countenance--indicating that some time has elapsed since it breathed its
last--the hand could not rest in this position. The cenotaph is of black
marble, disfigured by the names of idle visitors who choose to leave such
impertinent memorials behind. The famous GOUJON is supposed to be the
sculptor of the figure, which is painfully clever, but it strikes me as
being too small. At any rate, the arms and body seem to be too strong and
fleshy for the shrunken and death-stricken expression of the countenance.
Above the Seneschal, thus prostrate and lifeless, there is another and a
very clever representation of him, on a smaller scale, on horseback.

On each side of this figure (which has not escaped serious injury) are two
females in white marble; one representing the VIRGIN, and the other DIANE
DE POICTIERS:[52] they are little more than half the size of life. The
whole is in the very best style of the sculpture of the time of Francis I.
These precious specimens of art, as well as several other similar remains,
were carried away during the revolution, to a place of safety. The choir is
spacious, and well adapted to its purposes; but who does not grieve to see
the Archbishop's stall, once the most curious and costly, of the Gothic
order, and executed at the end of the XVth century, transformed into a
stately common-place canopy, supported by columns of chestnut-wood carved
in the Grecian style? The LIBRARY, which used to terminate the north
transept, is--not gone--but transferred. A fanciful stair-case, with an
appropriate inscription,[53] yet attest that it was formerly an appendage
to that part of the edifice.

Before I quit the subject of the cathedral, I must not fail to tell you
something relating to the rites performed therein. Let us quit therefore
the dead for the living. Of course we saw, here, a repetition of the
ceremonies observed at Dieppe; but previously to the feast of the
_Ascension_ we were also present at the confirmation of three hundred boys