'Or ça'—nous dit Grippeminaud, au milieu de ses Chats-fourrez—'par Stix, puisqu' autre chose ne veux dire, or ça, je te monstreray, or ça, que meilleur te seroit estre tombé entre les pattes de Lucifer, or ça, et de tous les Diables, or ça, qu'entre nos gryphes, or ça; les vois-tu bien? Or ça, malautru, nous allegues tu innocence, or ça, comme chose digne d'eschapper nos tortures? Or ça, nos Loix sont comme toile d'araignes; le grand Diable vous y chantera Messe, or ça'.
'Or ça'—nous dit Grippeminaud, au milieu de ses Chats-fourrez—'par Stix, puisqu' autre chose ne veux dire, or ça, je te monstreray, or ça, que meilleur te seroit estre tombé entre les pattes de Lucifer, or ça, et de tous les Diables, or ça, qu'entre nos gryphes, or ça; les vois-tu bien? Or ça, malautru, nous allegues tu innocence, or ça, comme chose digne d'eschapper nos tortures? Or ça, nos Loix sont comme toile d'araignes; le grand Diable vous y chantera Messe, or ça'.
TO appreciate what was involved by the building of the famous "Palais de Justice," which is perhaps the greatest pride of Rouen, I must needs bring before you a little more of the social life which made a court of law and justice necessary; and I can make no better beginning than by quoting again, from the Record of the Fierte St. Romain, those instances after 1448 which throw the greatest light upon the manners and customs of the years when the Échiquier de Rouen first became a permanent assembly in its own House.
In 1453 occurs an entry which suggests that the modern idiot who plays with a loaded revolver and shoots his friend "by accident" has been in existence ever since deadly weapons were invented. A carpenter named Guillaume le Bouvier drew his bow at a bird which was sitting on a tree-top. The arrow glanced off a bough, rebounded from a stone, and killed the son of the Sieur de Savary. Twenty-two years before, a woman had been killed by a bolt froma crossbow in almost the same way, and in 1457 a boy was shot by his brother in an exactly similar manner. In 1474 Bardin Lavalloys provided another particularly unfortunate example during a game which was in great favour at Christmas time, and consisted in throwing sticks at a goose which was tied by the leg to a tall pole. Jehan Baqueler missed his shot, and hit poor Lavalloys on the temple. A more serious weapon, the "couleuvrine," a long thin cannon, was responsible for an accidental death in 1476. Guillaume Bézet had made a bet that he could shoot at a gate better than his friends. His aim missed, and he killed a man sitting by a hedge not far off. A case that is still more instructive of the manners of the time occurred in 1475. Guillaume Morin, who was apparently making the best of his last chance of a good meal before Lent, had gone to feast with some neighbours on Shrove Tuesday, and when they had finished the beef, he threw the bone out of the window. It happened to be an especially large and heavy bone, and unluckily his little daughter of seven was just that moment returning from the tavern with more wine for the company. It fell upon her head from some distance and killed her. Another curious sidelight is thrown on fifteenth century society by the record of the next year. During a wedding-breakfast in Rouen Pierre Rogart upset the mustard-pot over M. Gossent's clothes. They quarrelled, the other guests took sides, swords were drawn, and the prime offender's nephew ran a man through; a crime for which the canons pardoned him.
