culptured figures, as indeed is the whole west front.
In arrangement, it resembles the frontispieces of certain of the grand
cathedrals, and, though lacking their sculptured ornateness, is
thoroughly satisfying as a decorative frontage. Had it been executed
fifty years later, it would be hard to imagine to what depths its lines
might not have fallen. As it is, the upper ranges of the tower suggest
the thought. The windows of the aisle and of the clerestory of the nave,
when viewed from the exterior, are grandly traceried and gracefully
coupled by a series of light, firm buttresses, which rise, only from the
gables of the lower set, over the low-lying roof to the spring of the
arch of the upper range. St. Pierre de Troyes suggests, in a mild way,
the "sheer glass walls" so frequently referred to by adulous French
critics when chanting the praises of the highly developed lightness of
their indigenous style. This is further accentuated when one notes the
glazed triforium, a decorative feature reminiscent of that at Seez,
Nevers, Tours, and St. Ouen at Rouen.

Troyes is one of those prominent cathedral cities of Catholic France
whereof the churchman deplores the fact that its men are not of the
church-going class, and that its congregations are mostly of the fair
sex. Be this as it may, except in Brittany, where the whole population
appears unusually devout, the stricture is probably true in a great
measure of all of the north of France; and, be it here said, recent
political edicts will doubtless not tend to increase the propaganda of
piety.

The north gable, with its portal and rose window, is of the fifteenth
century, and, with the "lustrous rose" of the south transept, forms a
pair of brilliant jewels which are hardly excelled elsewhere, not even
by the encircled splendour of the forty-foot openings at Reims and
Amiens, the equally extensive one of the north transept at Rouen, or,
most splendid of all, the galaxy at Chartres. These marvels of French
ingenuity and invention are nowhere more splendidly proportioned or
embellished than at Troyes, and are equally attractive viewed from
either within or without.

The chief "_tresor_" consists of a series of wonderful mediaeval
enamels.

[Illustration: CATHEDRAL OF SAINT ETIENNE SENS]

XIV

ST. ETIENNE DE SENS

Says the Abbe Bourasse, "One of the most beautiful titles to glory in a
church is the antiquity of its foundation," hence, most French
antiquaries who