r of Brittany, was the scene of the
magnificent entertainment offered Caesar Borgia in 1497. Afterwards it
became the residence of Marie de Medicis; later, a monastic
establishment, then a seminary, and lately simply an ordinary private
school. Says one writer, "No wonder its remains should be so scanty and
ill preserved."

[Illustration: _CATHEDRAL of St. PIERRE NANTES_]

VI

ST. PIERRE DE NANTES

As a city of commercial and strategic importance, no one will deny that
Nantes is supreme in the Loire valley; that its relations with the
affairs of Church and State are equally important, is a debatable point.
True, the edict in favour of Protestant worship, fathered by Henry IV.,
was a momentous and significant event; but the revocation, and the
subsequent massacres of the rascally Carrier, well-nigh wiped that out.
The history of the city is one long record of warfare and bloodshed.
Though holding the command of the Loire, the city has ever been more
closely identified with Brittany. Here, in its frowning tenth-century
castle, which fronts upon the river immediately in the foreground of the
Cathedral of St. Pierre, with which it forms an unusual grouping of
ecclesiastical and military architecture (M. H.), lived at one time or
another, most of the Kings of France, from Charles VIII. downward. Here,
too, Anne of Brittany was born, and here she married Charles VIII., thus
uniting the Duchy of Brittany with the crown of France. Her subsequent
marriage, in the chapel of the castle, with Louis XII., made for ever
impossible the future independence of the city.

Following the edict came the Revolution; and, as if the preliminary
horrors of massacres and atrocities, which spread to Orange in Vaucluse
and to Arras in Picardy, were not of sufficient stringency, the
"Noyades," or drownings, carried off the poor unfortunates, a boatload
at a time, until it is estimated that perhaps nine thousand were thus
cruelly murdered,--women, children, royalty, and the clergy alike. The
wrath which spent itself seemed to know no rank. The guillotine,
disease, and famine finished the work, so that the population of the
city was, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, immeasurably
inferior in numbers to what it had been a decade before. The details of
these significant events are recounted quite fully enough by historians
generally; but, in reality, it has little to do with the aspect of the
city as it exists to-day, which, if