On the wall are still to be seen remains of a painting of the Crucifixion, with many prophets and angels, S. Mary and S. John, the sun and moon, etc. In the northern gable of this building is a fine cylindrical chimney, built in alternate courses of dark and light stone, and rising from a fireplace in a chamber over the hall, and of the same date as the hall. M. Viollet-le-Duc gives a drawing of the fireplace, which is of a not uncommon early type, the head projecting considerably on a semicircular plan. At the north end of the _Salle des Morts_ is a passage leading to the cloister, and along the whole northern boundary once stood a vast range of building called the Maîtrise.[40] Nothing now remains of this save its undercroft, which was spanned by bold pointed arches of stone, on which the wooden floor rested. The Maîtrise was pulled down a few years since, and, not long before, a tower close by it, called the tower of S. Mayol, was also destroyed. It is described as an erection of the eleventh century, battlemented, but without machicoulis.[41] It seems to have served as part of the fortification of the church, which was also attended to in an alteration of the building on the west side of the cloister, in the fourteenth century. This building contained, below, a hall on a level with the church, which was the chapel of the Holy Relics; above was the _Salle des États_ of Velay, with a stone barrel-roof, now both thrown into one room. Above these again was an open space under the roof, protected on the side towards the town by a magnificent overhanging battlement and machicolation of the fourteenth century, and quite open on the side towards the cloister save for the stone piers supporting the roof. The machicoulis are some of the finest I have ever seen, and project from the buttresses as well as from the walls. The only access to this stage of the building seems to have been from the roof of the cathedral. Le Puy was, in the first instance, selected as a site for the cathedral because it afforded so secure a refuge from attack, and in later days it seems to have been not less necessary to provide against danger: for among other enemies the Lords of Polignac, whose magnificent castle is visible from the steeple of the cathedral, only some four miles distant, were the most conspicuous as they were also the most powerful. M. Viollet-le-Duc supposes, indeed, that the tower of the cathedral was meant in part for defence; but I see no evidence of this, and possibly he had in his mind the destroyed tower of S. Mayol, which, as well as the double wall of enceinte which formerly surrounded the whole cathedral, was no doubt a purely military construction. Fortified churches are by no means uncommon in this part of France. At Brioude is a painting showing the church entirely surrounded by a crenellated and turreted wall in A.D. 1636; and Royat, near Clermont, and the abbey church of Menat, also in Auvergne, still retains provisions for defence.