The importance of Sens in other days is attested by its ancient and majestic gateways, but the Sens of to-day is a small place clustering around the portals of its Cathedral, which is supposed to be the parent of the Choir of Canterbury, that church having been built by Williams of Sens. There is a resemblance but I shall not enter into description here, after having described so many other cathedrals of France. [Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL AT SENS By permission of Messrs. Neurdein] Passing its portals, one will linger a moment before the tomb of the Dauphin, father of Louis XVI., speculating as to whether he was a stronger character than his son, and as to what effect he would have had, had he worn the crown, though realising that nothing could have prevented that deluge of 1793. A Napoléon in command would have dispersed many of the mobs, spared the world much of the horrible bloodshed, but the Bourbon throne was doomed. Again, if the king had possessed a modern fire department he could have gained time if not saved his head. There is no mob which can stand against water as applied by a fire-engine. It has been tried and always with success. It would have saved the day at Versailles and the Tuileries and would do so at the present time in Russia--but to return to Sens. There is another monument not mentioned in the books and one of great beauty. It is to some archbishop whose name I have forgotten. The statue kneels on a black marble sarcophagus and is of white marble. It is not so much in the statue itself that the beauty lies, but in the wonderfully natural arrangement of the robe which flows behind in billowy folds, until one touches it and marvels that it is really marble and not heavy satin. Thomas à Becket fled to Sens to escape Henry II., and you may still see his robes and mitre in the treasury of this church. You may say your prayers if you desire at the same altar where he knelt, one wonders whether it was in adoration of himself or of God. In Sens you again encounter the work of Viollet-le-Duc, who has restored wherever he found it possible, but there are bits which escaped his eye if you care to hunt them out. I find myself before one now, off in a quiet corner. It is only a detached head on a column and the eyes gaze into mine in a sidewise fashion as though desirous of telling me its story,--just as the lips of the deserted Buddhas in the forests of Java seem ever quivering to speak. They say you were Jean du Cognot,--but will you pardon a wanderer in these latter days if he asks, who was Jean, and why his head is here all alone on this column? Was there ever any more to him? Did he listen to the booming of these great bells rolling out their summons above us? The eyes gaze downward at me in a sad sort of fashion and seem to follow me reproachfully as I pass outward.