rude, in spite of
their having been baked through by the centuries, only because, although
certain rude arches and carvings are let into them and they are
surmounted at either end with a small gable, they have (so far as I can
remember) little fascination of surface. Notre Dame is still expressive,
still pretends to be alive; but the temple has delivered its message and
is completely at rest. It retains a kind of atrium, on the level of the
street, from which you descend to the original floor, now uncovered, but
buried for years under a false bottom. A semicircular apse was,
apparently at the time of its conversion into a church, thrown out from
the east wall. In the middle is the cavity of the old baptismal font.
The walls and vaults are covered with traces of extremely archaic
frescoes, attributed, I believe, to the twelfth century. These vague,
gaunt, staring fragments of figures are, to a certain extent, a reminder
of some of the early Christian churches in Rome; they even faintly
recalled to me the great mosaics of Ravenna. The Temple de Saint-Jean
has neither the antiquity nor the completeness of those extraordinary
monuments, nearly the most impressive in Europe; but, as one may say, it
is very well for Poitiers.

Not far from it, in a lonely corner which was animated for the moment by
the vociferations of several old women who were selling tapers,
presumably for the occasion of a particular devotion, is the graceful
romanesque church erected in the twelfth century to Saint Radegonde--a
lady who found means to be a saint even in the capacity of a
Merovingian queen. It bears a general resemblance to Notre Dame la
Grande, and, as I remember it, is corrugated in somewhat the same manner
with porous-looking carvings; but I confess that what I chiefly
recollect is the row of old women sitting in front of it, each with a
tray of waxen tapers in her lap, and upbraiding me for my neglect of the
opportunity to offer such a tribute to the saint. I know not whether
this privilege is occasional or constant; within the church there was no
appearance of a festival, and I see that the name-day of Saint Radegonde
occurs in August, so that the importunate old women sit there always
perhaps and deprive of its propriety the epithet I just applied to this
provincial corner. In spite of the old women, however, I suspect that
the place is lonely; and indeed it is perhaps the old women who have
made the desolation.

The lion of Poiti