the history of France. She suffered, indeed, during the troubles of the Fronde, both from the massing of troops that occurred continually about her borders, and from many serious attacks of plague and famine, for which they were doubtless, to a large extent, responsible. But the trials which she had undergone had damped her military ardour. Bitter experiences in the past had exhausted the vehemence of her enthusiasm. Henceforth she lays aside her militant character and devotes herself to the peaceful pursuit of a quiet municipal life. The part she takes in politics is distinguished by ecclesiastical sobriety and commercial prudence.

An excellent college, founded by a good merchant, Pocquet by name, sprang into prominence in the life of the town, whilst the citadel, established by Henri Quatre at the Port S. Michel, is declared to be no longer needed. It is handed over, in 1600, to the citizens, and converted again into a church. And the Huguenots, so much has the spirit of the age changed, are provided with a church, so that each may worship in peace according to his own conscience.

The year 1623 saw two changes which affected the nominal position of Chartres and continue still to affect it. In the first place the diocese of Chartres became in that year the first suffragan of the newly-created Archbishopric of Paris, and, in the second place, the Duchy of Chartres, definitely and officially united with the crown, passed to Gaston, Duke of OrlÉans, and has ever since remained in the house of OrlÉans. The Duchy, it will be remembered, had been created by FranÇois I. in favour of RÉnÉe, daughter of Louis XII. Louis XIII. now bought it back from the Duke of Nemours, and himself, Duke of Chartres, visited the town in October of the same year. (It was on a previous occasion that, as the historian Doyen narrates, he came to pay his devotions at the shrine of Notre-Dame, and thereafter was indulging in a game of tennis at the court in the market-place when he was informed that there was a certain woman there who played a strong game. He sent for her and played a set with her. But she beat him. Cette femme prit un caleÇon et gagna le roi, en jouant par-dessous la jambe.) Three years later he presented his brother Gaston, on the occasion of his marriage and in exchange for the Duchy of Anjou, with the County of Blois and the Duchies of OrlÉans and Chartres. On the death of Gaston, the opponent of Mazarin, the Duchy of Chartres reverted to the Crown again, but Louis XIV., a few weeks afterwards, settled it, together with the Duchy of OrlÉans as an appanage, on his only brother, Philippe, on the occasion of the marriage of that prince with Henrietta of England. Since that time the title of Duke of Chartres has always been the appanage of the eldest son of the house of OrlÉans.

For the rest, Chartres passed more and more into the condition of a Ville de Province, where only the echoes of what is being said and done in Paris and France are to be heard.

The mystic heresy of the Illuminisme, propagated by the ‘alumbrados’ of Spain, appeared here in the first half of the seventeenth century, but was routed out before long. The method by which it was crushed is, however, significant. This heresy represented a revolt against the hierarchy of the Church. It rejected all dogmas and all ministers of religion. The chief exponent of it at Chartres was a hermit who took up his abode in the woods of LÈves, and soon secured a strong following among the unlettered classes. The heretics, in fact, began to make such progress in La Beauce and Picardie that Richelieu became alarmed. The Government gave orders that the sect was to be exterminated. The hermit of Chartres was therefore arrested and sent to Paris, where he recanted his errors.

He and his followers, in earlier days, would doubtless have been burnt at the stake without more ado. Now, such has been the growth of the central power, they were merely sent to Paris and converted. The punishment of heterodoxy had become generally much less severe. Very little hanging was now done for conscience’s sake. We only come across one instance of a monk being hung at this time, and that was for celebrating Mass without having been ordained priest.

Throughout the succeeding centuries, then, the political action of Chartres is reduced to that of an ordinary commercial municipality. It suffered none the less in common with the rest of France from all those causes which had issue in the Revolution. The crash of 1789 was precipitated by the coincidence of two events—the imminent bankruptcy of the Government and the great famine which, following on one of the worst winters on record, produced universal rioting throughout the country and ended in pure anarchy. For the Government, having no money and no credit, could not feed the people. The people might bring the King from Versailles and sack the Bastille but that did not make bread cheaper. The Constituent Assembly was as helpless as the King. The pressure in Paris was worse in October than during the siege by the Prussians. These famine riots continued in Paris and all over the country till good harvests came. Then the country would have settled down. But the Revolution had been begun, and, under the extreme party, with the aid of the Jacobin clubs, was destined to bring in its train the Reign of Terror. The Girondins wished for war and that the country should not settle down.

