ldings; and
vandals of a later day have scattered her sculptures and her tablets
here and there. Some are in the galleries of Avignon; a Belus, the only
one found in France, was sent to the Museum of Saint-Germain; and in the
multitude of treasures in the British Museum, the most beautiful of all
her statues, a Diadumenus, is artistically lost. In the days when it
still adorned the city, during the reign of the Emperor Gallienus,
Vaison was christianised by Saint Ruf, her Bishopric was founded, and in
337 the first General Council of the Church held in Gaul assembled here.
Another Council in the V century, and still another in the VI, are proof
of her continued importance.

[Illustration: "ON THE BANKS OF A PLEASANT LITTLE RIVER IS VAISON."]

[Illustration: "THE RUINED CASTLE OF THE COUNTS OF TOULOUSE."--VAISON.]

Among the first of Gallo-Roman cities, she was also among the first to
suffer. Chrocus and his horde who sacked Orange, seized her Bishop and
murdered him; and Alains, Vandals, and Burgundians, following in their
wake, brought disaster after disaster to the cities lying near the
Rhone. Vaison, by miracle, did not lose her prestige. In the X and XI
centuries she built her fine Cathedral with its Cloisters, and in 1179
she was still great enough to excite the covetousness of Raymond VI,
Count of Toulouse. This magnificent and ambitious prince built a castle
on a height above the city, and as he had before terrorised my Lord
Bishop of Carpentras, so now he seized the anointed person of Berenger
de Reilhane, who was not only Vaison's Bishop, but her temporal prince
as well. Berenger was a sufficiently powerful personage to make an
outcry which re-echoed throughout Christendom; the Pope and the Emperor
came to his aid; and in the Abbey Church of Saint-Gilles-du-Gard,
Raymond VI did solemn penance, and, before receiving absolution, was
publicly struck by the Papal Legate with a bundle of birch rods. Above
the Bishop's Palace the great castle still loomed in menace, but on that
day Berenger de Reilhane triumphed and Vaison was at peace.

It was a peace which presaged her quiet, uneventful downfall. For other
interests were growing stronger in the country, other cities grew where
she stood still, and in the XIV century, when Avignon became the seat of
papal power, Vaison had passed from the world's history. Her Bishopric
endured till 1801, but her doings are worthy only of provincial
chronicles and to-day she is bu