e right lies St. Avitien who
died in 325. The saint to whose name and memory the crypt was
dedicated lies buried beneath the high altar of the Church of St.
Ambrose at Milan. The body of St. Victrice, its builder, after lying
in this same vault for nearly four centuries after his death, was
transferred elsewhere.

The cold and gloomy little pit is eleven metres forty long, by five
metres forty broad, and five metres thirty high, and in the recessed
arches above the tombs may still be traced the thin red bricks of the
Roman builders and their strong cement between. In the circular apse
opposite the tiny square-headed entrance is the high window, set in
the east, that we saw from the outside, and in the wall on each side
are two square recesses in which the sacred vessels were locked up.
The altar on its raised platform stands upon two rude upright stones,
and is marked with five small crosses incised upon its upper surface.
Behind it, on the rounded wall, are faint traces of carving and of
fresco. All round the walls, except at the altar and the entrance,
runs a low stone seat after the true type of the Christian Catacomb. A
flat projecting rib of stone divides the barrel roof of the nave from
the circular vault of the apse which slopes upwards to the rounded
summit of the tiny window. A few skulls lie in a shadowed hollow near
the altar, but the State has fortunately put a stop to any further
grubbing in the floor for corpses that should never have been
disturbed.

[Illustration: ANCIENT CRYPT BENEATH THE CHURCH OF ST. GERVAIS]

There is an absolute and elemental simplicity in this tiny crypt,
with its stone bench and tombs of stone, that appeals far more
strongly to the imagination than any bespangled ecclesiasticism above
it. This is the true service of God and of His poor. The cold
austerity of a faith that stood in no need of external attractiveness
lays hold upon the senses as the reticent syllables of that first
gospel, spelt out from its original sentences, must have gripped the
hearts of those who heard it first. The Latin phrases of a long drawn
litany, set to complicated tunes, rolled overhead with an emptiness of
barren sound, among the clouds of incense and the glitter of the
painted walls and all the service of "the clergyman for his rich."

More beautiful places of worship we shall see in many parts of Rouen.
But in all France there is nothing more sincere than the small crypt
of St. Gervais.

So th