The Government had been more or less insolvent since 1715, but since 1783 the share taken by France in the War of American Independence had rendered total failure inevitable. The wealth of the country was not small and it was rapidly increasing. But the Government had for years put an immense strain upon their preposterous financial system, and the ridiculous machine had now completely broken down. Since 1783, one Superintendent of Finance after another had declared that the only possible way to avert bankruptcy was to introduce a sweeping change in the system of taxation. As soon as they came to that conclusion they were dismissed, for Louis XVI., who half knew that they were right, could not stand against his Court. But in the year 1788 the fact became too obvious. The Superintendent Necker declared that, unless some reform were undertaken, bankruptcy, in a few months, was inevitable. Now, the National Debt was held almost entirely by the official class in France, to whom, therefore, even the loss of their privileges, which consisted to a large extent in not paying taxes, seemed better than the bankruptcy of the country. Necker advised the King to summon the States-General and to carry out reforms in connection with it.

The demand for it to be summoned was already loud. It was the old Parliament of France, but it had not met since 1614. Then it had consisted of three separate houses, the Nobles, the Clergy, and the Third Estate, each acting independently of each other and enjoying the right of presenting petitions to the King. How the Third Estate asserted itself and, after the States-General had been converted into the Constituent Assembly, proceeded to fulfil its Tennis-Court Oath and to give a Constitution to France we need not repeat here. What from the point of view of the story of Chartres requires to be noticed is that the new Constitution, which was gradually drawn up between the years 1789-1791, represented to a great extent the ideas implied in the list of grievances, cahier des plaintes, submitted to the Chartrain representatives of the Third Estate. They had had a sufficiently bitter experience in past years of the heavy and unjust incidence of taxation, and the congestion and confusion of the judicial system, which, together with the existence of the official class, were the real grievances of the age. The administrative arrangements of the new Constitution embodied the theories of Rousseau, who advocated extreme democratic decentralisation. For this was a panacea which the followers of Diderot and the EncyclopÆdists, believing that the correction of bad laws and bad government would produce the millennium, that, in fact, you can change the character of the whole by changing the arrangement of the units, imagined would cure all the evils of Society. Almost all real power, therefore, was taken from the King and placed in the hands of municipal and village Councils, of what Carlyle called ‘forty thousand sovereign bodies.’ One need not emphasise the grim comment passed by history upon these theories.

So far as Chartres was concerned they had their immediate and lasting effect in a decree of the National Assembly, dated January 15, 1790, which constituted our town Capital of the Department of Eure-et-Loir and gave it a departmental administration. The bishopric was preserved, and only a court of appeal was wanting. The assembly of citizens, some 1500 in number, met and elected the members of the new municipal body, which included a mayor, eleven municipal officers, twenty-four notables, and a procureur de la commune.

Besides drawing up a new Constitution, the Constituent Assembly had been busy promulgating a series of decrees, of which some, such as those bringing in a new financial system, proved inoperative, and others, such as that concerning seigneurial dues, were concerned with abolishing what had already ceased to exist. But their decrees concerning the Church had some effect, and that bad. In the first place, the whole property of the Church was confiscated and tithes were abolished. In the second place, under the civil constitution of the clergy, all beneficed clergy were, it was decided, to be beneficed by the State (July 12, 1790). Thirdly, all beneficed clergy were required to submit themselves to free election at the hands of laymen, and to undertake the discharge of their holy office only after swearing a solemn oath to obey the rules of the new Constitution. This decree was an immense blunder. It was offensive in the extreme to every good Roman Catholic, to whom the spectacle of a purely lay power interfering in questions of ecclesiastical discipline was unbearable.

The Pope intervened and forbade the bishops to take an oath which involved the renunciation of all Papal claims. The greater number of bishops and clergy obeyed the Papal order, and were supported by the majority of the lower orders in whom the love of the Church was still quite strong and deeply rooted. At Chartres, M. de Lubessac refused to take the oath, and the assembly of departmental electors met and appointed in his place Nicolas Boisnet, a doctor of theology and vicar of the parish of S. Michel. He was a worthy man who for forty years had offered an example of all the Christian virtues, and he only accepted the See of the civic episcopate on the express condition that he would render it to him who had abandoned it when he should see fit to come and take it again.

