Save Notre Dame des Marais and the hospital, it has no buildings of note, but Notre Dame des Marais makes up for a multitude of architectural deficiencies. It is an irregular fifteenth-century Gothic church whose unbalanced façade is enriched with an absolute riot of exquisite carvings. Every ogive is latticed with trefoils and flowing tracery, every niche is peopled, every line breaks into tendrils, everywhere is the thistle in honor of the house of Bourbon, everywhere are saints and angels, devils and monsters. A hundred years ago Villefranche must have been more interesting than it is now. Certainly it was more picturesque; for its towers and crenellated walls were still standing, and at either extremity of its chief thoroughfare were massive gates, doubled with iron. Its picturesqueness interfered somewhat with its comfort and sanitary condition in Madame Roland’s eyes. She detested particularly its flat roofs, its little streets, with their surface sewers. In its organization it was much more complicated than to-day, and it possessed at least one institution, since disappeared, which placed it among the leading French towns of the period, that is, an academy, one of the oldest in the realm. The household which the Rolands entered at Villefranche was made up of Madame de la Platière, Roland’s mother, and an older brother, a priest of the town. The latter is a pleasant example of the eighteenth-century curé, half man of pleasure, half priest, spirited and versatile in conversation, something of a diplomat, faithful to his dogmas and duties, _bon enfant_ in morals, but in questions of politics and religion, domineering and prejudiced. The _chanoine_ Roland occupied an excellent position at Villefranche. He was one of the three dignitaries of Notre Dame des Marais; he was the spiritual adviser of the sisters at the hospital, and he had been for over thirty years an Academician. With these offices, his family, and his agreeableness, he was of course received by all the families of the town and country worth knowing.