und the aisles of nave and choir is a curiously suggested arcade with
an overhanging balustrade ornamented with a series of indifferently
sculptured heads. The bosses of many of the intersecting groins of the
vaults are coloured with questionable effect. There are also many
visible evidences of coloured wall decorations, which might perhaps as
well have been left covered, inasmuch as they have suffered exceedingly
in the attempted restoration; so much so, that it is impossible to say
whether they ever approached acceptable perfection; possibly not, as
they are supposed to date only from the period when much of this class
of work was of none too good a quality.

The triforium of the nave is gracefully balustraded, and the choir
stands apart from the nave, separated by an elaborate eighteenth century
iron _grille_. The ambulatory of the choir sets three steps lower than
the nave, though the platform is on the same level. The crypt beneath
the choir, so often the only existing remains of an earlier church, is
here grandly in evidence, and dates from the eleventh century at least.

There are a few interesting tombs of former Bishops of Auxerre and
others of local celebrity.

On the whole the charm of Auxerre and its cathedral must be admitted to
lie in its general surroundings and immediate environment, quite as much
as because of any remarkably distinctive features of a superlative
quality in the cathedral itself, though an undeniable wealth of
picturesque detail exists.

The conventional guides speak of it as "highly interesting," and so it
is, with its Romanesque remains, its ungainly facade, its three fine but
weather-worn doorways, and its charming river view.

Beside the cathedral stands the old-time Episcopal Palace with its fine
arcaded Romanesque gallery overlooking the river, where the prelates
took their "constitutionals," safely guarded from wind and weather.
To-day this grand building represents the officialdom of the local
Prefecture.

Two other noble ecclesiastical monuments are to be seen here, the Church
of St. Germain, or rather, the fragment which was spared by the
Huguenots, now being used as an adjunct to a hospital; and the Church of
St. Pierre. The latter is the most appalling example of a Renaissance
building which one is likely to meet with, and shows in its remarkable
facade, in sheer perversion of misdirected labour, the grossness of
pseudo-classicism, which quite entitles it to rank with th