Meantime the revenues of the Church had been sequestrated, and the Chapter, yielding to force, had passed out of existence. It was after this fashion that religion, like the monarchy, was provided with a Constitution.

The Girondin Clubs had taken possession of Chartres as of the other towns. They soon had their way, and France was at war with Prussia and Austria. That war was entered into without any very definite plan or enthusiasm by the Allies, who expected a mere parade march to Paris and an opportunity of aggrandisement for themselves. But France, thinking that the victory of the Allies would mean the restoration of the old rÉgime, took the war very seriously from the beginning. A voluntary movement of unequalled size and enthusiasm took place in the spring of 1792. Eure-et-Loir furnished several battalions of volunteers, and Chartres gave to France, as captain of their first battalion, the young and chivalrous Marceau. The vigour of this resistance surprised the Allies, who in the face of it would have been at a loss to know what to do if they had arrived at Paris. Instead of exerting themselves, therefore, they fell back upon the frontier. But their advance had proved fatal to Louis, who must have hoped for their success. As they advanced the panic in Paris had increased. The crisis came with the 10th of August, on which day a big mob rising, clearly engineered by the Girondins, drove the King to seek safety in the Assembly, whence he passed to spend his last sad hours in the Temple prison, and finally to meet death on the scaffold. Meanwhile, the Girondin leaders dictated three decrees to the Chamber. The King was suspended from his functions, the new Commune of Paris was recognised, and it was decided to summon an extraordinary National Convention, a single Chamber with powers to do what it pleased, elected by universal suffrage. To that celebrated Assembly Chartres contributed some very notable deputies. The upheaval of public opinion in the town is indicated by its representatives, for among them was JÉrÔme PÉtion, Mayor of Paris in 1792 and President of the Convention, and Brissot de Warville. These men were Girondins, and when the party split in two they remained Girondins and suffered death in the following year at the hands of the extreme section, the Jacobins. As a Girondin town Chartres, then, was typical of the provincial towns of France. For while as to political theory Girondins and Jacobins were agreed in aiming at an ideally democratic Republic extremely decentralised, on the practical question of ways and means they differed. The Girondins insisted, in spite of the war, on carrying out their decentralising projects at once, but the Jacobins recognised that if Paris was to be defended at all in the ensuing campaign of ‘93, a strong central government, a dictatorship in fact, was absolutely necessary. The soul of the Jacobin party was Danton, the one man neither fanatic nor fool, and he saw not only the necessity for improvising a strong central government, but also how it could be done. It could be done by means of the organisation supplied by the political clubs scattered through France, and by terrorising the majority. For the numbers of the Jacobins were always small, but the audacity of their measures produced the illusion of power. Paris was cowed, the Girondin party crushed by force, and the Jacobin conquest of France, after the suppression of the risings in the Girondin provincial towns, for a while complete.

The Reign of Terror had begun and lasted till July 1794. It lasted, in other words, till the Jacobin party had done that side of its work, which was thoroughly national and popular, and, thanks to its conduct of the war, under Carnot, the danger on the frontier had ceased. Then the Jacobin Government fell at once. It was because they were doing their work with regard to the war, and no one else could do it, that France tolerated the policy of brigandage and butchery by which they governed;—for this reason, and because those most likely to resist were away at the frontier, and also through fear. For the Jacobins were an organised party, and the rest were a chaotic mass of individuals. Therefore they slew not less than thirty thousand men and women of all classes. A minority that had begun to rule by terror, they could not go back. They felt the weakness of their position, and went on increasing the pressure, themselves almost mad with terror. Individual zeal was required to make up for their lack of numbers. A scrutiny was held of their own members, and those who showed a lack of energy were expelled and guillotined. They executed also that they might confiscate, and thus provide the sinews of war. And an official theory, stated by the chiefs and formulated by Robespierre, was not lacking to justify their

Rue des BÉguines
Rue des BÉguines

behaviour. Owing to centuries of despotic government, it was said, the mass of Frenchmen were corrupt and unfit for citizenship in the ideal Republic that was going to be established. They must wipe out the bad blood.

