At its feet is another slab, the aforementioned door-step, on which, before the papal legate, the remorseful monarch did penance before his later expiation at Canterbury. A little farther on is a small heap consisting of shafts and capitals of columns, a stone sarcophagus and a brass plate stating that they are the "Derniers restes de la cathedrale d'Avranches; commencee vers 1090 et consacree par l'eveque Turgis en 1121." The nave having fallen in, the rest of the edifice had to be taken down in 1799. Because of its picturesque environment and situation, Avranches is perhaps a more than ordinarily attractive setting for a shrine, and it is well worthy of the attention of the passing traveller, in spite of its ancient cathedral being now but a heap of stones. Apart from this it is of little interest, and hence, to most, it will probably remain, in the words of a French traveller, a mere "silhouette in the distance." [Illustration] [Illustration: _CATHEDRAL of S. SAMSON DOL_] X ST. SAMSON, DOL-DE-BRETAGNE The one-time Cathedral of St. Samson, at Dol, is, says an unusually expressive Frenchman, "a grand, noble, and severe church, now widowed of its bishops. Its aspect is desolate and abandoned, as if it were but a ruin _en face sur la grande place_, of itself, but a mere desert of scrub." This is certainly a vivid and forceful description of even a wholly unprepossessing shrine. This St. Samson is not, and due allowance should be made for verbal modelling which, in many cases, is but the mere expression of a mood _pro tempo_. There is, however, somewhat of truth in the description. About the granite walls there is a grimness and gauntness of decay; of changed plans and projects; of devastation; of restoration; and, finally, of what is, apparently, submission to the inevitableness of time. The enormous northwesterly tower is stopped suddenly, with the daylight creeping through its very framework. Its facade is certainly bare of ornament, and gives a thorough illustration of paucity of design as well as of detail. There is, indeed, nothing in the west facade to compel admiration, and yet there is a fascination about it that to some will be irresistible. A sixteenth-century porch, of suggested Burgundian style, forms the main entrance to the church, and is situated midway along the south side. Almost directly opposite, on the north, is the curiously contrasting feature of a crenelated battlement, a reminder of the time when the church was doubtless a temporal as well as a spiritual stronghold. The interior, as the exterior, is gloomy and melancholy. One has only to contemplate the collection of ludicrously slender clustered columns of the nave, bound together with markedly visible iron strands, to realize the real weakness of the means by which the fabric has been kept alive. The nave itself is of true proportions, and, regardless of the severity of its lines, and the ludicrous pillars, is undeniably fine in effect.