But these are rather of the nature of the modern "manslaughter." The "crime passionel" and the downright murder of malice aforethought, are even more frequent. In 1466 Catherine Leseigneur was scolded and even threatened with a beating while in bed by her mother-in-law. In a sudden passion shesnatched up a large stone and killed the other woman with it. How a stone large and heavy enough for the purpose happened to be in a bedroom we are not told, but it is quite easily explained in the case of Jehan Vauquelin, who was annoyed while working in the fields by Lucas le Febure in 1471, and killed him with the weapon that is as old as the first murder in recorded history, and seems to have been rather favoured in the fifteenth century. The year 1473 is only notable because Étienne Bandribosc was delivered by the Chapter contrary to the expressed wish of Louis XI., after he had killed a man who had insulted him. But in 1483 the element of romance appears again. A priest called Robert Clérot, with a sword beneath his cloak, was accustomed to pester with his attentions a pretty seamstress in the parish of St. Eloi. Her legitimate lover interfered, and, when the priest drew his sword, called in help and killed him with his dagger. Twice more in this period is a "couturière" the heroine of the Fierte. In the very next year Denise de Gouy, whose previous history is not pleasant reading, took service with a citizen of Rouen, and by means of false keys provided by her lover, robbed her employer of a considerable quantity of linen, using her special knowledge to pick and choose the best. She only escaped being hanged with her paramour by being about to give birth to a child, and was finally pardoned by the Chapterhouse. In 1492 a dressmaker was far less fortunate. She was unable to satisfy a lady as to the fit of her stays, and this angry customer, whose name was Marie Mansel, gave her so shrewd a blow with her fist that the poor little dressmaker died in a week. The canons apparently so sympathised with the annoyances of a badly fitting corset, that they gave Marie Mansel her freedom. But the episode has its value in showing that the modern muscular female is not so new anapparition as she fancies. Tradesmen did not always get the worst of it, however, in such disputes as these; for in 1525 a butcher complained bitterly that his hair had been cut too short, in a barber's shop near St. Ouen. The mistake so preyed upon his mind that when he met the barber next day he smote him on the head and ran away into the cemetery of St. Ouen. But Nicolas Courtil pursued him valiantly, armed only with the instruments of his calling, and finally killed the butcher by stabbing him in the neck with a pair of scissors.
PALAIS DE JUSTICE. TOURELLE IN THE RUE ST. LÔPriests are almost as interesting as the ladies in this extraordinary record. In 1520 a curate from Marcilly hired Germain Rou for two sovereigns to hide a baby in a chalk-pit, and then fled to Rome. The cries of the child were heard two days afterwards by some travellers, and Germain Rou, condemned to have his hand cut off and then be hanged, was pardoned. In 1535 an even more flagrant crime is registered against an ecclesiastic. Louis de Houdetot, a subdeacon, had been so successful in his courtship of Madame Tilleren, that the lady's husband sent her out of the town to her father's house. But this did not stop the priest from continuing to visit her, and while M. Tilleren was in Rouen news was brought him that Houdetot had actually beaten M. de Catheville's servants in trying toget into the house. This was too much; so Tilleren "took a corselet of beaten iron (hallecrest) and a crossbow with a long bolt, and took a companion, named Justin, armed with a helmet and a long-handled axe, with five or six others." The gang, who evidently meant to make sure of their man, met Houdetot in a street in Rouen; Tilleren fired his crossbow on sight and shot him through the body; a piece of summary justice which evidently appealed to the Canons of the Cathedral, in spite of the fact that the sufferer was an ecclesiastic.
But in 1501 a gallant priest intervened in the most creditable manner, and without any bloodshed, in a love-affair that should set all our promising young historical novelists by the ears to tell it afresh. There was a certain Jean de Boissey who was much in love with Marie de Martainville. Her mother was not averse to a wedding, but the father refused entirely. Luckily for Jean he was on excellent terms with the lady's cousins, Philippe and Thomas de Martainville; so the three friends with Pierre de Garsalle and other youthful sympathisers betook them to the Abbey of St. Pierre-sur-Dives to talk it over. Jean found an ally he could have hardly expected within the Abbey walls, for Nicolle de Garsalle, a relation of one of his comrades and a brother of the House, asked them all to stay to supper with him, and before the porter let them out again he had arranged a plan for carrying off the lady. The young men were delighted with this jovial monk's suggestions, and the next morning the whole company met again with seven or eight more ardent blades, and entered straightway into the Manor where the lovely Marie dwelt. Cousin Philippe stayed outside and kept watch at the drawbridge. In a short time—after adventures which are discreetly concealed—Jean and his friends came out with the lady, and the whole party made off to Caulde, wherethe betrothal was solemnised. The next day they rode to Cambremer, and the happy pair were married, "le sieur de Boissey," says the manuscript, "espousa sa fiancée sans bans," and no doubt Brother Nicolle de Garsalle helped to tie the knot. No less than sixteen persons being implicated in the capital charge of abduction which followed, you may imagine how lively the Procession of the Fierte was that year, and the cheers of the populace as Jean de Boissey (begarlanded with roses, as all the prisoners were) moved along, no doubt with Marie on his arm, and the sturdy monk walked behind him from the Place de la Basse Vieille Tour to the Cathedral. The de Martainvilles gave the Chapter a large Turquoise set in gold, in token of their gratitude, and the gem was at once placed upon the shrine to whose sanctity they owed deliverance.