In this matter of wiping out bad blood a certain amount of moderation at any rate was observed at Chartres. But, short of bloodshed, every outrage and abomination conceivable by a horde of raging maniacs was solemnly proposed and perpetrated. The priceless treasure of the Cathedral was looted, and all the churches pillaged. The leaden roofs thereof, and the bells of the Cathedral, and all leaden tombs that could be found, were melted down to supply the army with money and with cannon. It was decreed that every statue within and without the Cathedral should be destroyed. The work of destruction had already begun on the north porch, when a member of the Convention, Sergent Marceau, raised his voice against the measure, and, in the interest of art, the decree was repealed. But next day, at a meeting of the Chartrain Club, a member arose, and, declaring that the Cathedral dominated this Republican city too much, proposed that it should be destroyed. The proposal was considered, and actually adopted.

But the Cathedral of Chartres was in the end allowed to stand. For a curious reason. It was found that the difficulty of getting rid of the vast masses of dÉbris would be insuperable. No citizen would undertake to allow the fragments of the building to be cast upon his land, and, seeing that the town would be endlessly encumbered by them, it was decided that the Cathedral should not be destroyed.

But, if not destroyed, it must be profaned. Hideous orgies were prepared to celebrate the Feast of Reason. The group of the Assumption in the choir was converted into a group more conformable to the patriotic sentiments of the moment by setting a red cap on the head of the Virgin, and placing a pike in her hand. The marbles of the choir were inscribed with Republican maxims, and in the centre of the sanctuary a miniature mountain was raised. On the summit was reared a statue of Reason, leaning against an oak, on the highest branch of which was perched a cock holding in his beak a tricolour. The Temple of Reason was inaugurated by a sermon, in which the citizens were informed that they had recovered their liberty, and were once more men, pure as Nature herself. This discourse was followed by a musical drama, entitled Reason Victorious over Fanaticism, in which Watchfulness, in a robe sown with eyes, and Fanaticism in priestly garb figured, with Rousseau and Voltaire as acolytes of the former. Philosophy then engaged and easily vanquished with argument Fanaticism, who, seeing himself beaten, hurled himself, shrieking abuse, on Watchfulness. But the cry, ‘To Arms!’ was raised, and lo! the Republic, in the guise of a woman in a tricolour robe, rose from a cavern near and cast down Fanaticism, pierced him with a dart, broke the altars and trampled under foot a crucifix. Then a machine in the form of a cloud raised the Republic to the mountain top and set her beside the statue of Reason.

And M. Thirion, of the Convention, closed the proceedings with an address.

These profane and grotesque celebrations were followed up a month later (December 23, 1793) by a bonfire, which was lit in front of the Porte Royale on the day which would have been Sunday had not Sundays been abolished. Into this bonfire were hurled all ornaments of the Church which were not of precious metal—books and wooden crucifixes and statues. And with them was burnt the ‘Druidical Statue,’ Notre-Dame-de-Sous-Terre.

On the civil side, bread riots and brigandage were the order of the day at Chartres, but at last, under the Directory, comparative quiet began to be restored. The town, however, was accused of not supporting that highly centralised administration with sufficient warmth, and, indeed, Delarue, the deputy of the Five Hundred, made a report, in which he stated that the Chartrains ‘had furnished arms and ammunition to five hundred brigands to suppress the liberty of the legislative body.’ The municipal administration defended themselves vigorously against this charge. It was probably true enough that Chartres was not in favour of the Directory, which, from the beginning, rested on the support of the army, and thus began that process which was to end in the Consulate—when the army set up its own man. From this time forth the army is France. It had been enormously improved since 1792. Out of the unskilled rabble that had fled before the Allies without striking a blow it had been converted into an organised machine. Under Carnot, at the War Office, good men were coming to the front. In 1796 they took the offensive, and arranged a big triple advance upon Vienna. Jourdan was to advance from the Netherlands, Moreau from Alsace, Bonaparte through North Italy. The brilliant successes of the latter covered the failure of the other two, who were beaten back to the French frontier. But before their retirement the Battle of Altenkirchen had been fought, and there had fallen the young Chartrain, General Marceau—FranÇois SÉverin Marceau-Degraviers—whose statue stands in the centre of the Place des Épars. He was only twenty-seven years of age at the time of his death. His praises were pronounced to the Council of the Five Hundred by his old friend and comrade in arms, Jourdan, who secured for his mother a handsome pension. Marceau represents to the Chartrains the ideal of that military ardour which is the keynote of modern France.

