[20] The episcopal palace as it now stands is a handsome eighteenth-century red brick building, and was built by the Bishop de Fleury in 1760. Vast and sumptuous, with its Italian portico and flights of steps, with its gardens of which you see but a small part through the _grille_ which opens on the cloister near the north porch of the Cathedral, with its wing ‘de la Duchesse,’ as it was called after the Duchesse de Fleury, mother of the bishop, and the wing built in 1702, wherein are the immense reception-rooms, this palace, regal almost in its size and magnificence, suggests the temporal and spiritual power of the prelates who numbered among their vassals the highest barons of the realm and whose diocese was known at Rome as the Great Bishopric. But it is little in accord with the life or the means of the twentieth-century bishops, to whom, as to their Anglican brethren, the palaces they have to maintain are usually white elephants. [21] There is a punning saying that this church has ‘trois clochers et deux cents cloches’ (deux _sans_). [22] He figures in the Galerie des Rois, on the western façade of the Cathedral. [23] As early as 680 the Episcopal schools of Chartres were held in repute. [24] The story of this presentation is told in the glass of the Chapel of S. John the Baptist in the Church of Aix-la-Chapelle. Charles-le-Chauve caused it to be brought thence into France. [25] S. Piat preached the Gospel to the Carnutes in the third century before going to gain the crown of martyrdom at Tours. He is the saint to be invoked by farmers for fair weather in the rainy years. See the chapel dedicated to him, built out beyond the apse of the Cathedral. This chapel was added in the fourteenth century, and is a good example of that period, the doorway at the foot of the staircase which gives access to it from the Cathedral being especially beautiful. In the tympanum of this doorway is a statue of the Virgin and the Christ-Child playing with a dove. The bracket of the tympanum of the doorway at the top of the staircase once supported a statue of S. Piat. It has been destroyed, but you may see a picture of the saint in the grisaille above this door. The glass belongs partly to the fourteenth and partly to the fifteenth century, and is good, though not so good as that of the rest of the Cathedral. It has suffered from an ignorant application of oil-colour some fifty years ago. The polychrome bosses in the roof and the rich capitals are full of detail, and skilfully wrought. The exterior, unlike the interior, is unprepossessing. Before the year 1793 it could boast a spire of lead and wood, which may have done something to relieve the present effect of heaviness. The staircase which connects the chapel with the Cathedral is, however, very beautiful. [26] _Roman de Rou._ [27] _Le livre des Miracles de Chartres_ (translated into French verse from some Latin collection in the thirteenth century).