Few stories have either so romantic a beginning or so fortunate an end, in this record of the Fierte; but the large number of prisoners then released has its parallel, is even surpassed indeed, on two occasions soon afterwards; for in 1522 the whole parish of the village of Étrepagny received the Fierte as accomplices of a young ruffian called de Maistreville; though considering that his victim was one of their own women, their ardent support of the man against all the officers of justice is somewhat inexplicable. In 1560, when another whole village was pardoned, their sympathy with a fellow-labourer who killed a servant of the Overlord is more easily intelligible. But nearly all of the most prominent cases have a woman at the bottom of them. One that is especially instructive as to the morals and the manners of the public occurred in 1524.
Antoine de la Morissière, Sieur de la Carbonnet, had, it seems, insulted Mademoiselle d'Ailly, and beaten her so badly that she died a short time afterwards with five of her ribs broken. So Étienne le Monnier, her relation, resolved to avenge her, andtook out a warrant against the ruffian who had killed her. Desiring to make quite sure that justice should not miscarry, he took some fifty gentlemen, all armed, and accompanied the police-sergeant to the man's house. They found de la Morissière[61]in a somewhat compromising position, and he did not reply to their request for admittance. Le Monnier, determined to get him out, set fire to the roof in four places. The fellow then cried out that he would surrender, and trusting to the presence of an officer of the law he came down. Le Monnier at once wounded him in the chest with a long pike, and two other relations of Mademoiselle d'Ailly hit him over the head with clubs, "so that he fell to the ground as one dead." But le Monnier, seeing that he still showed signs of life, drove his dagger into his throat and finished him off. Two accomplices were actually hanged for this crime, but de Monnier, after paying 1200 livres to the dead man's family, and being unsuccessful in securing the royal pardon, was given the Fierte with the rest of his friends by the Chapterhouse of Rouen.
Of the morality of those days you must imagine something from these instances. There are many more with which I have neither space nor inclination to shock susceptibilities more delicate than were those of a Cathedral Chapterhouse in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. The tale of Jehanne Dantot, for instance, in 1489, is one of the most astonishing stories of the lengths to which desperation and wickedness can drive a woman that I have ever read. A queer glimpse of the economy of certain households is provided by the record of 1534. Pierre Letellier married the daughter of Maître Hoüel, and by a clause in the marriage-settlement it was arranged that the father-in-law should board and lodge the young couple for threeyears. They had not lived in the house long before they were scandalised by the immoral behaviour of the old man, and Pierre naturally quarrelled with him about it. The ill-feeling between the two men came to a climax one night when young Letellier had been supping in the town, and coming back late found that his father-in-law had bolted the door. At length his wife heard his knocks, and as soon as she had let him in he roundly abused the servants for keeping him so long upon the doorstep. The old man at once appeared on the scene, without much in the way of clothing, it would appear, but waving a stout club called a "marcus." With this he beat Pierre about the head and shoulders until the young man lost patience and killed his father-in-law with his dagger or "sang de dey."
The taverns were of course as frequent a source of crime then as they are now. But the fashion of wearing swords has made a drunken brawl less fatal. The records of the Fierte might very well be used as a dictionary of offensive weapons from the number of swords, daggers, maces, rapiers, clubs, and pikes their pages contain from year to year. It was at the double game of rapier and dagger that Marquet Dubosc wiped off old scores after a quarrel at the Sign of the Cauldron, near the Church of St. Michel, in 1502. He had been playing dice with a man named Chouquet, and in the quarrel that followed about payment, Chouquet had too many friends to be attacked safely. So Dubosc waited till the next day, gathered a few companions of his own, and killed his man in the woods near Croisset.
In 1511 the Chapterhouse records a tavern brawl that was settled on the spot. There had been some dispute about a woman between Le Monnier, a king's officer, and Jehan Canu, a lacquey. This man deliberately chose out a few others to help him in the business, and then went to drink at the "Barge," inthe Rue Eau de Robec, on a night when he knew Le Monnier would come there to supper. The officer actually took the next table, and in a few moments swords were drawn, and Le Monnier was killed. Why Canu and his nine accomplices were pardoned is one of the mysteries of the Fierte which I suppose no one will ever be able to unravel.
