We continue along the Rue Bonaparte past the new Academie de Medecine and on our L. soon sight the grey pile of the old Abbey Church of St. Germain des Pres, once refulgent in colour and gold. A part of the great tower is said to have resisted the Norman conflagrations, but the church as we now behold it, is that rebuilt 1000-1163; enlarged in 1237 and restored at various periods in the first half of the nineteenth century. Of the great fortress-monastery, with its immense domains of land; its cloisters, walls and towers; its prison and pillory, over which the puissant abbots once held sway, only a memory remains. The fortifications were razed in the seventeenth century and gave place to artizans' houses. The famous Fair of St. Germain has long been suppressed, where Henry IV. on the royal entry of Marie de' Medici, after promising the merchants that they should grow rich, since his queen had _de l'argent frais_, disappointed them all by chaffering much and buying nothing. Over the entrance of the church within the W. porch is a well-preserved Romanesque relief of the Last Supper. Some bases and capitals of the triforium date from the twelfth century, but the heavy Romanesque capitals of the eleventh century nave are restorations, and the beautiful early Gothic choir has also been much modified at various epochs. The interest of the interior is enhanced to the lover of French art by Flandrin's admirable frescoes (p. 391), illustrating scenes from the Old and New Testaments. Unhappily, they are seen with difficulty, and a bright, sunny day is necessary to appreciate the masterly art, the noble and reverent spirit that animates them. One of the most successful and best seen is the Entry into Jerusalem, L. of the choir.