I have written that the people of Nogent-les-Vierges were not barbarians, but I am on the point of taking it back, when I think of a sort of panoramic Calvary which they have installed in their beautiful church. Let them look at this picture which might seem beautiful to a Kanaka: then let them look at the two beautiful bas-reliefs of the fifteenth century which are placed at the extremity of the nave, and let them blush! A little farther on, the church of Villers-Saint-Paul also possesses a Romanesque nave on low, squat pillars, and a Gothic choir whose columns expand into wide branches of stone. This choir is square, like that of Nogent-les-Vierges. The two villages are only a league apart; without doubt only a few years separated the two buildings, yet it will always be impossible for us to confound these two churches in our memory! Rieux also had its Romanesque nave and its Gothic choir. The nave has been made into a schoolhouse. As to the choir, it is being restored, but the orientation of the altar is being changed in the process, so that the width of the choir becomes the length of the church. And they are executing this lovely transformation without any thought of the ancient plans, or any more respect for the wishes of the dead who, buried under the pavement of the sanctuary, will no longer occupy the position with respect to the altar in which they had wished to rest forever. On the left bank of the Oise, Pont-Sainte Maxence: a pointed-arched church of the Renaissance, heavy, massive. This type of architecture, which has produced so many elegant works in Normandy, has been less happy in the Isle of France. Pontpoint: a Romanesque nave, a pointed choir, at the end of which they have preserved an old apse of the eleventh century, and these patchings are delightful! We salute at the portal of the church of Yerberie an adorable statue of the Virgin. We cross back to the right bank of the Oise to admire the stone steeple of Venette, pleasingly planted on the pedestal of a Romanesque tower: we reach Compiègne. ***** [Illustration: 0195] Compiègne has a beautiful château which everybody knows, and Compiègne is a charming town which many sojourners do not know. More than one traveler has gone through it without ever having seen the chapel of the ancient Hôtel-Dieu, whose grand reredos of carved wood is one of the most brilliant masterpieces of the French sculpture of the seventeenth century.