About the altar are numerous cannon-balls of stone which are relics of the siege. Entering the large annex on the right the visitor will now perceive a still more curious relic of the siege--the fourteenth or fifteenth-century statue of Notre-Dame-de-la-Brèche, whose name was graven on the keystone above mentioned. And if he inquire how that name was earned he will be told that this is the very statue which was set over the Porte Drouaise and, by a miraculous intervention, saved the town. For the contemporary chronicler Duparc informs us that ‘For all that the chiefs of the Huguenot army were esteemed the greatest soldiers in Europe, yet were they miraculously blinded by a manifest miracle. And the miracle was on this wise. There was on the Porte Drouaise an image of Our Lady against which the enemy fired many shots from cannon and arquebus alike, but without being able to hit it. And to show that many shots were fired at the said gate on which was the said image, the bridge of that gate was broken and cut in twain by the cannon-balls, and all round the image up to a few inches of it the marks of many bullets may still be seen. But it was hit by never a one, and it remained therefore whole and intact; in spite of the efforts of the enemy to destroy that image, it was never struck by a single shot. I know well,’ he adds, ‘that the heretics and some others laugh at this, but Herod also mocked at Christ when he beheld Him.’ Another version of this miracle is given by Chaline (b. 1596) in his old _Histoire de Chartres_. ‘The Huguenots,’ he says, ‘having drawn near on the 9th of March to enter the town by the breach which they had made, it happened that there appeared on the said breach opposite to them a tall lady holding a child in her arms, against whom they fell to firing and to hurling volleys of abuse, without being able to reach or strike her in any way _terribilis ut castrorum acies ordinata_. On the contrary, the bullets which they fired fell harmless, without effect or force, at the foot of the wall, and they, thinking to enter, found themselves repulsed. The Chartrains perceiving this, and knowing that it was the Holy Virgin who, with her Son, was thus visibly taking the defence of the town into her own hands, the ecclesiastics and women turned to pray, and the men of war and all capable of bearing arms made a sortie upon the besiegers and vigorously repelled them.’ By a further development, the popular tradition of the country, so prettily expressed in the verses of M. Jolliet which I have put at the head of this chapter, now maintains that the Virgin caught the bullets in the folds of her mantle.