The interior is in the simple Romanesque manner, and, in spite of base uses to which the place is now put, it remains impressive by virtue of the sixteen massive piers which support the nave and aisles, which have been simple always, and remain grand in their ruin. Two early square crypts under the transepts are worth seeing. For the rest, of what once was, I need only mention the wooden jubé, carved by P. Courtier, on which Jehan de Beauce had also done some work. Among the carvings, it is said, was one which represented a pig churning butter--an epigram in stone against notorious heretics, for Calvin is frequently treated as a pig in this sort of imagery. CHAPTER X _Mathurin Regnier and the Renaissance at Chartres_ ‘J’ai vécu sans nul pensement Me laissant aller doucement A la bonne loi naturelle; Et si m’étonne fort pourquoi La Mort daigna penser à moi Qui ne pensai jamais à elle.’ _Epitaph of Régnier._ Unlike the English, who, in public, prefer to ignore genius, the French provincials, when they have any great men born within the borders of their town, are not ashamed to honour them. They erect monuments easily, and it even occurs to them to call their streets after the names of great writers. In Chartres you have the Rue Félibien[92] and the Rue Régnier,[93] with the house in which Mathurin Régnier was born. God has made the men of La Beauce in the image of the soil whence they have sprung. They have the regularity, the monotony and the hardness of their native land. They are without passion or imagination, cold and avaricious, and their women are like them. Their wit, when they have any, is of the kind that delights in carping, ironical raillery. Their minds, when they are developed, are cast in a logical and scientific mould. Therefore it is that the representative writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries at Chartres are Pierre Nicole, the moralist and theologian of the Port Royal School (_Essais de Morale_); Michel Félibien, the critical and scientific historian of Paris (_Histoire de la Ville de Paris_); the cold, but elegant, courtier poet, Philippe Desportes, and his nephew, Mathurin Régnier, the creator of French satire (1573-1613).