period, it possesses in the Tour de
Hasting, named after the Danish pirate (though why seems obscure), which
enfolds the north transept, a work of the best eleventh-century class.
This should place the church, at once, within the scope of the
designation of a "transition" type. In this tower the windows and
pilasters are of the characteristic round variety of the period. The
south porch is the most highly developed feature as to Mediaeval style,
but the attraction lies mainly in its ensembled massiveness, with its
two sturdy towers and a ridiculously spired south _clocher_. Beyond a
certain grimness of fabric the church fails, not a little, to impress
one with even simple grandeur, even when one takes into consideration
the charms of its florid but firmly designed cloister, which, with the
church itself, is classed by the _Departement des Beaux Arts_ as one of
the twenty-three hundred "_Monumentes Historiques_." Nevertheless, the
building proves more than ordinarily gratifying, though by no stretch of
the imagination could it be classed as grand.

Loftiness and grandeur are equally lacking in the interior, and there is
great variation of style with respect to the pillars of nave and choir.
This is also the case with the windows, which play the gamut from the
severe round-headed Romanesque to the latest flamboyant development, a
feature which not only disregards most conventions, but, as every one
will admit, most flagrantly offends, with sad results, against the
general constructive elements. A plain triforium, in the nave, blossoms
out, in the south transept and choir, in no hesitating manner, into
exceeding richness. The choir has an apsidal termination and contains
carved wooden stalls which are classed as work of the mid-seventeenth
century, though appearing much more time-worn.

The really popular attribute of the church lies in the reconstructed
monument to St. Yves, the patron saint of advocates, and commonly
considered the most popular in all the Brittany calendar.

Born near Treguier in 1253, St. Yves' "unheard-of probity and
consideration for the sick and the poor" gained such general respect
that, with his death on the nineteenth of May, 1303, there was
inaugurated a great feast which to-day is yearly celebrated, and all
grieving against a real or fancied wrong have recourse promptly to the
supposedly just favour of this universal patron of the law.

[Illustration: S. BRIEUC]

XIII

ST. BRIEUC