To the south of the Cathedral lies what alone would make Poitiers worth a visit, without the other churches which call for notice--the little Temple Saint-Jean, said to be the oldest baptistery in France, and dating probably from the fourth century. Once inside, we can realise the position of the officiating priest and the place occupied by the rooms where the converts disrobed themselves and whence they were conducted to the central basin, fed by a continual stream of water, where stood the bishop, the typical representative of the first Baptist. Freeman says: “It is the one monument of the earliest Christian times which lived on, so to speak, in its own person, and is not simply represented by a later building on the same site. It is the truest monument of Hilary.” The name of Poitiers churches really is legion, but there are two more which should not be passed over--first, Notre-Dame-la-Grande, a beautiful Romanesque church standing in the market-place, with a long barrel-vault roof, unbroken by transepts, and terminated by towers ornamented with “fish-scale” pattern; next the church of Sainte Radégonde, the queen-saint of the sixth century, wife to the first Chlothar. She lived among the nuns of her own foundation of the Sainte Croix, and lies buried in the crypt of her church, which contains also a marble statue, erected indeed to her memory, but in the likeness of another queen who had few pretensions to saintliness--Anne of Austria, mother of Louis XIV. Fortunatus also became a monk of Poitiers, that he might at least have the satisfaction of living near this queen, whom he worshipped. The nuns of Sainte Croix went to England and founded there a sisterhood on the Green Croft near Cambridge, and this priory remained until the end of the fifteenth century, when the foundation was suppressed by Bishop Alcock, and became part of the corporation of Jesus College. [Illustration: POITIERS] It is with a certain feeling of apology toward tradition and childish days that one leaves to the very last the mention of the Black Prince’s great fight. Not until we have reached fairly mature years do we realise that Poitiers has a cathedral and a baptistery and many churches; but there are very few of us who do not associate with the earliest days of history books the name of the “Battle of Poitiers, 1356.” More properly it is the Battle of Maupertuis, and Freeman indeed denies its right to “come into the immediate story of the city.”