A mile down the river lies what is left of St. Florent-les-Saumur[193] re-established by Fulk Nerra when he conquered Saumur in 1026. Its narthex, now the chapel of a nuns' community, shows one of the earliest uses of the Plantagenet vault of eight branches (1170-1200). At St. Florent was living the daughter of the exiled poet-duke of Orléans, with her young husband, the Duke of Alençon, when one day in 1429 word came that at Chinon, near by, where Charles VII was staying, had arrived an inspired maid, and young d'Alençon, soon to be Jeanne d'Arc's lieutenant--her _gentil duc_--galloped along the banks of the Loire to see the wonder. So delighted was he with Jeanne's management of spear and horse that he presented her with a palfrey, and she came to St. Florent-les-Saumur for a four days' visit to his duchess, promising[194] that anxious young wife that she would bring back her husband safe and sound. Fontevrault's abbatial, where culminated the art of the cupola church, is the chief excursion to be made from Saumur. It can be reached by a ten-mile trolley ride. Only three miles from Fontevrault, and a pleasant cross-country walk from it, is the beautiful Plantagenet Gothic church of St. Martin, at Candes,[195] crowned with battlements, on the highland above the confluence of the Vienne and the Loire. In the ancient abbey here St. Martin died as the IV century closed. A chapel to the north of the choir marks the site of his cell, and its window recalls the pious piracy of his loyal parishioners of Tours, who claimed his body for burial, but who, knowing that Candes would not give it up, came by night and stole it away; and quite rightly they had judged, for when, centuries later, the Northmen invasions forced Tours to send its great relic for safe-keeping to Auxerre, it took an army of six thousand men to get it back. The present choir of St. Martin's at Candes was built in the latter half of the XII century (c. 1180). Fifty years later rose the nave, justly considered one of the most brilliant examples of Plantagenet Gothic architecture, its model, not the unaisled cupola-church, but the Romanesque church of Poitou, whose side aisles are so high that their lancets are the only lighting of the edifice. St. Martin's hall-like interior of three spacious aisles is inundated with light. The well-proportioned clustered piers rising from pavement to vault-springing are placed considerably out of alignment, and in a number of other arrangements the architect here followed his personal bent. In the western porch the ribs of several Plantagenet vault sections fall on a central pillar. THE CATHEDRAL AT POITIERS[196] _Vexilla Regis prodeunt_ _Fulget Crucis mysterium_ _Qua vita mortem pertulit_ _Et morte vitam protulit._ Abroad the regal banners fly And bear the mystic Cross on high, That Cross whereon Life suffered Death And gave us Life with Dying breath.