COURTYARD OF PALAIS DE JUSTICE
COURTYARD OF PALAIS DE JUSTICE
If this somewhat dismal catalogue of crimes has not yet fully acquainted you with the state of society with which the "Palais de Justice" was first built to deal, the shortest glance at some of the sentences inflicted upon criminals who were not fortunate enough to bear the Fierte will be sufficient to show that the judges were almost as far behind our modern notions of propriety as were their prisoners. And it must be remembered that the criminals I have just mentioned are far from being the worst of those brought up before the Courts of Rouen; they are indeed those persons picked out by the assembled body of trained ecclesiastics in the Cathedral Chapterhouse as worthy to escapefrom the horrors which a sentence in the fifteenth or sixteenth century involved.
What these sentences were may be gathered from such examples as the following. In 1506 a man surprised picking pockets in the Court-room was taken into the great open space before the entrance and soundly flogged upon the spot. Few men escaped so fortunately. Assassins nearly always suffered the loss of a limb before the final mercy of hanging. In the same year several women, convicted of false testimony and spreading scandals, were stripped naked and beaten with rods in all the squares of Rouen. A thief suffered the same punishment; his ear was then cut off, and he was banished from France with a rope round his neck. On the 19th of March a miserable prisoner was drowned in boiling water by a sentence of the Bailly confirmed in the higher courts. In 1507 a murderer was hanged in front of his victim's house. In 1513 a highway robber had his right arm cut off and placed on a column by the roadside near the scene of his theft, his head was then placed opposite to it, and the mutilated body hung upon a gibbet close by. Forgers had a fleur de lys branded on their foreheads. Sacrilege was punished by burning the criminal in chains over a slow fire. Some burglars, in the same year, had their hands cut off, their arms pulled out with red-hot pincers, and were finally beheaded and cut in pieces. The next year some wretched coiners were boiled alive. Infanticides were burnt. Other crimes were punished by searing the tongue with red-hot iron, or by breaking the prisoner alive upon the wheel, and leaving him to die without food or water. A parricide was condemned to this, with still more hideous tortures added, in 1557. In 1524 a criminal nearly escaped his sentence altogether because his jailor's daughter fell in love with him, and asked the Court to be allowed to marry him. The question of sanctuary came up very often, as may be imagined, and only by very slow degrees were the privileges of the holy places taken from them.
Though many of these punishments hardly seem to recognise the humanity of the victim, the privilege of confession to a priest had been allowed to prisoners condemned to death ever since 1397, at the instance of a famous preacher named Jean Houard, in years when even more barbarous tortures were still practised, though the strength of sanctuaries was, as some compensation, at its height. Judicial ideas, however, took a long time to become civilised; for in 1408 a pig was solemnly hanged for having killed a little child. The invention of printing[62]no doubt did some good in this direction, and by 1490 the first printer in Rouen, Martin Morin, was established in the Rue St. Lô, close by the spot where the lawcourts soon appeared. Lest you should think that the Palais de Justice of sixteenth century Rouen was even worse than the terrible chapters in Rabelais would lead his readers to imagine, I must tell you here the story of an advocate of Rouen that may in part make up for the gruesome pages which precede it.
The Parliament of Normandy, as the Échiquier was called in 1558, had assembled in the Palais de Justice on the morning of the 26th of August, to discuss a case which involved the interpretation, if not the actual integrity, of the famous code known as the "Grand Coutumier de Normandie"; and representatives of every court had been summoned to the hearing. A certain burgess of Rouen, Guillaume Laurent by name, convicted of murder, had had his hand cut off before the west façade of the Cathedral, and was then beheaded in the Vieux Marché. His goods and property had, as a matter of course, been confiscated by the State. His destitute orphans went to live with their grandfather, who soon died of grief. The terrible spectacle then followed of this old man's daughter trying to drive the children out of the house, because they could inherit nothing from a murderer. "Aulcun" ran the law, "qui soit engendré desang damnéne peut avoir, comme hoir, aulcune succession d'héritage." Against this clear decree the magistrates were powerless to help the orphans, indignant as they were at the inhumanity of their aunt. But the children appealed to the Higher Court. A brilliant advocate, Brétignières by name, had decided to oppose the "Coutumier" on their behalf, and the mass of people who had thronged the Parvis to see the father punished now crowded the Palais de Justice to see the children saved.
The Court assembled more slowly to hear his arguments, with the President St. Anthot at their head, a strong, wise, and enlightened man, after Brétignières' own heart. The advocate waited for the supporter of the law to open his case. The precedents went back to Ogier the Dane, to Ragnar, to Rollo the founder of the town itself, who strove to put down the crime of murder by extending the punishment beyond the criminal himself to his descendants, and thus appealing to the paternal instincts of the rough warriors they had to rule.
