Grégoire de Tours speaks of a monastery of S. Laurence in Paris; and S. Domnole, bishop of Le Mans, who died in 581, had been previously its abbot. This abbey has long since disappeared, and been lost to memory; and the parish, which since the 13th century has taken its place, became a dependency of the priory of S. Martin. The _façade_ of the present building is no older than 1622; the nave and transept were erected in the 16th, the choir and apse in the 15th century. A niche containing a statue of S. John Baptist is commendable, and some of the details of corbels, gargoyles, cornices, and other exterior decoration are quaint and often grotesque: little beasties jumping about in foliage; small children in fool's caps tumbling about in grotesque attitudes; one little imp being whipped by the schoolmaster; Angels with animal continuations; a hunter shooting arrows at a salamander, and divers other monstrosities. The interior is cold and uninteresting, the bosses being the best part of the decoration. They are of all manner of devices: S. Nicholas blessing his children; crowns, garlands, Angels' heads; foliage and draperies, and a mass of ornament and little personages--the Virgin and Child, S. John Baptist with his cross, S. Laurence and his gridiron, the scenes from the Passion, and many other conceits. The apse has been disfigured, after the manner of S. Séverin and S. Germain l'Auxerrois, by Corinthian columns, pilasters, monograms, and trophies--the work of Lepautre. The _jubé_ has gone, and divers other Gothic "excrescences," and the church remains a grand example of the last century barbarism. Well has Victor Hugo described those gentlemen, so-called artists, who fell down and worshipped Fashion, as set by its 18th century votaries: "Les modes ont fait plus de mal que les révolutions. Elles ont tranché dans le vif, elles ont attaqué la charpente osseuse de l'art; elles ont coupé, taillé, désorganisé l'édifice, dans la forme comme dans le symbole, dans sa logique comme dans sa beauté. Et puis, elles ont refait; prétention que n'avaient eue, du moins, ni le temps, ni les révolutions. Elles ont effrontément ajusté, de par _le bon goût_, sur les blessures de l'architecture Gothique leurs misérables colifichets d'un jour, leurs rubans de marbre, leurs pompons de métal: véritable lèpre d'oves, de volutes, d'entournements, de draperies, de guirlandes, de franges, de flammes, de pierre, de nuages, de bronze, d'amours replets, de chérubins bouffis, qui commence à dévorer la face de l'art dans l'oratoire de Catherine de Médicis, et le fait expirer, deux siècles après, tourmenté et grimaçant, dans le boudoir de la Dubarry." SAINT-LEU-SAINT-GILLES.