The arches outside prove nothing, for they do not date farther back than the middle of the seventeenth century. If this leaning had been the result of sinking foundations, the vaulting would have cracked, and the pillars would have been broken to pieces. But the present Gothic vaulting is not so old as the walls; it was added in 1485-1504, when Gomez Gonzalez was its prior, as the inscription and coat of arms near the keystone of the arch next to the _Capilla Mayor_ testify. Is it likely that any architect would have added such vaulting had the walls really been falling? Besides, in none of the manuscripts preserved for so many centuries in the archives of the _Colegiata_ is there any mention of this extraordinary inclination nor of any catastrophe connected with it. This silence favours the belief that the whole thing is intentional, and a feat of architectural skill. Then, too, if the sinking had been accidental, the inclination of the walls and pillars would have been inwards, not, as is the case, outwards. So much for the accepted theory. The word “bandy-legged” is not, admittedly, an architectural term, yet it is the most appropriate epithet I can find to bring before my readers the peculiar inward inclination of the piers and walls of this church. The man who fetched the keys and showed me round may have been an ignorant fellow, but he at least saw no mystery about the structure of his parish church: he pointed out to me that the river Sar not only ran very close to the edifice, but filtered into the ground beneath it. The wooden floor which I beheld was six feet higher than the original floor; it had been raised on account of the water, and completely hid the bases of the piers. Had the whole depth of the pillars been visible, their inclination, or, rather, the bow in their legs, would have been much more striking even than it is at present. “The foundations could be drained,” said the man, “but it would cost lots of money”; and so saying, he opened a trap door in the central nave and let me look down. It was like the dungeon floor in the Doge’s Palace at Venice. “You see, with all that water, it’s quite natural that the building should get shunted a bit,” he continued.