iration, which the many will
pass by, the few enjoy.

IV.

CATHEDRALS OF THE VALLEYS.

[Sidenote: Orange.]

Lying on the Rhone, and almost surrounded by the papal Venaissin, is a
tiny principality of less than forty thousand acres. This small state
has given title to more than one distinguished European who never
entered its borders, and who was alien to it not only in birth, but in
language and family. So great was the fame of its rulers that this
small, isolated strip of land suffered for their principles, and
probably owes to them much of its devastation in the terrible Wars of
Religion. From the well-known convictions of the Princes of Orange, the
country was always counted a refuge for heretics of all shades, and in
1338 they were in sufficient force to demolish the tower of the
Cathedral. Later in history, Charles IX declared William of Nassau "an
outlaw" and his principality "confiscate"; and in 1571, there was a
three days' massacre of Protestants. In spite of this horrid orgy the
Reformers rose again in might and soon prevented all celebration of
Catholic rites. Refugees fleeing from the Dragonnades of Dauphine and of
the Cevennes poured into the principality; and when the Princes of
Orange were strong enough to protect their state, its Catholics lived
restricted lives; but when the Protestant power waned, Kings and
Captains of France raided the land in the name of the Church. And at
the death of William of Orange, King of England, Louis XIV seized the
capital of the state, razed its great palace and its walls, and after
the Treaty of Utrecht had awarded the principality to the French crown,
treated the defenceless Huguenots with the same impartial cruelty he had
meted to their fellow-believers in other parts of the kingdom. Orange's
changes in religious fate are not unlike those of Nimes, with this
essential difference, that here Catholicism has conquered triumphantly.
Where ten worship in the little Protestant temple, a thousand throng to
the Mass.

Both in history and its monumental Roman ruins, the capital of this
province, Orange, is one of the richest cities of the Southland, but its
Cathedral is very poor and mean. The plan is one of the simplest of the
Provencal conceptions, a "hall basilica," archaeologically interesting,
but in its present state of patch and repair, architecturally
commonplace and unbeautiful. In spite of Protestant attacks and Catholic
restorations, the XI century type