The inevitable obtrusive organ-case is of the seventeenth century, and like all of its kind is a parasitical abomination, clinging precariously to the western wall.
The sacristy is an extensive suite of rooms which contain throughout a deep-toned and mellow oaken wainscot.
For the rest, the lines of this church follow the conventionality of its time. Its proportions, while not great, are good, and there is no marked luxuriance of ornament or any exceeding grace in the entire structure, if we except the detached tower before mentioned.
The situation of the town is most picturesque; not daintily pretty, but of a certain dignified order, which is the more satisfying.
The ancient château, called Le Duché, is the real architectural treat of the place.
XVI
ST. JEAN D'ALAIS
Alais is an ancient city, but greatly modernized; moreover it does not take a supreme rank as a cathedral city, from the fact that it held a bishop's throne for but a hundred years. Alais was a bishopric only from 1694 to 1790.
The cathedral of St. Jean is an imposing structure of that obtrusive variety of architectural art known as "Louis Quinze," and is unworthy of the distinction once bestowed upon it.
Perhaps it is due to the fact that the Cevenole country was so largely and aggressively Protestant that the see of Alais did not endure. Robert Louis Stevenson tells of a stranger he met in these mountain parts—that he was a Catholic, "and made no shame of it. No shame of it! The phrase is a piece of natural statistics; for it is the language of one of a minority.... Ireland is still Catholic; the Cevennes still Protestant. Outdoor rustics have not many ideas, but such as they have are hardy plants and thrive flourishingly in persecution."
Built about in the façade of this unfeeling structure are some remains of a twelfth-century church, but they are not of sufficient bulk or excellence to warrant remark.