Among the first of Gallo-Roman cities, she was also among the first to suffer. Chrocus and his horde who sacked Orange, seized her Bishop and murdered him; and Alains, Vandals, and Burgundians, following in their wake, brought disaster after disaster to the cities lying near the Rhone. Vaison, by miracle, did not lose her prestige. In the X and XI centuries she built her fine Cathedral with its Cloisters, and in 1179 she was still great enough to excite the covetousness of Raymond VI, Count of Toulouse. This magnificent and ambitious prince built a castle on a height above the city, and as he had before terrorised my Lord Bishop of Carpentras, so now he seized the anointed person of Berenger de Reilhane, who was not only Vaison's Bishop, but her temporal prince as well. Berenger was a sufficiently powerful personage to make an outcry which re-echoed throughout Christendom; the Pope and the Emperor came to his aid; and in the Abbey Church of Saint-Gilles-du-Gard, Raymond VI did solemn penance, and, before receiving absolution, was publicly struck by the Papal Legate with a bundle of birch rods. Above the Bishop's Palace the great castle still loomed in menace, but on that day Berenger de Reilhane triumphed and Vaison was at peace. It was a peace which presaged her quiet, uneventful downfall. For other interests were growing stronger in the country, other cities grew where she stood still, and in the XIV century, when Avignon became the seat of papal power, Vaison had passed from the world's history. Her Bishopric endured till 1801, but her doings are worthy only of provincial chronicles and to-day she is but a little country town, served by the stage-coach. She still lies on both banks of the river; the "high city," with long rows of deserted houses, climbs the side of the steep hill and is dominated by the ruins of the great castle, which Richelieu destroyed. The "lower city," which is the busier of the two, lies on the opposite bank; and on its outskirts, in a little garden-close, almost surrounded by the fields, is the Cathedral,--solitary, lonely, and old. [Illustration: "THE WHOLE APSE-END."--VAISON.] [Illustration: "THE SOUTH WALL WHICH IS CLEARLY SEEN FROM THE ROAD."--VAISON.]