from his summer palace on the Rhone, must have come to
"assist" at Mass. The building in which these solemn scenes of the early
Church were enacted soon disappeared and was replaced by the present one
whose older walls Revoil attributes to the IX century. The present
Cathedral's first documentary date is 1152, in the era of the Republic
of Arles. The name of Saint-Etienne was changed, and the body of
Saint-Trophime, carried in state from the ruined Church of the
Aliscamps, was buried under a new altar and he was solemnly proclaimed
the Patron of the richest and most majestic church in all Provence.

[Illustration: "IN THE MIDST OF THE WEALTH OF ANTIQUE RUINS."--ARLES.]

[Illustration: THE FACADE OF SAINT-TROPHIME.--ARLES.]

Nearly eight hundred years later a traveller stood before the portal of
this church. In the midst of his delighted study he suddenly felt the
attraction of a pair of watchful eyes, and turned to find a peasant
woman gazing fixedly at him. In her strange fascination she had placed
beside her, on the ground, two huge melons and a mammoth cabbage, and
her wizened hands were folded before her, Sunday-fashion. She was a
little witch of a woman, old and bent and brown.

"Yes, my good gentleman," she said, "I have been looking at you,--five
whole minutes of the clock, and much good it has done me. In these days
of books and such fine learning there is not enough time spent before
our door; and I who pass by it every day, year in, year out, I have
watched well, and only two except yourself have ever studied it. The
foreigners come with red books and look at them more than at the door
itself,--they stay perhaps three minutes, and go off, shaking their wise
heads. Our people, passing every day, see but a door, a place for going
in and coming out." She paused for breath.

"And what do you see?" asked the traveller.

"You ask me?" She smiled wisely. "But you know, since you are standing
here and looking too. Listen!" And her old eyes began to gleam. "I'll
tell you of a time before you were born. I was a child then; and we
marched here every Sunday, other little girls and myself, and we stood
before this door. And the nuns--it was often Sister Mary Dolorosa--told
us the stories of these stones. See! Here is Our Lord Who loves all
mankind, but has to judge us too;--and there is Saint-Trophime. But I
cannot read, Monsieur. An old peasant woman has no time for such fine
things, and you will laugh at me for tell