The sculptor of this Last Judgment—­a Benedictine monk, doubtless, like the architect of the church who has left this personal record, ‘Bernardus me fecit,’ upon a stone in a dim corner—­died centuries ago, and although his bones or their dust may be near, his name will never be known.  But how his mind lives in the figures that took life under his hand!  With what inspired longing of the soul he must have conceived and felt the majesty of Christ sitting in judgment at the end of time to have expressed so much that is sublime in the holy face and figure with his poor knowledge of art!  The right hand is raised to bless the just, and the left repels the unforgiven.  Grouped around the central figure are saints and angels.  Peter, holding his keys, is followed by a crowd of the elect, headed by an old man on crutches, and a crowned sovereign—­said to be Charlemagne—­carries a reliquary.  In the lower half of the tympan Satan is enthroned, his feet resting upon a writhing and hideously grimacing figure, supposed to be that of Judas.  Immediately above, an angel and a fiend are weighing souls in a pair of scales, and the demon is trying to cheat.  In this lower division the infernal punishments inflicted upon sinners of different categories are set forth.  The sin of Francesca and Paolo is treated less poetically than by Dante, for here two guilty lovers are seen hanging to the same rope.  A glutton is being stuffed with flaming viands, sent up from the devil’s kitchen.  All manner of torture is being inflicted by jubilant demons upon the souls that have fallen into their clutches.  One has caught in the net that he has just thrown a mitred abbot and two other monks.  As the dead rise from their tombs the justiciary angels bar the way of the wicked who strive to approach the Judge.  A seraphim holds the closed book of life, upon which these words are carved:  ‘Hic signatur liber vitae.’  On various parts of the portal are numerous inscriptions, some of which, like the following, are in leonine verses: 

    ’Casti pacifici mites pietatis amici
    Sic stant gaudentes securi nil metuentes.’

The archaeological interest of Conques is not confined to its church.  Here, hidden from the world in this obscure little gorge, far from any railway-station, is one of the most remarkable collections of ancient reliquaries in France.  The chief treasure is the very ancient gold statue of St. Foy (Sancta Fides) virgin and martyr, the patron saint of Conques.  It is a seated figure nearly three feet in height, and its appearance is thoroughly Byzantine; indeed, one may go farther, and say that it looks much more pagan than Christian.  There is nothing in the treatment that indicates a Christian motive; while the antique engraved gems with which it is studded, illustrating, as some of them do, workings of the Greek and Roman mind very far removed from the Christian idea of what is becoming in morals, make this astonishing statue an archaeological puzzle.  The explanation