Brétignières rose suddenly from his seat, crying that in Normandy alone was this inhuman decree allowed, that Rome herself had never dared to stain the statute book with such a penalty. The extension of the punishment to the children, far from proving a deterrent, actually encouraged these hopeless and destitute orphans to exist by crime, since every avenue of honest livelihood was barred to them. Deprived of all theirfather had possessed, they saw their relations in the enjoyment of an increased inheritance. Ruined by punishment for a crime in which they had had no share, they saw the prosperity of others increased by the operations of an unjust law, a law that might have served the turn of a more barbarous people, but which was now far more the relic of an ancient ignorance than a symbol of modern enlightenment. In an age when the judicial combat of the old code had been abolished with the trial by fire, the changing customs and growing ideas of the people in the rest of Normandy were not likely to preserve a custom so inhuman as that which the Court of Rouen alone still exercised.
Amid a scene of intense excitement, as Brétignières ceased, all the king's officers in every other court in Normandy stood up, and in answer to the President, asserted that the law had never been carried out under their jurisdiction. It remained only for the President St. Anthot to withdraw with his judges, and, as the Sovereign Senate of the Province, not merely to interpret law, but to make it. There was a long pause before they returned into the great hall, this time all dressed in their red robes bound with ermine. In the solemn silence that ensued, St. Anthot declared the law null and void from disusage, restored the children to the inheritance of Guillaume Laurent, and reinstated them in the house from which their aunt had driven them.
The people rushed into the courtyard carrying the orphans with them, and while the barristers were congratulating Brétignières, his little clients were borne on the shoulders of a cheering mob through the streets of Rouen to their home; and from that day ceased the cruel law known as the "Arrêt du Sang Damné."
It was in the hope, no doubt, that benefits of this nature would be conferred upon the Province, that the great Cardinal d'Amboise and Louis XII. madethe Échiquier de Normandie perpetual, and gave it the great Palais de Justice in Rouen for its home. During the English occupation the damage done to the Château de Bouvreuil had necessitated moving the Easter sessions of the Échiquier to the archbishop's lodgings in 1423, and on five subsequent occasions the Court (composed half of English and half of Frenchmen) had to hold its sittings in that part of the halls (on the Place de la Vieille Tour), where the weavers usually carried on their commerce. By the time of Louis XII. the Château de Bouvreuil was in better repair, but it was evident that worthier quarters were needed the moment Cardinal d'Amboise had obtained the immense advantage of making the courts perpetual. Its new home was soon decided upon. Already on part of the Clos des Juifs a large common hall had been erected, in which the merchants gathered to discuss their business instead of using the nave of the Cathedral; and in 1499 this hall was made into the west wing of the new palace, and called first the Salle des Procureurs, and now the Salle des Pas Perdus; it is the great building on the left of the courtyard as you enter from the Rue aux Juifs. Its roof is like the upturned hull of some great ocean-galley, and all round the timbers, where the upper line of walls meets the vault above, a company of queer grotesques are carved which Rabelais himself might have suggested. You will notice especially the twisted spire upon the outward turret that overhangs the Rue aux Juifs, the broad sweep of the entrance stairway, and the admirable proportions of the arch above it. At the south end used to be the beautiful little chapel in which the Messe Rouge was sung for the "Rentrée de la St. Martin," and in which St. Romain's chosen prisoner knelt before he went out to the procession of the Fierte. Beneath are the prisons and dungeons of the High Court of Rouen. This is the building thatLouis XII. ordered to be set up, and into which he transferred the Échiquier from the Château de Rouen on the 11th of March, 1511; the first "Messe Rouge" was sung here to celebrate that opening, and the custom is preserved to this day.
