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 look of a mediæval stage-setting. Sens has many other treasures, not only in its unusually rich collection of church relics and tapestries, but among the fragments of architecture distributed through its streets; and in the eighteenth century gates of the archiepiscopal palace it can show a specimen of wrought-iron work probably not to be matched short of Jean Lamour's gates at Nancy.

One of its most coveted possessions—Jean Cousin's famous picture of the Eva prima Pandora—has long been jealously secluded by its present owner; and one wonders for what motive the inveterate French hospitality to lovers of art has been here so churlishly reversed. The curious mystical interest of the work, and its value as a link in the history of French painting, make it, one may say, almost a monument historique, a part of the national heritage; and perhaps the very sense of its potential service to art gives a perverse savour to its possessor's peculiar mode of enjoying it.

From Sens to Fontainebleau the road follows the valley of the Yonne through a tranquil landscape with level meadows and knots of slender [ 169 ]