Nothing could be more eloquent of the difference between mediÆval and modern France, of the change from the rule of Church and King to the domination of the established army, than the present state of the old Benedictine Abbey of S. Pierre, locally called S. PÈre, and its precincts. For the site of the old dormitory, refectory and cloisters is now used for cavalry barracks, and Chasseurs d’Afrique now stable their horses where once the cloistered monk tended his garden and fish ponds.

The church itself is one of the most remarkable in existence, and would doubtless be better known had Chartres no Cathedral. As it is, the magnificence of Notre-Dame obscures the excellence of the smaller church, and obliterates from the memory its striking characteristics. In any other town its glass alone would bring pilgrims from afar. For not only are the thirty-six great lancet windows of rare beauty, being filled, to a great extent, with thirteenth and fourteenth-century glass, but the impression which they give you on first entering the church is almost unique. The apse is ablaze with colour, the triforium of the choir glazed, chiefly in grisaille, and the delicate triforium of the nave is topped by huge lights of colour and grisaille, which are interrupted by hardly any framework of stone. It seems as if the whole of the upper part of the building were one continuous sheet of glass gloriously coloured. The effect, indeed, is scarce an illusion.

For the monks of S. PÈre have taken up the idea of the flying buttresses where the builders of the Cathedral had left it. We have seen (p. 189) how those builders had felt their way with the buttresses of the nave, and developed those later ones of the choir. In happy rivalry of the Cathedral, our monks now, it would appear, determined to show the full possibilities of the idea. They built a temple of glass and supported it with flying buttresses. Windows took the place of walls in their church, and the walls were set several yards outside the windows. That is the effect of this amazing tour-de-force as you look at it from the east or west. The line of buttresses show like the solid wall of the church without. Yet so cunningly were those buttresses arranged to carry the thrust of the building, that the church, windows and roof and all, still stands unimpaired.

Something of the history of this once large and famous abbey we have already given in the course of our extracts from the Chartulary of S. Pierre, which was written in great part by the monk Paul in the eleventh century. There is an old tradition, quite devoid of foundation, that a church was built at Chartres in honour of S. Peter, who then held the See of Rome, by S. Potentian and his disciples. This church, tradition further asserts, was connected with an abbey by Clovis, and endowed by Queen Clotilda on the death of her husband. However that may be, the church was certainly founded by the middle of the seventh century, and probably the monastery also. They grew and flourished exceedingly in spite of wars and sieges, burnings and bishops, and waxed in wealth and importance to such an extent as to provoke serious jealousy in the hearts of the clergy and adherents of Notre-Dame. Thus, even as early as the year 840, we find the monks asserting the rights of their constitution against the Bishop HÉlie, and refusing to recognise the episcopal jurisdiction. The bishop did not hesitate to have recourse to arms. The very threshold of the Church of S. PÈre was stained with blood. The greater part of the monks were forced to flee from their monastery, whilst the prelate seized all the precious ornaments and property that belonged to them, and left but a bare sustenance for the small band of brethren who had dared to remain. The hand of the Northman completed, in 857 and 911, the ruin of the abbey thus begun by the bishop, and it was not till 930 that that ‘noble, rich and virtuous prelate,’ Aganon, built on the site of the ruins a vast monastery and great church, and restored to the brethren and canons thereof their confiscated vineyards and property. The work of the material and spiritual reformation of the monastery was continued by his successor, Ragenfroy. To this period must be referred the great square western tower, of which we have spoken as being contemporary with the Cathedral of Fulbert (see p. 66 ff.). It is even possible that it formed a part of the church reconstructed by the Bishop Aganon about the year 940. It is certainly much the oldest portion of the building. The rest, together with the monastic buildings, perished in the great fire which destroyed the town and damaged the Cathedral in 1134. After that disaster the monk Hilduard was entrusted by his abbot with the task of rebuilding the church of the monastery, and he began to work in the year 1150. After he had finished the choir, however, lack of funds brought matters to a standstill. A wall was built across the western end of the choir in order to enclose it. But whilst the foundations of this wall, which was meant to serve as a temporary west end, were being dug a discovery was made, the result of which was quickly to furnish the means needful for continuing the construction of the church. A small vaulted chamber was opened, in which was found the body of S. Gilduin. Miracles began to occur. The faithful flocked to the new shrine, bringing rich gifts, and about the year 1210 the building was again able to be taken in hand. The church was completed. But when this was done, either because they were not content with the choir of Hilduard, as being unworthy of the later nave, or because it was already in need of repair, the monks of S. PÈre rebuilt the choir towards the end of the reign of S. Louis. The apse was finished in or about the year 1310. The monks made it, as it were, almost one sheet of glass, and supported their beautiful, if daring, creation by a series of sixteen buttresses without, which are higher, lighter and more graceful than those of the nave. A beautiful thirteenth-century doorway on the north side of the church is the remaining feature of note on the exterior. But, in spite of the variety of dates to which the various portions of the building belong, it is, as a whole, singularly well proportioned and full of grace.