PALAIS DE JUSTICE. THE OCTAGON ROOM OF LOUIS XII.In 1508 Louis XII. established in his new palace the jurisdiction known as that of the "Table de Marbre," because the Cathedral Chapterhouse sold for the use of this new Admiralty Court an old marble tomb, round which the members sat in the great hall. Corneille and his father were both officers of this jurisdiction later on. In the same year was begun the "Grand Chambre" in which the President held his High Court, called now the Cour d'Assises, and decorated with a magnificently carved ceiling in panels of polished wood. It is just behind that octagonal turret which juts from the centre of the main building exactly opposite the entrance from the Rue aux Juifs. Within this turret is the lovely little circular chamber which was reserved for the King's own use. Its beautiful proportions break the symmetry of the long front wall, yet are clasped to the building by the cornice whence the line of gargoyles spring; and in the same way the long and steep rise of the roof is broken up by the crests above each window that rise into the air in a pinnacled tracery of fretwork filled with carved arabesques and statues. Among them are the arms of France, supported by two stags, a memorial of the badge used by Charles VI. according to the story told by de la Mer. It is this central block of buildings that contains most of the original work of Roger Ango and Rouland Leroux. The wing on the right of the entrance from the Rue aux Juifs is modern, and though that part of the left wing which faces the courtyard is old, the façade upon the Rue Jeanne d'Arc at the Place Verdrel was rebuilt in 1842. The courtyard was originally enclosed by a fine crenulated wall like that round the Hôtel de Cluny in Paris. This has been replaced by a badly designed iron railing. But as a civic building, in spite of its railing and its new Cour d' Appel, the Palais de Justice remains the finest of its kind in Europe, and is superior to the Hôtel de Ville both of Brussels and of Louvain.
Of many famous ceremonies were these great Halls the scene after Louis XII. had built them. In the next reign Francis I. held a solemn "Lit de Justice" here, in order to do at Rouen as he had done at Paris, and ask the Parliament of Normandy to register the Concordat which Duprat, Boisy, and others in his suite had helped to frame. His entry into the city had been especially brilliant, not only because the King himself desired to impress the occasion on his faithful subjects, but because in the first prosperous years of a reign that seemed so full of promise, the citizens of Rouen were even readier than usual to give the loyal reception to their sovereign for which thetown was famous. The officers and councillors of the city were clad in velvet, and the burgesses in camlet and satin, and all were very anxious indeed to see the King, and get what was possible out of the visit. The Italian victories, brilliant as they were, had not been without their expense to Rouen as to every other town in France, not in money merely but in the caring for hundreds of disbanded soldiers. Besides this the especial privileges of the city had to be upheld and confirmed, and particularly those appeals from the maritime courts which were settled by the jurisdiction of the "Table de Marbre."
Those who were inclined to pessimism were reminded that at Lyons, at Amboise, at Paris, and at Compiègne, Francis had already favourably received the representations of the town, and had even told them: "Si vous avez esté bien traictez par mes prédecesseurs, j'entens et veux vous traicter encore mieux." So that when the King had reached the Priory of Grandmont, the deputies sent out to meet him were in excellent spirits. They were de Brézé, Captain of the Town and Grand Seneschal; the Bailli, Jean de la Barre; the President of the Financial Court, Jean Auber; and the President of Parliament, Jean de Brinon. By three o'clock these gentlemen joined the royal cortège and advanced towards Rouen itself, being met at the bridge by the Town Councillors bearing above the King's head a great and spacious canopy of cloth of gold, the highest mark of honour that the town could render.
Before His Majesty rode the "Grand Écuyer," Galéas de Severin, bearing the sword of state on a great white horse. On his right was Cardinal de Boisy, brother of Admiral Bonivet, and on his left Cardinal Antoine Bohier, the nephew of Chancellor Duprat. Next to the King was Monsieur d'Alençon, whose powers as Lieutenant-Governor of Normandywere wielded by d'Amboise during his absence at the Italian wars. Behind him came Charles de Bourbon the Constable, who was to die as a rebel in Rome two years later. With them were John Stuart, Duke of Albany, nephew of James III. of Scotland; the Comte de St. Pol; Louis de la Tremouille, the most brilliant knight of his time; Maximilian Sforza, the eldest son of that Il Moro who had been imprisoned in the dungeons of Loches; Jacques de Chabannes; Anne de Montmorency, who had been one of the King's playfellows and grew up into the sternest Constable France ever had; Guillaume, Sieur de St. Vallier, the father of Diane de Poitiers, who also learnt the horrors of Loches for his share in Bourbon's wild conspiracy; the second Georges d'Amboise, himself Archbishop of Rouen, with their Lordships of Lisieux, Avranches, Evreux, and Paris; Antoine Duprat, the Chancellor; and Florimond Robertet, the King's Treasurer, whose house is still at Blois.
