e cage of a winding staircase which ascends (no great distance) to an
upper gallery, where an old priest, the _chanoine-gardien_ of the
church, was walking to and fro with his breviary. The turret, the
gallery, and even the chanoine-gardien, belonged, that sweet September
morning, to the class of objects that are dear to painters in
water-colours.

[Illustration]

Chapter iii

[Tours: Saint Martin]

I have mentioned the church of Saint Martin, which was for many years
the sacred spot, the shrine of pilgrimage, of Tours. Originally the
simple burial-place of the great apostle who in the fourth century
Christianised Gaul and who, in his day a brilliant missionary and worker
of miracles, is chiefly known to modern fame as the worthy that cut his
cloak in two at the gate of Amiens to share it with a beggar (tradition
fails to say, I believe, what he did with the other half), the abbey of
Saint Martin, through the Middle Ages, waxed rich and powerful, till it
was known at last as one of the most luxurious religious houses in
Christendom, with kings for its titular abbots (who, like Francis I.,
sometimes turned and despoiled it) and a great treasure of precious
things. It passed, however, through many vicissitudes. Pillaged by the
Normans in the ninth century and by the Huguenots in the sixteenth, it
received its death-blow from the Revolution, which must have brought to
bear upon it an energy of destruction proportionate to its mighty bulk.
At the end of the last century a huge group of ruins alone remained, and
what we see to-day may be called the ruin of a ruin. It is difficult to
understand how so vast an edifice can have been so completely
obliterated. Its site is given up to several ugly streets, and a pair of
tall towers, separated by a space which speaks volumes as to the size of
the church and looking across the close-pressed roofs to the happier
spires of the cathedral, preserve for the modern world the memory of a
great fortune, a great abuse, perhaps, and at all events a great
penalty. One may believe that to this day a considerable part of the
foundations of the great abbey is buried in the soil of Tours. The two
surviving towers, which are dissimilar in shape, are enormous; with
those of the cathedral they form the great landmarks of the town. One of
them bears the name of the Tour de l'Horloge; the other, the so-called
Tour Charlemagne, was erected (two centuries after her death) over the
tomb of L