+THE FLAMBOYANT STYLE.+ The geometric treatment of the tracery and the minute and profuse decoration of this period gradually merged into the fantastic and unrestrained extravagances of the +Flamboyant+ style, which prevailed until the advent of the Renaissance--say 1525. The continuous logical development of forms ceased, and in its place caprice and display controlled the arts of design. The finest monument of this long period is the fifteenth-century nave and central tower of the church of +St. Ouen+ at Rouen, a parish church of the first rank, begun in 1318, but not finished until 1515. The tracery of the lateral windows is still chiefly geometric, but the western rose window (Fig. 112) and the magnificent central tower or lantern, exhibit in their tracery the florid decoration and wavy, flame-like lines of this style. Slenderness of supports and the suppression of horizontal lines are here carried to an extreme; and the church, in spite of its great elegance of detail, lacks the vital interest and charm of the earlier Gothic churches. The cathedral of Alençon and the church of +St. Maclou+ at Rouen, have portals with unusually elaborate detail of tracery and carving; while the façade of Rouen cathedral (1509) surpasses all other examples in the lace-like minuteness of its open-work and its profusion of ornament. The churches of +St. Jacques+ at Dieppe, and of +St. Wulfrand+ at Abbeville, the façades of Tours and Troyes, are among the masterpieces of the style. The upper part of the façade of Reims (1380-1428) belongs to the transition from the Rayonnant to the Flamboyant. While some works of this period are conspicuous for the richness of their ornamentation, others are noticeably bare and poor in design, like St. Merri and St. Séverin in Paris. +SECULAR AND MONASTIC ARCHITECTURE.+ The building of cathedrals did not absorb all the architectural activity of the French during the Gothic period, nor did it by any means put an end to monastic building. While there are few Gothic cloisters to equal the Romanesque cloisters of Puy-en-Vélay, Montmajour, Elne, and Moissac, many of the abbeys either rebuilt their churches in the Gothic style after 1150, or extended and remodelled their conventual buildings. The cloisters of Fontfroide, Chaise-Dieu, and the Mont St. Michel rival those of Romanesque times, while many new refectories and chapels were built in the same style with the cathedrals. The most complete of these Gothic monastic establishments, that of the +Mont St. Michel+ in Normandy, presented a remarkable aggregation of buildings clustering around the steep isolated rock on which stands the abbey church. This was built in the eleventh century, and the choir and chapels remodelled in the sixteenth. The great refectory and dormitory, the cloisters, lodgings, and chapels, built in several vaulted stories against the cliffs, are admirable examples of the vigorous pointed-arch design of the early thirteenth century.