“The first, the royal virago with the prominent stomach, is ordinary enough; the last, opposite to this princess at the furthest end of the front near the old tower, has lost half her face, and the remaining portion is not attractive; but the three others, standing in the principal doorway, are matchless.

“The first, tall, slender, and very straight, wears a crown on her brow, a veil, hair banded on each side of a middle parting, and falling in plaits on her shoulders; her nose turns up a little, is somewhat common; her lips firm and judicious; her chin square.  The face is not very young.  The body is swathed, and rigid, in a large cloak with wide sleeves, and the richly-jewelled sheath of a gown that betrays no feminine outline of figure.  She is upright, sexless, shapeless; her waist slight and bound with a girdle of cord, like a Franciscan Sister.  She stands looking, with her head slightly bent, attentive to one knows not what, seeing nothing.  Has she attained to the perfect negation of all things?  Is she living the life of Union with God beyond the worlds, where time is no more?  It might be thought so, since it is noteworthy that, in spite of her royal insignia and the magnificence of her costume, she has the self-centred look, the austere demeanour of a nun.  She seems more of the cloister than of the Court.  Then we wonder who can have placed her on guard by this door, and why, faithful to a charge known to none but herself, she watches, day and night, with her far-away gaze across the square, waiting motionless for some one who for seven hundred years has failed to come.

“She might be an embodiment of Advent, stooping a little to listen to the woeful supplications of man as they rise from earth; in that case, she must be an Old Testament queen, dead long before the birth of the Messiah she perhaps may have prophesied.

“As she holds a book, the Abbe Bulteau thinks it may be a full-length statue of Saint Radegonde.  But other princesses have been canonized, and, like her, hold books.  At the same time, the monastic aspect of this queen, her emaciated figure, her eye vaguely fixed on the region of internal dreams, would well befit Clotaire’s wife, who retired to a cloister.

“But for what can she be watching?  The dreaded arrival of the king bent on tearing her from her Abbey at Poitiers to replace her on the throne?  For lack of any information every conjecture must be futile.

“The second statue again represents a king’s wife holding a book.  She is younger; she wears neither cloak nor veil; her bosom is full and closely fitted in a clinging dress, tightly drawn over the bust like wet linen; a bodice resembling the Carlovingian rokette, fastened on one side.  Her hair lies flat in two bands on her forehead, covering her ears and falling in long tresses plaited with ribbon, and ending in loose tufts.

“Her face is wilful and alert, and rather haughty.  She is looking out of herself; her beauty is of a more human type, and she knows it.  Saint Clotilde, is the Abbe Bulteau’s guess.