An utterly uninteresting exterior encloses some good mural paintings by Orsel, Périn, and Roger. The church was completed in 1836 by Lebas, and were the weather always bright, the interior would not fail to impress the visitor; but it is too dark for a Northern clime, and it is therefore difficult fully to appreciate the frescoes. That over the altar is by Picot; the subjects from the life of the Virgin are by Dubois, Langlois, Vinchon, and Hesse; the choir is the work of Delorme; _the Presentation in the Temple_, and _Christ disputing with the Doctors_, are by Heim and Drolling. They are all inspired by a reverent feeling for the subjects, and are resplendent with gold. NOTRE-DAME DES VICTOIRES. Louis XIII. laid the first stone of this church in 1629, and dedicated it to Our Lady of Victory, in memory of the famous battle of La Rochelle. It was part of the convent of barefooted Augustins, who were nicknamed the Little Fathers, by Henri IV., on account of the diminutive stature of some of the friars, and consequently the church was as often called Notre-Dame des Petits Pères as Notre-Dame des Victoires. Pierre Lemut was its original architect; and before it was completed, in 1740, by Cartaud, two other architects, Libéral Bruant and Gabriel Leduc, lent their aid. The cupola is decorated with an Assumption; pictures by Vanloo adorn the choir, and other chapels contain some by Perrault. Those by Vanloo represent the thanksgiving of the King and the Cardinal for the mighty victory aforesaid, the taking of La Rochelle. But the interest of, or the objections to, the church, according to the point of view from which we start, consists in the innumerable _ex-voto_ tablets which cover the walls, and proclaim the answers to prayers by mothers, wives, husbands, sons, fathers, and daughters. They are emblems of the faith which saves. But would not the same earnest prayers, put up on other spots, produce the same results? Is it not a narrow notion that we are more likely to be heard in the Place des Victoires than in the Halles? Such is not the view of the _dévots_ and _dévotes_, as the statue of the Virgin proclaims, for it is hung all over with costly jewels and ornaments; and whatever time of the day we may enter the church, we find it almost filled with troubled souls who come to gain an indulgence at its privileged altars, which are to those of a different sort of mind examples of what to avoid. For those persons having leanings to superstition, let me commend this church as an antidote; to others, it is neither æsthetically interesting nor, from a religious point of view, particularly edifying. To musicians it has one attraction, as being the burial-place of Jean-Baptiste Lulli, the charming fiddler, who died in 1687, and whose bronze statue by Cotton is in the transept. L'ORATOIRE.