in almost original form, it will be seen that the
portal is a very interesting example of the Provencal use not only of
Roman suggestion, but of the actual fragments of Roman art which had
escaped the invader; that the south aisle, in itself a completed
interior, bears a close resemblance to Avignon; and that the Cloister,
although now very worn and even defaced, must have been one of the
quaintest and most delicate, as it is one of the tiniest, in Provence.
Three sides of its arcades support plain buildings of a later date; the
fourth stands free, as if in ruin. Little coupled columns, some
slenderly circular, some twisted, and some polygonal, rest on a low
wall; piers, very finely and differently carved, are at each of the
arcade angles; the little capitals of the columns were once beautifully
cut, and even the surfaces of the arches have small foliated disks and
rosettes and are finished in roll and hollow. Unfortunately, a very
large part of this detail-work is so defaced that its subjects are
barely suggested, some are so eaten away that they are as desolate of
beauty as the barren little quadrangle; and the whole Cloister seems to
have reached the brink of that pathetic old age which Shakespeare has
described, and that another step in the march of time would leave it
"sans everything."

[Illustration: THE CLOISTER.--AIX.]

About two hundred years later, in 1285, the Archbishop of Aix found the
Cathedral too unpretending for the rank and dignity of the See, and he
began the Gothic additions. Like many another prelate his ambitions were
larger than his means; and the history of Saint-Sauveur from the XIII to
the XIX century, is that oft-told tale of new indulgences offered for
new contributions, halts and delays in construction, emptied treasuries,
and again, appeals and fresh efforts. The beginnings of the enlarged
Cathedral were architecturally abrupt. The old nave, becoming the south
aisle, was connected with the new by two small openings; it retained
much of its separateness and in spite of added chapels much actual
isolation. The Gothic nave, the north aisle and its many chapels, the
apse, and the transepts, whose building and re-construction stretched
over the long period between the XIII and XVII centuries, are
comparatively regular, uniform, and uninteresting. The most ambitious
view is that of the central nave, whose whole length is so little broken
by entrances to the side aisles, that it seems almost so