The picture by Th. Maillot is equally wanting in aërial perspective, but instead of an obscuring fog overwhelming the good citizens of Paris who are pouring down the "mountain" with S. Geneviève's _châsse_, a glaring sun cuts out the figures from the background. The scene represents a procession through what is now the market of the Place Maubert. It was the 12th of January, 1496; so says a manuscript in the Bibliothèque Nationale. Rain had been pouring down incessantly for an unnatural period, although there was then no Eiffel tower upon which to lay the blame. What was to be done? Clearly an appeal must be made to the patron Saint, and her intercession supplicated to stay the flood. And so the bishop, the abbot, and the canons regular and secular, trudged barefooted down the _montagne_ bearing the _châsse_ containing the relics of the maid of Nanterre. An account of the event is given in a letter from Erasmus to his friend Nicholas Werner. The sage was ill of a fever at the time, but that did not prevent him from taking part in the procession, and we easily recognise his familiar physiognomy in the foreground of M. Maillot's work. "Il y a trois mois qu'il pleut ici, sans cesse. La Seine étant sortie de son lit, a inondé la campagne et la ville. La châsse de Sainte Geneviève a été descendue et portée en procession à Notre-Dame. L'évêque, accompagné de son clergé et du peuple, est venu au-devant. Dans cette auguste cérémonie, les chanoines réguliers, précédés de leur abbé marchant nu-pieds, conduisaient les reliques et quatre porteurs en chemise étaient chargés de ce précieux fardeau. Depuis ce temps le ciel est si serein qu'il ne peut l'être davantage." The bishop is represented with a gilt mitre, the abbot wears a white one. Behind them are the provosts, the military, the magistrates, the canons, and the people, the procession terminating with the king's drummers and trumpeters. The crowd of people seem to be walking, or rather tripping down a very perpendicular street, to cross a zigzag wooden bridge with no side rails. The horizon is close to the top of the frame, so that the _châsse_ appears to be falling off the shoulders of the men who are carrying it, and the people seem to be stepping down a steep incline. The colour is bright, and the costumes are picturesque, the whole picture having the effect of an early Flemish work, or of a page torn out of an old manuscript; so early is it in style that it is as incongruous in its place as would be a van Eyck, or a van der Weyden. Imagine Raffaello and Michael Angelo decorating S. Peter's after the manner of Giotto, Botticelli, or Ghirlandajo, and you have no greater incongruity than Maillot's fresco in S. Geneviève. Placed in S. Germain l'Auxerrois, or Notre-Dame, the picture would be in keeping with the architecture; in the Panthéon one feels that the decoration preceded the building.