Page:A book of the Cevennes (-1907-).djvu/173

Rh with glazed brown and yellow tiles. A portion was ripped by a storm and has been repaired with green tiles, and the effect is singular, as if a huge pot of green paint had been spilled over the roof.

The church, with a vulgar modern west-front, is wholly modernised within, but without, where not built into houses, shows that the original church was of the fourteenth century. The buttresses were round turrets that have been deprived of their tops. In a chapel of the church is the monument in black marble of the Marshal Ornano, raised by his wife the Duchess. It was mutilated at the Revolution.

The Ornano family was that of the Sovereign Counts of Corsica, descended from Ugo Colonna whom Leo III. charged with the expulsion of the Saracens from that isle. He was invested with the title of Count by Charlemagne, and he obtained at the same time sovereign rights.

The Genoese, by making themselves masters of Corsica, drove out the Ornanos, and Sanpietro, who went into the service of France, was engaged all his life in fighting the Genoese; and he succeeded in gaining the whole island for France, but Henry II. basely restored it to the Genoese. His son, Alphonso d'Ornano, born in 1548, died in 1610. He fought the Genoese like his father, and with equal success, and was created Marshal of France. His son, Jean Baptiste, was born in 1583, and died in 1626. He was brought up at the Court and was appointed governor of Pont-Esprit, and he was there when tidings reached him of the assassination of Henry IV. He married the Countess of Montlaure, an heiress. Under De Luynes he was appointed tutor to the Duke of Orléans, the King's brother, and governor