Carpentras lies to the east of Orange and Avignon, about fifteen miles from either place. In the old days the dusty mud-stained diligences plied from Avignon to Carpentras, but to-day the cross-country motor-bus has found in Provence a hearty welcome and plenty of passengers, and the ancient relationship between the two towns is more closely knit together. Carpentras is no longer the important town it was before the Revolution. From being a Roman town of great consequence, “Carpentorate,” it grew during the Middle Ages to become the capital of the Papal province, the “Comtat Venaissin.” When Pope Clement V., by the orders of Philip the Fair, removed his Papal See from Rome, his time was divided between Carpentras and Avignon, and it was in the former town that he breathed his last. In 1305, when Clement took up his temporary abode in Carpentras, it was strongly fortified with machicolated battlements, towers and gateways, and all the other accessories of a mediæval town. Churches had been established for ages, the oldest one, St. Siffrein, dating from the sixth century. The present Cathedral of that name is the fifth building that has been erected upon the same site: the first having been built in the sixth century, the second in the eighth or ninth, the third in the tenth, and the fourth at the end of the thirteenth century. Nothing remains of the two earliest, although some parts of the third building were incorporated in the fourth. The present church was built by the anti-pope Benedict XIII., who at the period of the schism had a large following among the clergy of France. He thought to establish himself and the Papacy in Carpentras, having previously been kept a prisoner at Avignon by the factions who refused to acknowledge his papal authority. He was, however, only successful in retaining the loyalty of a portion of the French Church and nobility, for a few years later, in 1409, the General Council of Cardinals met at Pisa, together with the influential envoys of France and England, and the two rival Popes, Benedict XIII. and Gregory XII., were both tried and deposed for contumacy and the violation of their solemn engagements. But for this Carpentras might have been a second Avignon. [Illustration: CATHEDRAL OF S^{T} SIFFREIN CARPENTRAS]