the
French Kings. For although the Popes were under "the special protection"
of the Kings, it was as sheep under the special protection of a shearer,
and they found that they must protect themselves against a too "special"
and royal fleecing. For they did not always agree that--

"'Tis as goodly a match as match can be
To marry the Church and the fleur-de-lis
Should either mate a-straying go,
Then each--too late--will own 'twas so.'"

[Illustration: "THE TOWER OF PHILIP THE FAIR."--VILLENEUVE-LES-AVIGNON.]

Haunted by the humiliation of their heaven-sent power, caged in
"Babylonish captivity," it is conceivable that the Popes were too
occupied or, perhaps too distracted, to object to the unsuitable
modesty of Notre-Dame-des-Doms. When a Pope swept forth from his
Cathedral, new-crowned, to give "urbis et orbi" his first pontifical
benediction, his eye glanced, it is true, on the crowds prostrate before
him, before the church, awed and breathless; but it fell lingeringly--it
was irresistibly drawn--across the swift Rhone to the town of the kings
who had defied his power, to the royal city of Villeneuve, and to the
strong tower of Philip the Fair, standing proudly in the sunlight. Would
it be thought strange if their thoughts wandered, or if the portraits of
the "French Popes" which hang about the Cathedral walls at Avignon,
show more worldly preoccupation than is becoming to the successors of
Saint Peter and Vicars of Christ?

Little indeed in the days of their residency did the Popes add to
Notre-Dame-des-Doms. A fragile, slender marvel of Gothic architecture,
the tomb of John XXII, was placed in the nave before the altar; and a
monument to Benedict XII was raised in the church. But their Holinesses
incited others in Avignon to good works so successfully that Rabelais
laughingly called it the "Ringing city" of churches, convents, and
monasteries. The bells of Saint-Pierre, Saint-Symphorien, Saint-Agricol,
Sainte-Claire, and Saint-Didier chimed with those of chapels and
religious foundations; the Grey Penitents, Black Penitents, and White
Penitents, priests, and nuns walked the streets, and Avignon grew truly
papal. Clement V and his successors proceeded to the safeguarding of
their temporal welfare in truly noble fashion; and scarcely fifty years
later they had become so well pleased with their new residence that the
magnificent Clement VI refused to leave in spite of the supplications of
Petrarch a