Under the porches before the main entrances of many ancient cathedrals bishops, emperors and honoured citizens were often buried, as the ecclesiastical law in the primitive Church did not allow people to be buried inside the walls of the sacred building. Many important services were held under these porches; prayers for the dead were offered up, ablutions performed by the faithful before entering the church, relics and images were exposed, and litanies chanted. Later it became absolutely necessary to keep them strictly closed on account of the abuse of the shelter of the porch by the erection of market stalls and booths on fair-days under the shadow of the church, and the crowd of buyers and sellers making the air ring with their noisy bargainings. A further development was to make the porch a kind of arcaded _avant-porte_ surmounted by a gable with sculptured features. These decorated canopies were by degrees thrown back into the main wall, became merged into the mouldings of the doorway, and were finally lost as a separate feature in the highly ornamented and deeply splayed portal. Fortunately the ecclesiastical interest of Troyes is not confined to one corner, and the churches of Saint Urbain and the Madeleine lie in one’s path to the market-place along the very picturesque streets of sixteenth-and seventeenth-century houses, which offer every conceivable variation of roof and gable. The beautiful details of the unfinished church of Saint Urbain may well have won for itself the reputation of equalling if not of surpassing anything of its kind either in France or Germany; and although it is still in the hands of the restorer, there is now no scaffolding to prevent one looking in admiration at the graceful choir and transepts. The detached _pignons_ above the chancel window spring from the buttresses clear of the wall, and throw a deep shadow over the upper portion of the windows. This shadow gives an appearance of weight and stability to the building, which is certainly required as an assurance against the result of too daring construction. In the Madeleine, which is not far from Saint Urbain, is a notable rood-screen, full of luxuriant tracery and sculpture of a late Flamboyant period. It attracts attention, not because it fulfils any ceremonial requirements or forms any part of an architectural effect in the interior of the church, but rather on account of its singular appearance of being slung between two pillars. Chapter Seventeen MEAUX, SENLIS, AND BEAUVAIS