One of Mignard’s two canvases represents St. Martha attending on our Saviour. It is significant of the high repute in which the religious legends of Provence were held, and the wealth of the Church at the period, that such popular painters of the eighteenth century could be commissioned to execute pictures recording them. There is a small picture by Vanloo, “The Death of St. Francis d’Assisi,” in one of the side-chapels; a very beautiful rendering of a religious subject that is worth, [Illustration: A STREET IN TARASCON.] from an artist’s standpoint, miles of the larger canvases that cover the main walls. An old altar-piece in another of the shallow side-chapels is a fine piece of sixteenth-century decorative painting. Enclosed in a cheap-looking painted cupboard that stands in the sacristy is the reliquary that holds a “veritable” portion of St. Martha’s skull. This reliquary is not ancient, but is a reproduction of an original that was presented to the Church by Louis XI. in 1478, and which, in the unhappy starvation times of the great Revolution, was sent to the Genoese merchants by the revolutionaries in exchange for wheat to the value of £4,000. It was a great loss to the Church in more ways than one, for in the head of the bust were placed the frontal bones of the patron Saint of Tarascon. This bust was of solid gold, and round it were beautiful little enamels which pictured the life of St. Martha; an exquisite statue of King Louis XI. represented him kneeling in adoration at the base of the bust. The reproduction is in gilt, and contains a portion of the base of the Saint’s skull tied with a piece of pink ribbon. The tomb in the crypt had of course to be opened to obtain these. Beautiful as the reproduction is, and veritable as is the relic it contains, it is doubtful if the pious Tarasconaises are reconciled to the loss of the most precious ornaments that the town possessed. Down in the dark, damp crypt of the Church, lit only by the entrance, lies a tomb of real dignity and beauty. This crypt is a part of the older church of the twelfth century, and is without any particular grace or beauty, acting as a foil to the monument it enshrines. This representation in marble of the entombment of St. Martha is of real merit. The recumbent figure of the Saint lies in a peaceful repose that is nobly expressed. A figure of Christ supports the head, and one of St. Fronto the feet. The anachronism of associating St. Fronto, who was a Bishop of Périgueux in the fourth century, with an event that presumably took place in the first, does not seem to have troubled the author of this tomb. But in a land of Romance one should close one’s eyes to such unromantic things as dates, and accept without question the stories woven by a clergy that seem to have been largely endowed by the same spirit that inspired the Troubadours of their sunny land. LES BAUX IV LES BAUX