The façade has undergone some breaking-out and stopping-up of windows during the past decade; for what purpose it is hard to realize, as the effect is neither enhanced nor the reverse. A gaunt supporting buttress, or what not, flanks the tower on the south and adds, yet further, to the incongruity of the _ensemble_. In fine, its decorations are a curious mixture of a more or less pure round-headed Roman style of window and doorway, with later Renaissance and pseudo-classical interpolations. With the interior the edifice takes on more of an interesting character, though even here it is not remarkable as to beauty or grace. The nave is broad, aisleless, and bare, but presents an air of grandeur which is perhaps not otherwise justified; an effect which is doubtless wholly produced by a certain cheerfulness of aspect, which comes from the fact that it has been restored--or at least thoroughly furbished up--in recent times. The large Roman nave, erected, it has been said, from the remains of a former temple of Augustus, has small chapels, without windows, beyond its pillars in place of the usual side aisles. Above is a fine gallery or _tribune_, which also surrounds the choir. The modern mural paintings--the product of the Restoration period--give an air of splendour and elegance, after the manner of the Italian churches, to an appreciably greater extent than is commonly seen in France. In the third chapel on the left is an altar-table made of an early Christian sarcophagus; a questionable practice perhaps, but forming an otherwise beautiful, though crude, accessory. [Illustration] XV ST. THÉODORIT D'UZÈS The ancient diocese of Uzès formerly included that region lying between the Ardèche, the Rhône, and the Gardon, its length and breadth being perhaps equal--fourteen ancient leagues. As a bishopric, it endured from the middle of the fifth century nearly to the beginning of the nineteenth. In ancient Gallic records its cathedral was reckoned as some miles from the present site of the town, but as no other remains than those of St. Théodorit are known to-day, it is improbable that any references in mediæval history refer to another structure. This church is now no longer a cathedral, the see having been suppressed in 1790. The bishop here, as at Lodève and Mende, was the count of the town, and the bishop and duke each possessed their castles and had their respective spheres of jurisdiction, which, says an old-time chronicler, "often occasioned many disputes." Obviously! In the sixteenth century most of the inhabitants embraced the Reformation after the example of their bishop, who, with all his chapter, publicly turned Protestant and "sent for a minister to Geneva."