It is a city of enthusiastic demonstrations. It was so in 1814 for the Bourbons, and again a year later for the emperor on his return from Elba. In 1857 it again surpassed itself in its enthusiasm for Louis Napoleon, when he was received in the cathedral, under a lofty dais, and led to the altar with the cry of "_Vive l'empereur_;" while during the bloody Franco-Prussian war it was the seat of the provisional government of Thiers. Here the Gothic wave of the North has produced in the cathedral of St. André a remarkably impressive and unexpected example of the style. In the general effect of size alone it will rank with many more important and more beautiful churches elsewhere. Its total length of over four hundred and fifty feet ranks it among the longest in France, and its vast nave, with a span of sixty feet, aisleless though it be, gives a still further expression of grandeur and magnificence. It is known that three former cathedrals were successfully destroyed by invading Goths, Saracens, and warlike Normans. Yet another structure was built in the eleventh century, which, with the advent of the English in Guienne, in the century following, was enlarged and magnified into somewhat of an approach to the present magnificent dimensions, though no English influence prevailed toward erecting a central tower, as might have been anticipated. Instead we have two exceedingly graceful and lofty spired towers flanking the north transept, and yet another single tower, lacking its spire, on the south. The portal of the north transept--of the fourteenth century--is an elaborate work of itself. It is divided into two bays that join beneath a dais, on which is a statue of Bertrand de Goth, who was Pope in 1305, under the name of Clement V. He is here clothed in sacerdotal habits, and stands upright in the attitude of benediction. At the lower right-hand side are statues of six bishops, but, like that of Pope Clement, they do not form a part of the constructive elements of the portal, as did most work of a like nature in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, but are made use of singly as a decorative motive. The spring of the arch which surrounds the tympanum is composed of a cordon of foliaged stone separating the six angels of the _première archivolte_ from the twelve apostles of the second, and the fourteen patriarchs and prophets of the third. In the tympanum are three _bas-reliefs_ superimposed one upon the other, the upper being naturally the smaller. They represent the Christ triumphant, seated on a dais between two angels, one bearing a staff and the other a veil, while above hover two other angelic figures holding respectively the moon and sun. The arrangement is not so elaborate or gracefully executed as many, but in its simple and expressive symbolism, in spite of the fact that the whole added ornament appears an afterthought, is far more convincing than many more pretentious works of a similar nature.