toward the Cathedral, through tortuous streets
and little alley-ways. And in the gloomiest of them all there is no
odour of a stale antiquity, but the perfume of a garden-full of roses,
of a thousand orange-blossoms, and of locusts, honey-sweet, and he
begins to think himself enchanted. He feels the dark, old houses are
unreal, as if, instead of cobble-stones beneath his feet, there must be
the soft and tender grass of Araby the Blest. Such is the magic of a
trade, the perfume industry of Grasse that for so many hundreds of years
has made her meanest streets full of refreshing fragrance.

Breathless from the climb, the traveller stepped at length into the
little square, before a most ungainly Cathedral. "Chiefly built in the
XII century," it may have been, but so bedizened by the Renaissance that
its heavy old Provencal walls and massive pillars seem to exist merely
as supports for additions or unreasonable decorations of a poor Italian
style. A certain Monseigneur of the XVII century re-built the choir in a
deep, rectangular form; another prelate enlarged the church proper and
ruined it by constructing a tribune over the aisles, and desiring the
revenues of a new burial-place, he ordered Vauban to accomplish the
daring construction of a crypt. Still another Bishop with like
architectural tastes built a large new chapel which opens from the south
aisle; and with these additions and XVIII century changes in the facade,
the original style of the church was obscured. In spite of the pitiful
remains of dignity which its three aisles, its firm old pillars, and its
height still give to the interior, it is as a whole so mean a building
that it has fittingly lost the title of Cathedral.

[Illustration: THE "PONT D'AVIGNON."]

III.

RIVER-SIDE CATHEDRALS.

[Sidenote: Avignon.]

Everything which surrounds the Cathedral of Avignon, its situation, its
city, its history, is so full of romance and glamour that it is only
after very sober second thought one realises that the church itself is
the least of the papal buildings which majestically overtower the Rhone,
or of those royal ruins which face them as proudly on the opposite bank
of the river. Yet no church in Provence is richer in tradition, and in
history more romantic than tradition.

The foundation of this church goes back to the first Avignon, a small
colony of river-fishermen which gave way before the Romans, who
established a city, Avernio, on the great roc