Men were thinking little of the future of this brilliant company as they passed through Rouen in the summer sunshine, and even on the south side of the river the welcoming pageantry began. For at the first "theatre" the King beheld a great Fleur de Lys, which opened and slowly displayed three damsels representing the virtues of His Majesty, of the Queen, and of Madame la Régente. The stream itself, on each side of the bridge, was gay with the flags and sails of every craft along the quays. Beyond it was a group of Titans, thunderstruck by Jupiter amid the stupor of the other gods in a dismayed Olympus. The next stage showed Theseus welcomed by Thalia, Euphrosyne and Aglaia, who led the hero to Pallas to receive from her the shield of Prudence, and take his place among the starry divinities. Need it be added that both Jupiter and Theseus were the King?Within the cemetery of St. Ouen three martial monks were storming the semblance of a guarded tower. At the Ponts de Robec appeared a wondrous similitude of the sky upheld by Hercules and Atlas, in the midst whereof disported a bellicose and most lively salamander, slaying a bull and a bear, in graceful reference to the victory of the Marignano, with this astonishing quatrain:—
"La Salamandre en vertu singulièreLors estaignit l'horrible feu de MarsQuant au grant ours emporta la banièreEt du thoreau rompit cornes et dardz."
At the Parvis Notre Dame appeared the image of a marvellous great horse, rearing up his forefeet into the air, on which sat the effigy of the King, of so natural a mould that breath alone was wanting to its life, an ostentatious decoration which was done, say the Town Accounts with some pride, "pour ancunement ensuyvir et émuler le triumphe des Romains." All the streets were hung with gaily-coloured cloths, and tapestries fell gracefully in glowing folds from every window. All the church-doors, opened to the widest, displayed their ornaments and shrines in bewildering profusion. All the church bells, which had their signal from "Georges d'Amboise" and "Marie d'Estouteville" in the Cathedral, were ringing lustily. And at last, his official reception over, François I. was able to go to the lodgings prepared for him in the palace of the Archbishop. Neither he nor any of his suite were allowed to forget the welcome of the Town; for, after the Chapterhouse had presented their traditional and proper loaves of bread and wine, His Majesty was offered a great golden salamander ("assise sur une terrasse," whatever that may mean) by the Town, who must have wished that they had got off aseasily as the canons; for, in addition to this, the councillors gave to the Queen a golden cup, to Louise de Savoie a pair of silver-gilt goblets, to Princess Marguerite a silver-gilt image of St. Francis, to M. de Boisy two great ewers and basins, to Chancellor Du Prat six silver "hanaps" and five great dishes, all richly gilt. And no doubt both gifts and recipients had been carefully chosen with a view to securing an impartial consideration for the claims made by the Town.
On the next afternoon, from the Priory of Bonne Nouvelle, rode in Queen Claude, dressed in a white robe of cloth of silver, on a white hackney, with Louise de Savoie, her mother-in-law, on one side, and Marguerite d'Alençon (afterwards Queen of Navarre) upon the other. And for the Queen was prepared at the Portail des Libraires a special "theatre," wherein was represented a garden, and the Virgin Mary clad all in white damask, with a lamb beside her, feeding upon grapes and rosebuds, at which the clever Princess Marguerite must have laughed almost as much as at the clumsy quatrains. Every prisoner in the dungeon of the new "Palais de Justice" and in every prison of the town was set free, except three especially "bad cases," who were hurried to Louviers before Francis reached Rouen, and brought back to Rouen when he had got to Louviers. As a contrast to this unfortunate greediness of the law, it is recorded that many persons hastened to confess their crimes, got imprisoned just before he arrived, and were joyfully delivered at his entry, all of which satisfied justice in 1517 very thoroughly indeed.
Some substantial results soon began to reward the Town and the Chapterhouse for all their loyalty, in the subscription of 10,000 livres from His Majesty (in yearly instalments) to the Cathedral Fund for restoring the central spire which had just been burnt. Most of what the Town Councillors desired was also granted. So that everybody was thoroughly well satisfied with the royal visit, and some little choir-boys were so fascinated with the royal escort that when the King went to Louviers and Gaillon, these little runaways marched off with Lautrec's troops, and I regret to relate that the priests caught them at the next halt, and not only soundly flogged the truants, but took away all their holidays as well.
BUREAU DES FINANCES, FROM THE PARVISBut it must not be thought that the King had come to Rouen merely to delight his subjects with the sun of his presence and the favours of his consent. He had certain business of his own to transact, of a financial nature; and for raising the various sums he needed, both for personal and patriotic reasons, there was already in existence certain financial machinery which was housed in very fair quarters in Rouen. Two of the most beautiful of the sixteenth century buildings have to do with finance. One of them is the "Bureau des Finances" (as its latest title ran), opposite the Cathedral at the corner of the Rue Ampère; the other is the "Cour des Comptes," whose Eastern façade and courtyard hasjust been opened to the Rue des Carmes, north-west of the Tour St. Romain.
