best
towards the close of a quiet afternoon, when the densely decorated
towers, rising above the little Place de l'Archeveche, lift their
curious lanterns into the slanting light and offer a multitudinous perch
to troops of circling pigeons. The whole front, at such a time, has an
appearance of great richness, although the niches which surround the
three high doors (with recesses deep enough for several circles of
sculpture) and indent the four great buttresses that ascend beside the
huge rose-window, carry no figures beneath their little chiselled
canopies. The blast of the great Revolution blew down most of the
statues in France, and the wind has never set very strongly towards
putting them up again. The embossed and crocketed cupolas which crown
the towers of Saint Gatien are not very pure in taste; but, like a good
many impurities, they have a certain character. The interior has a
stately slimness with which no fault is to be found and which in the
choir, rich in early glass and surrounded by a broad passage, becomes
very bold and noble. Its principal treasure perhaps is the charming
little tomb of the two children (who died young) of Charles VIII. and
Anne of Brittany, in white marble embossed with symbolic dolphins and
exquisite arabesques. The little boy and girl lie side by side on a slab
of black marble, and a pair of small kneeling angels, both at their head
and at their feet, watch over them. Nothing could be more elegant than
this monument, which is the work of Michel Colomb, one of the earlier
glories of the French Renaissance; it is really a lesson in good taste.
Originally placed in the great abbey-church of Saint Martin, which was
for so many ages the holy place of Tours, it happily survived the
devastation to which that edifice, already sadly shattered by the wars
of religion and successive profanations, finally succumbed in 1797. In
1815 the tomb found an asylum in a quiet corner of the cathedral.

I ought perhaps to be ashamed to acknowledge that I found the profane
name of Balzac capable of adding an interest even to this venerable
sanctuary. Those who have read the terrible little story of "Le Cure de
Tours" will perhaps remember that, as I have already mentioned, the
simple and childlike old Abbe Birotteau, victim of the infernal
machinations of the Abbe Troubert and Mademoiselle Gamard, had his
quarters in the house of that lady (she had a specialty of letting
lodgings to priests), which stood on