Within, since the Revolution, when the tombs of Fulbert and many other bishops were destroyed together with much valuable and artistic furniture, carved stalls and a Renaissance jubÉ, there are two main attractions—the windows and the Limousin enamels. But before speaking of them we must mention the epitaph of Robert, son of Richard, first Duke of Normandy, who was not Archbishop of Rouen, as the inscription which is in the aisle states. Also the very rich and graceful triforium of the nave, and the later and still more delicate triforium of the choir, cannot fail to please.

The unique gallery of fourteenth-century glass presented by the windows of S. PÈre is, as M. l’AbbÉ Bulteau remarked, arranged methodically in a carefully-considered combination and not according to the whims of the various founders, as was to a large extent the case with the thirteenth-century lights of the Cathedral. On the left-hand side of the nave are represented the Apostles and episodes from the Gospel story; on the right, the Confessors and incidents drawn from the lives of the martyrs; in the choir, martyrs, prophets and saints group round our Saviour, who, as a little child, is borne on His mother’s arm, and as a grown man hangs upon the tree of the Cross.

All the windows of the church, therefore, viewed thus, seem to converge towards a common centre, which is Jesus Christ our Lord.

The scheme of the majority of windows is the presentation of large single figures of stained glass surrounded by broad bands of grisaille.

On the north or left-hand side, beginning from the west end, next the old tower, are two Apostles, set in a broad frame of grisaille.

These two Apostles are S. James the Less and S. Matthias. The next window gives S. Jude and S. Barnabas, and the next two tell the story of S. John the Baptist—(a) Baptizing Jesus; the daughter of Herodias demanding his head and presenting his head in a charger to her mother; John showing the Divine Lamb to his disciples. (b) The announcement to Zacharias; his childhood, preaching, and answering Herod. The fifth window shows S. Andrew (with a book) and S. John (with a book open). In the next S. Bartholomew holds a cutlass and S. James a book, whilst the seventh and eighth recount the history of S. Peter. For the seventh shows him with his disciples, healing a man born blind, preaching, and being delivered from prison by an angel. In the eighth S. Peter receives the keys, appears before Nero, confronts Simon, is crucified and taken up to heaven.

S. Thomas and S. Philip, S. Matthew and S. James fill the ninth and tenth windows. The eleventh and twelfth recount the chief incidents in the life of Jesus Christ. In the eleventh, the entry into Jerusalem, the Last Supper, the Betrayal, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection and the ‘Touch me not’ are represented, and in the twelfth the disciples of Emmaus, S. Thomas, the Ascension, Pentecost and Judgment. On the right-hand or south side of the nave we are shown the Confessors and incidents from ecclesiastical history. The first, next to the tower, gives S. Benedict and S. Maur, for the Church of S. PÈre, it will be remembered, was the church of a Benedictine monastery. The second light gives S. Avitus and S. Laumer. The third relates the legend of S. Agnes; she repels the son of the Proconsul and her modesty is miraculously shielded; she is burnt at the stake and transferred. The story of S. Catherine, who disputed with the Emperor and converted the heathen philosophers and led them to martyrdom, is told in the fourth.

