ay to
the apostle of the Christians. Where a temple stood, a church was built;
and unlike many early saints who looked upon old pagan images as homes
of devils and broke them into a thousand pieces with holy wrath and
words of exorcism, the prelate of Vence buried an image of a vanquished
god under each and every pillar of his church, in sign of Christian
triumph.

These early days of the Faith were days of growth for the little city,
and she prospered in her Mediaevalism. High on her hill, she was too
difficult of access to suffer greatly from marauding foes, and hidden
from the sea, she did not excite the cupidity of the Mediterranean
rovers. When Antibes and Nice were sacked, her little ledge of rock was
safe; and people crowded thick and fast behind her walls, until no
bee-hive swarmed so thick with bees as her few streets with citizens.
Here were arts and occupations, burghers and charters, riches and
liberties. Here came the Renaissance, and Vence had eager, if not famous
sculptors, painters, and organ-builders, and a family of artists whom
even the dilettante Francis I deigned to patronise.

Such memories of a busy, energetic past seem fairy-tales to those who
walk to-day about the dark and narrow streets of Vence. She scarcely has
outgrown her ancient walls, her civic life is dead, and in her virtual
isolation from the modern world she lives a dreary, quiet old age.

The old Cathedral, Notre-Dame, lies in the heart of the town; and takes
one back along the years, far past the Renaissance, to those grim
mediaeval days when even churches were places of defence. It is a low,
unimpressive building, said to have been built on the site of the Roman
Temple in the IV century. Enlarged or re-built in the X century, it was
then long and narrow, a Latin cross. But in the XII century, deep, dark
bays were added; in the XV, tribunes were built, the form of the apse
was changed to an oval and it was decorated in an inharmonious style;
and a hundred years ago the nave vault was re-built in an ellipse.

[Illustration: "THE OLD ROUND ARCH OF THE BISHOP'S PALACE."--VENCE.]

In the side wall there is a low portal of a late, decadent style, which
opens on the little square, but there is no real facade; and to see the
church, the traveller passed under the old round arch of the Bishop's
Palace, through a small, damp street to another tinier square where the
apse and tower stand. The little Cathedral-churches of Provence are
alw