S. Séverin was probably buried near the oratory, and what would be more natural than that the disciple should consecrate the spot to the memory of his master? In 1050 Henri I. gave the patronage, which had been up to his reign in the hands of the kings, to the then Bishop of Paris, Imbert. At the end of the 11th century, it became an enormous parish, extending almost over the whole of the southern part of the city. It is now the centre of the Italian legion, models, organ-grinders, white-mice men, and plaster-image vendors; and it is a pretty sight on Sundays and _fête_ days to see the church packed with emigrants from the sunny South decked out in all the splendour of their holiday attire. How a group of people can alter the whole aspect of a building, was once demonstrated to me in S. Paul's cathedral. Walking down that dismal and gloomy nave upon an afternoon to which the same adjectives might be appropriately applied, it seemed suddenly to become bright and light by the entrance of a group of three or four Italian women with their children, dressed in the familiar, and upon any other human beings, hideously crude violet, emerald-green, and raw-blue coloured garments; colours which are totally wanting in beauty and harmony of themselves, but allied to the snow-white chemises and trimmed with gold braid, and partially covered with silver ornaments, they seemed to drop into harmony with the church, and to completely change the general appearance of the melancholy background, as even a ray of sunshine fails to do completely. S. Paul's is so essentially Italian that its usual congregations, clad in blacks and browns, form an utterly inharmonious foreground to the architecture, and give one the idea that the building is _dépaysé_.