I think you will agree with me that considering its early date (no part probably later than _circa_ A.D. 1150 or 1180), it would be difficult to find a grander or more nervous scheme, or one which, with such small dimensions, conveys nevertheless so great an impression of size and importance. The choir-aisles were altered at various times. That on the south has been rebuilt in second-pointed of poor character, and is now a mere passage-way to the modern sacristy, and that on the north was probably interfered with not very long after its first construction, when the great steeple which now abuts upon it was commenced. M. Mérimée,[37] in his very interesting description of the church, suggests that the base of the tower was originally a baptistery, but I see no reason whatever for this suggestion and it is impossible to doubt, when we carefully examine the whole design, that though the steeple was long in building, the main feature in its design was from the first just what we now see it to be. Moreover, the chapel of S. Jean close by is said to have been the baptistery for the whole city until within the last sixty years. The design of the steeple is very bizarre and unusual. It consists of a long series of no less than nine stages on the exterior, and it diminishes rapidly in diameter, and is, perhaps, on the whole, more curious than pleasing in its outlines. If you look at the ground-plan you will see that its construction is most remarkable. The internal diameter of the tower at the base is twenty-four feet six inches, but this is reduced to only twelve feet by four detached piers, one foot ten and one-half inches square. These piers are carried up from the base to the very summit, detached in the three lower stages, and forming part of the thickness of the wall in the portion above. The highest stage of the steeple, twelve feet in internal and sixteen feet in external diameter, is therefore, as nearly as possible, carried up on these four piers, and the rapid decrease in the external dimensions, from thirty-six feet to sixteen feet, was only rendered possible by this very ingenious mode of construction. So far as I know there is only one other example of the same scheme, viz. in the steeple of the cathedral of S. Étienne at Limoges. Here, however, the base is the only portion remaining of the original work, and the columns are cylindrical in place of being square, but it is evident that the intention was the same as at Le Puy. The steeple at Limoges is probably the first in point of date. M. Viollet-le-Duc dates it at about A.D. 1050, but the Abbé Arbellot, in a learned paper on the cathedral, in the _Bulletin_ of the _Société Archéologique et Historique du Limousin_, maintains that it was certainly built before A.D. 1012, when the Bishop Arnaud de Périgeux, after assisting at the consecration of Bishop Gerald at Poitiers, accompanied him to Limoges, and put the cords of the bells into his hands. The lower part