Haunted by the humiliation of their heaven-sent power, caged in "Babylonish captivity," it is conceivable that the Popes were too occupied or, perhaps too distracted, to object to the unsuitable modesty of Notre-Dame-des-Doms. When a Pope swept forth from his Cathedral, new-crowned, to give "urbis et orbi" his first pontifical benediction, his eye glanced, it is true, on the crowds prostrate before him, before the church, awed and breathless; but it fell lingeringly--it was irresistibly drawn--across the swift Rhone to the town of the kings who had defied his power, to the royal city of Villeneuve, and to the strong tower of Philip the Fair, standing proudly in the sunlight. Would it be thought strange if their thoughts wandered, or if the portraits of the "French Popes" which hang about the Cathedral walls at Avignon, show more worldly preoccupation than is becoming to the successors of Saint Peter and Vicars of Christ? Little indeed in the days of their residency did the Popes add to Notre-Dame-des-Doms. A fragile, slender marvel of Gothic architecture, the tomb of John XXII, was placed in the nave before the altar; and a monument to Benedict XII was raised in the church. But their Holinesses incited others in Avignon to good works so successfully that Rabelais laughingly called it the "Ringing city" of churches, convents, and monasteries. The bells of Saint-Pierre, Saint-Symphorien, Saint-Agricol, Sainte-Claire, and Saint-Didier chimed with those of chapels and religious foundations; the Grey Penitents, Black Penitents, and White Penitents, priests, and nuns walked the streets, and Avignon grew truly papal. Clement V and his successors proceeded to the safeguarding of their temporal welfare in truly noble fashion; and scarcely fifty years later they had become so well pleased with their new residence that the magnificent Clement VI refused to leave in spite of the supplications of Petrarch and Rienzi and a whole deputation of Romans. During the reign of this Pontiff, the Papal Court became one of the gayest in Christendom. Clement was frankly, joyously voluptuous; and his life seems one moving pageant in which luxurious banquets, beautiful women, and ecclesiastical pomps succeeded each other. The lovely Countess of Turenne sold his preferments and benefices, the immense treasure of John XXII was his, and he showered such benefits on a grateful family that of the five Cardinals who accompanied his corpse from Avignon, one was his brother, one his cousin, and three his nephews; and that the Huguenots who violated his tomb at La-Chaise-Dieu, should have used his skull as a wine-cup, seems an horrible, but not an unfitting mockery. It was in vain that Petrarch hotly wrote, "the Pope keeps the Church of Jesus Christ in shameful exile." The desire for return to Rome had passed.