The north portal is richly sculptured; and the choir, with its fifteenth-century ogival chapels, has been rebuilt from the original work of 1285. The interior, since the recently discovered frescoes of the cupolas, presents an exceedingly rich appearance, though there are actually few decorative constructive elements. The apse of the choir is naturally pointed, as its era would indicate, and its chapels are ornamented with frescoes of the time of Louis XII.; neither very good nor very bad, but in no way comparable to the decorations of the cupolas. The only monument of note in the interior is the tomb of Bishop Alain de Solminiac (seventeenth century). The paintings of the choir are supposed to date from 1315, which certainly places them at a very early date. A doorway in the right of the nave gives on the fifteenth-century cloister, which, though fragmentary, must at one time have been a very satisfactory example. The ancient episcopal palace is now the prefecture. The bishop originally bore the provisional title of Count of Cahors, and was entitled to wear a sword and gauntlets, and it is recorded that he was received, upon his accession to the diocese, by the Vicomte de Sessac, who, attired in a grotesque garb, conducted him to his palace amid a ceremony which to-day would be accounted as buffoonery pure and simple. From the accounts of this ceremony, it could not have been very dignified or inspiring. The history of Cahors abounds in romantic incident, and its capture by Henry of Navarre in 1580 was a brilliant exploit. Cahors was the birthplace of one of the French Popes of Avignon, John XXII. (who is buried in Notre Dame des Doms at Avignon). XI ST. CAPRAIS D'AGEN Agen, with Cahors, Tulle, Limoges, Périgueux, Angoulême, and Poitiers, are, in a way, in a class of themselves with respect to their cathedrals. They have not favoured aggrandizement, or even restoration to the extent of mitigating the sentiment which will always surround a really ancient fabric. The cathedral at Bordeaux came strongly under the Gothic spell; so did that at Clermont-Ferrand, and St. Nazaire, in the Cité de Carcassonne. But those before-mentioned did not, to any appreciable extent, come under the influence of the new style affected by the architects of the Isle of France during the times of Philippe-Auguste (d. 1223). At the death of Philippe le Bel (1314), the royal domain was considerably extended, and the cathedrals at Montpellier, Carcassonne, and Narbonne succumbed and took on Gothic features. The diocese of Agen was founded in the fourth century as a suffragan of Bordeaux. Its first bishop was St. Phérade. To-day the diocese is still under the parent jurisdiction of Bordeaux, and the see comprises the department of Lot-et-Garonne. A former cathedral church--St. Etienne--was destroyed at the Revolution. The Romanesque cathedral of St. Caprais dates, as to its apses and transepts, from the eleventh century.