little brass - bellied engines 

 snort importantly, as they tow 

 clattering trains of toy cars 

 behind in their wanderings. 

 The sleepy railway stations 

 glimmer a dull red or tan in 

 the golden sun, and soft-eyed, 

 black - haired country folk 

 watch with unfailing interest 

 as the trains roll in and out. 

 Poitou is very easy of access 

 from Paris by rail — yet who 

 knows Poitou? 



It is full of lovely little 

 towns ; here one clustering 

 about the skirts of a molder- 

 ing chateau upon a hill ; there 

 one compacted closely by the 

 demands of modern com- 1 

 merce about railway station or : 

 factory. And there is St. 

 Savin, straggling leisurely 

 along the banks of the cold, 

 dark, swift little river Gar- 

 temps, which is full of trout. 

 As many houses as can have 

 crowded down to the walled 

 bank, and the tall, precise pop- 

 lars whisper over their dull 

 red roofs as the stream flows 

 by, its shining breast gay with 

 vast garlands of a slender 

 weed spangled with myriads 

 of tiny, white blossoms. 



The lofty trees and the an- 

 cient monastery, now turned 

 into a gendarmerie ; the old 

 mill, with its low dam ; and the squat, 

 massive bridges give St. Savin character 

 and to spare. But the town's distinction 

 is apart from its beauty — its towering old 

 monastic church, whose soaring vault is 

 illuminated yet with exceedingly curious 

 and dramatic twelfth century paintings, 

 among the rarest of their kind. 



ONLY ONE LEVEL SPOT 



Poitou's principal city and capital, Poi- 

 tiers, has a most remarkable location 

 upon a pear-shaped hill, moated about 

 naturally by the little rivers Clain and 

 Boivre, which have made it almost an 

 island. It is so compact, so jammed to- 

 gether, that the only level spot in town 

 is the main square, upon the very crest 

 of the hill. Everywhere else you go 

 either up or down, and every street is 

 crooked. 



1 



Photo by Arthur Stanley Riggs 

 PAPA AND LITTLE YVONNE AT THE PARDON 



All types of church architecture are 

 represented on these crooked streets, 

 from the unpretentious little primitive 

 Christian chapel of St. Jean, part of 

 which dates from Roman times, on 

 through temples of every size and style 

 and idea the creative centuries produced, 

 past amazing Romanesque Notre Dame 

 la Grande — an edifice so bizarre, so as- 

 tonishingly carved and decorated, it seems 

 more like a Hindu temple than a church — 

 and on to the cathedral, with its remark- 

 able southern Gothic interior, given per- 

 spective and beauty by the adroit nar- 

 rowing and lowering of the lofty arches. 

 It is the most astonishing ecclesiastical 

 medley imaginable, with quite as much 

 emphasis upon harmonic discords as 

 upon the dignity and proportion that so 

 distinguish most of the churches of 

 France. 



427 



