ready; prepare, then, to let the smoke of the incense rise in their honour, and to render to the divinity the rights which are his due." Symphorien replied: [Illustration: FONTAINE ST LAZARE--AUTUN _Facing page 50_] "The judge in whom is vested the public authority should not accompany his sentence with vain and useless words. If it be perilous not to make every day further progress in the way of perfection, how much more so to wander from the straight path and to risk foundering upon the reefs of sin?" Again the magistrate spoke: "Sacrifice to the gods, that you may enjoy the honour granted by the prince to those who serve him." Symphorien replied in the same strain. "A judge degrades his authority when he thus publicly puts a price upon the observance of the law. He does irreparable wrong to his soul, and shames his good name for ever." Finally, the official, irritated, cut short Symphorien's discourse, with the following sentence:--"That Symphorien, guilty of public crime, in having committed sacrilege by refusing to sacrifice to the gods, and seeking to profane our holy altars, should be struck by the avenging sword, that the dread effects of his crime may be cancelled, and the law, human and divine, satisfied." In Ingres' picture, Symphorien is on his way to execution outside the town walls, while, from the rampart, his mother is addressing to him her last words of farewell and encouragement. He was decapitated by the executioner, and his body buried at night near a fountain "extra publicum campum," probably one of the vast burial places on the road to Langres and Besançon.[60] Here we leave the cathedral of Autun, comforting ourselves with the assurance that, though we pass no more beneath its magnificent porch, we shall meet sister churches, not less beautiful, in other ancient towns of Burgundy. Meanwhile, before descending the steep old street that leads downwards, by the Hotel Rolin, to the centre of modern Autun, wander awhile through the narrow ways of the cathedral precincts, where still, as of old, the priests, living relics of a shadowy past, muttering into their breviaries, pace up and down before many a curious Gothic building. In the sixteenth century--1543, to be precise--the chapter of the cathedral commissioned an architect unknown, who may possibly have been Jean Goujon, to erect a fountain which was placed, at first, near the corner of the Place St. Louis and the Place des Terraces.