ped the horrors which were spread through the South of
France by the religious wars of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries;
but it was not similarly spared by those of the sixteenth century. The
Huguenots laid siege to the town in 1576, and entered it by the
treasonable help of a woman--the wife of one of the consuls. There was
the usual massacre that followed victory, whether on the side of
Protestants or Catholics, and the people became Calvinists for the
same reason that they had centuries before become English. In less
than fifty years afterwards they were all Catholics again. During this
unsettled period, however, there was great domestic dissension in the
town, owing to the circumstance that many women belonging to the old
Catholic stock had married Protestants who had come into the place. As
they could not agree with their husbands, and as many of these refused
to be converted for their sake (they may have been thankful for an
opportunity of getting rid of them), a refuge called 'L'hospice des
mal-mariees' was built for the unhappy wives. When the need for this
very singular institution no longer existed it was pulled down.

The Church of St. Sauveur, as we see it to-day, is disappointing. It
has been so much rebuilt after different convulsions, and pulled about
when there has been less excuse, that many a church in an obscure
village gives more pleasure as a whole to the eye that seeks unity of
design and inspiration in a work of art. Nevertheless, there are
details here that no archaeologist will despise. In the nave are the
piers and Romanesque capitals of an early, but not the earliest,
church on the spot. They are certainly not later than the twelfth
century. Baptismal fonts, now used as holy-water stoups, are probably
of anterior workmanship. Cut out of solid blocks of stone, their
carving shows all the interlacing lines and exquisite finish of
detail, purely ornamental, that marks the pre-Gothic period in the
South of France, when the artistic spirit of Christianity was still
confined to the close imitation of Roman and Byzantine art.

The Church of Notre Dame du Puy, built upon a height, as the word
_puy_ implies, is likewise interesting only in respect of details,
such as the sculptured archivolts of the portal and the
fourteenth-century rose-window. It, however, contains a very
remarkable example of sixteenth-century wood-carving in its massive
and elaborate reredos, a portion of which, having been de