Of this celebrated Abbey, where several royal persons stayed: _Mary Stuart_ twice, in her childhood and after she was widowed; _Henry IV._, on a visit to his cousin, the Abbess Renée II.; _Anne of Austria_, of whom the _Congrégation_ library contains a portrait; there remains hardly anything but two 16th century _pavillons_ belonging to the period when Renée de Lorraine, sister of the Queen of Scotland and aunt of Mary Stuart, was abbess of the convent. Built of stone and brick with marble incrustations, and adorned with beautiful carvings, these _pavillons_ were pure Renaissance in style. The head of an angel with unfolded wings and the head of a grinning demon surmounted the two windows of one of the ground-floors. On the first floor of the same _pavillon_ the window, framed with delicate ornaments, opened above a cornice, the principal sculptural subject of which was a nude woman, helmeted, suckling two children. [Illustration: RUINS OF THE ABBEY OF ST. PIERRE-LES-DAMES, _8, Rue St. Pierre-les-Dames_.] _The Rue St. Pierre-les-Dames leads to the Rue des Murs, into which turn to the right, then to the left into the Rue du Barbâtre. Follow the latter to the end._ This street suffered greatly from the early bombardments, and was almost entirely destroyed in the summer of 1918. _At Nos. 137 and 139, at the corner of the Rue Montlaurent_, are the ruins of the =Hôtel Féret de Montlaurent=. =Hôtel Féret de Montlaurent.= [Illustration: GALLERY FACING THE COURTYARD OF THE HÔTEL FÉRET DE MONTLAURENT _The statues in the niches represent the sun and planets._] This large building, occupied by the _Cercle Catholique_, was commenced about 1540 by Hubert Féret, a _Lieutenant_ of the people, and the most celebrated member of a family which played an important part at Rheims in the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries. The outside façade has been greatly altered. At No. 137 it was entirely rebuilt under Louis XVI. At No. 139 the ground-floor openings have been modified. As in many of the mansions of the 16th century, most of the decoration is on the inner façades. Inside the courtyard, on the ground-floor of the wing abutting on the Rue Montlaurent, there is a six-arched gallery which was damaged but not destroyed (_photo,_ p. 99). Between the arch-centres and at the ends of the gallery are seven niches, three feet high, enclosing stone statues of the sun and the six planets known in the 16th century.