In connection with the procession referred to we must mention the _Tour de Ville_, as it is called, or _La Chandelle du Tour_, or _Le Tour de cire_. This was a huge yellow wax candle, rolled on a wooden cylinder, and weighing as much as 220 pounds. ‘From time immemorial,’ the archives record, ‘the town of Chartres has been wont to maintain this candle before the Black Virgin of the pillar in front of the jubé. It was instituted originally by the community of the said town as an oblation for the safety of the town, and was to burn before the said image.’ Every day a piece was cut off and burnt on the town candlestick. For many years the _Tour de la Ville_ was presented at one or other of the Church festivals indifferently, very often on the 17th of October, the Feast of the Dedication of the Cathedral. But in the seventeenth century it was decided that the presentation should take place on the 15th of March, the anniversary of the deliverance of the town from the siege of the Huguenots. The ceremony was very popular. All the officials of the town attended. Before the procession started the Mayor (for he had come into existence by that time), or, occasionally, some great man who happened to be the guest of the town at the time, lit the first candle before the shrine of the Black Virgin. Thereafter the _Tour de Ville_ was carried in the procession to the breach. This custom lasted on to the days of the Revolution. You can imagine the procession winding its way from the Cathedral down the steep curves of the Rue Muret towards the Place Drouaise and the Pont Neuf where once was the Porte Drouaise. Those who took part in it would pause, perhaps, and read the inscription let into the ramparts and engraved on two stones six feet long by three high which recorded the events of the siege in the Latin tongue for the instruction and example of posterity. One of the stones is, I gather, still preserved in the garden belonging to Madame Tillionbois de Valeuil and may be seen from the Pont Neuf. Pursuing their way up the Rue de la Brèche, the procession would next arrive at the Chapel of Notre-Dame-de-la-Brèche on their left. Let the reader enter this tiny chapel, after noticing the arms sculptured above the window, and he will find himself face to face with a statue of the Virgin which rests on the keystone of the old chapel erected in 1599 in memory of this event, and near the site of the famous breach.