I will now turn to the churches of Auvergne. Though numerous, they are so much alike in their character, details, and design, that a description of their peculiarities need not be so long as might be supposed. These churches all lie in a group together, Clermont-Ferrand being their geographical centre,[52] and to its north are Riom, Volvic, Menat, Mozat, and Ennezat; to the east Chauriat; to the west Royat and Orcival; and to the south S. Nectaire, S. Saturnin, and Issoire. Beyond the bounds of the province, at Brioude, at Conques, at Toulouse, and in the church of S. Étienne at Nevers, there are, among many others, examples of precisely the same description of design and construction.[53] It will be well to describe the general type of these churches, and then give a few notes as to particular examples. In plan they consist of a nave and aisles, western narthex and steeple, central dome and steeple, transepts with apsidal chapels on the east, and apsidal choirs with the aisles continued round them, and four or five apsidal chapels round the aisle. Under the choir is sometimes a crypt, in which, in addition to the columns under the columns of the apse, are four shafts which were intended for the support of the altar, and whose presence certainly seems to suggest that it must have been a baldachin and not merely an altar that they were designed to support.[54] The naves are roofed with waggon-vaults, either with or without cross ribs below them. The aisles have quadripartite vaults without ribs, and the triforia above them are roofed with a continuous half barrel-vault, which resists the thrust of the vault of the nave, and is, in truth, a continuous flying buttress. The triforia galleries are lighted with small windows, and this, the only light analogous to a clerestory, being entirely inadequate, the effect of the nave roof is generally very gloomy. The transepts are vaulted with barrel-vaults like the nave, and in one or two instances are divided in height by a sort of tribune level with the triforium. At Brioude, where this arrangement is seen, there is an original thirteenth-century open fireplace in the tribune, and M. Mérimée ingeniously suggests that the noble canons of Brioude, for they all had the rank of Count, were in the habit of hearing mass before a good fire; but it is fair to them to say that the fireplace is in the east wall, and that I saw no signs of an altar near it. The crossing under the tower is generally roofed either with an octagonal vault or with a circular dome with an opening in the centre. To resist the thrust of this dome on the north and south sides the upper vaults of the triforia are continued on between the transepts and the crossing, or else vaults of the same section are introduced at a higher level, where the central dome is raised (as it often is) higher than the barrel-roof of the nave. The western steeple, as well as the centre lantern, was sometimes domed; and that at Brioude is a