North of the Museum loom the massive gloomy towers of the church of St. Sulpice, which contains, among much mediocre painting, a chapel to the right of the entrance adorned by some of Delacroix's finest work. Still further northward is the old abbey church of St. Germain des Prés. But before entering we may cross the Rue de Rennes and visit (No. 50) the picturesque Cour du Dragon, so-called from the eighteenth-century figure of the dragon over the portal. At the end of this curious courtyard, paved as old Paris was paved, with the gutter in the centre of the street, will be seen two interesting old towers enclosing stairways. [Illustration: COUR DU DRAGON.] [Illustration: THE LOUVRE FROM THE SOUTH-EAST.] The grey pile of St. Germain des Prés, the burial-place of the Merovingian kings, once refulgent with gold and colour, has been wholly restored; but on the west porch, over the main entrance, a well-preserved, Romanesque relief of the Last Supper may be noted. The admirable frescoes in the interior by Flandrin are among the noblest achievements of modern French art. Part of the Abbots' Palace of the sixteenth century is left standing in the Rue de l'Abbaye, but of all the fortress-monastery, with its immense domain of lands and cloisters, walls and towers, over which those puissant lords held sway, only a memory remains: the walls were razed in the seventeenth century and replaced by artizans' houses. The Rue du Four recalls the old feudal oven. Lower down the Rue Bonaparte is the little visited but most interesting Ecole des Beaux Arts, once the monastery of the Petits Augustins, now rich in examples of early Renaissance architecture and other artistic treasures. It is a great teaching centre, and trains some fifteen hundred students in sculpture, painting and architecture. Westward of this, the artists' quarter of Paris, is the select and aristocratic, but dull Faubourg St. Germain--the noble Faubourg--where many of the descendants of the noblesse who escaped from the wreck of their order during the Revolution, dwell in petulant isolation and haughty aversion from the Third Republic and all its ways. Further westward are the great hospital and church of the Invalides, with Napoleon's majestic monument, and the military school of the Champ de Mars. * * * * *