S. Malard and S. Solemnis, S. Lubin and S. Martin fill the fifth and sixth. The seventh and eighth, which are now in a deplorable condition, once illustrated the lives of S. Denis and S. Clement, the pope and martyr. S. Gregory and S. Sylvester fill the ninth, the Virgin and Child, with the donor kneeling below, the tenth.

The eleventh traces the history of the parents of the Virgin. Joachim and Anna are repelled by the priest, Anne by her servant. Joachim feeds his flocks; an angel appears to him and also to S. Anne, who goes out and meets her husband at the gates of Jerusalem. She gives birth to Mary, who presents herself at the Temple and marries Joseph.

The twelfth window portrays further scenes in the life of the Virgin—the Annunciation, Visitation, Birth of Christ, Adoration of the Magi, the Presentation and Death of Mary.

The windows of the choir, with the exception of those in the apse, are of thirteenth-century glass. In them the patriarchs, prophets and personages of the Old Testament are shown, to the number of forty, carrying palms in their hands, and speaking, apparently, to each other.

The six apsidal windows contain the most brilliant glass in the abbey. They are as remarkable, so M. l’AbbÉ Clerval observes, for elegance of design as for vivacity of colouring. Each of them holds four life-size figures of bishops or apostles surrounded with rich architectural ornamentation; whilst the heads, divided into three quatrefoils, give scenes of martyrdom and an angel bearing a crown for the martyred saints below.

The grisailles of the triforium were replaced in the early part of the nineteenth century by some glass painted in 1527 by Robert Pinaigrier, which had been saved from the adjacent Church of S. Hilaire, destroyed during the Revolution. Unfortunately they have been arranged with extraordinary indifference to their meaning, and pieces of glass have been stuck in pell-mell according as they happened to suit the shape of the window or convenience of the glazier. The result is that windows which, both in colouring and design, were quite exceptionally good have been deprived of all the charm of their design and much of the effect of their colour.

The lower series of windows of the church are for the most part modern. They represent chiefly scenes from the Gospel story of the life of Christ and come from the hand of M. Lorin, the glass-painter of Chartres, whose atelier is in the Rue de la Tannerie.

Leaving the study of the glass you should now go to the apsidal chapel dedicated to the Conception. This chapel has been restored and polychromed by M. Paul Durand, and contains a statue of the Virgin by Bridan and the tombstone of Simon de Beron, Canon of Chartres in the twelfth century. But it is the magnificent Limoges enamels of Leonard Limousin, 1547, which we wish to see. They are ranged round the walls of the chapel, and in order to see them you must ring the bell near the chapel railings and summon the attendant.

These enamels, which are of extraordinary beauty and size (24 x 10?), exquisite in colour and shading, and are in perfect preservation, come from the chapel of the famous ChÂteau d’Anet, which Diane de Poitiers built, voulant une oeuvre toute FranÇaise, and of which Henri II. wrote to his Queen—

This magnificent chÂteau, the noblest type of the Renaissance in France, was destroyed to a large extent (1799-1810,) but was in great part restored by the late M. Moreau. Lying, as it does, on the Évreux line, it is quite worth stopping to see. But the tourist may be grateful for the information that it is 1½ kilomÈtres from the station, and is only shown on Thursdays and Sundays.

The beautiful enamels before us, so rich in their varied shades of blue, were presented by Henri II. to the lovely and accomplished mistress, who, in spite of her years, had won his heart when he was but a lad of thirteen.

They had been wrought for FranÇois I. by the famous LÉonard Limousin,[101] after the designs of Michel Rochetel. The date (1547) and the initials and salamander of FranÇois bear witness to this fact, and the initials L. L. on the handle of the sword of S. Paul and beneath S. James the Less proclaim the artist.

The panels represent the twelve apostles, with their characteristic emblems, and each apostle is set in a framework of Renaissance ornament—genii and fantastic animals and garlands of flowers.

There is nothing else in S. PÈre of sufficient interest to detain us.