With the first of these the same King had to do who built the "Palais de Justice." It was during his visit in 1508 that Louis XII., shocked with the narrow crowded streets all round the Parvis, destroyed the various money-changers' hovels, and ordered the building of a "Hôtel des Généraux de Finance" on the spot where these had stood. The Church of St. Herbland was only just finished at the corner of the Rue de la Grosse Horloge, and in 1510, Thomas Bohier asked the canons to allow a hut to be built in the Parvis for the convenience of his masons, just as the Church had done. In 1512 the neighbouring citizens petitioned the Chapterhouse that this hut should be removed. It was between these dates, therefore, that Rouland le Roux, whose work on the Cathedral façade you will remember (p. 130), began the building of this exquisite house. It was certainly completed by 1541, and was probably used some time before that date.
Mutilated and degraded to base uses as this fine piece of French Renaissance has now become, it is still possible to realise what Le Roux first built; and in his heavy cornice I cannot help imagining a suggestion of Italian feeling made by that same King whose wars in Italy had given him a sense of proportion and of beauty that may be seen again in his desire to clear the surroundings of the Cathedral, an idea quite contrary to French mediæval notions, and in his spacious plans for the great Palace of the Law. Be that as it may, nothing could well be more appropriate than the whole decoration of this corner house. Before shops had invaded its ground-floor, and advertisements had defaced the exquisite line of carvings just above, the Rez de chaussée had seven low arcades whose pilasters and windows were carved with medallions,candelabra, and "grotesques" in low relief. Over the vaulted entrance was the shield of France, borne by the Porcupines of Louis XII. Above this is an "entresol" of tiny circular windows alternating with medallions of crowns held up by genii. The next storey has seven windows with beautifully carved pilasters. It is far better preserved than the rest, but the two niches have lost their statues, and a corbelled tower was destroyed in 1827, when shops were first put in.
The first Général des Finances for Normandy was Thomas Bohier, whose fortunes I have traced at his Château of Chenonceaux in Touraine. He was as unfortunate as every other great financier of these centuries, and though his end was less ignominious than the disgracefully unjust punishment which Louise de Savoie inflicted on his relation, Jacques de Beaune Semblançay, his life was scarcely less troubled; and after leaving his bones in Italy with so many of the best of François' courtiers, he bequeathed little but embarrassment to his son, and Diane de Poitiers took his château. His office in Rouen he held from 1494, in the town where his brother Antoine had done so much for St. Ouen. Indeed every one of these "Surintendants," even to Fouquet of more modern memory, is associated either personally or indirectly with so much of the beautiful in architecture and art that posterity has almost forgiven them mistakes which were due more to the régime they lived under than to their own shortcomings.
After 1587 the prisons of the Hôtel des Généraux were changed from the ordinary criminal cells to separate dungeons in the Rue du Petit Salut, where I have fancied I could still trace them in the gloomy cells at the back of No. 13 Rue Ampère, which tradition assigns to the "Filles Repenties" of the eighteenth century. In 1554 the Hôtel des Généraux was calledCour des Aides, and by the changes of 1705 it was joined to the Cour des Comptes in the Rue des Carmes, and the new Bureau des Finances took the house in the Parvis I have just described, which still preserves its name. In the general destruction of 1796 the house was sold to a private owner.
The second Financial building you must see is the Cour des Comptes, whose courtyard opens on the Rue des Carmes,[63]with another entrance on the Rue des Quatre Vents. This was originally the property of M. Romé, Sieur de Fresquiennes and Baron du Bec Crespin, who received there the Duc de Joyeuse, Governor of Normandy. The large square which originally composed it was built about 1525, and its beauty may be imagined from the eastern façade and the southern wing (containing the Chapel) which still remain. On this eastern front, the two stages above the ground-floor are of equal height, each with six windows, separated by pilasters of several different orders, decorated with capitals and candelabras and groups of mythological subjects, such as Mars, Venus, the Muses, and various instruments. The south wing is built in four round-arched arcades with flat Corinthian pilasters, three of which are in the nave of the Chapel, and two in its Sanctuary. The second floor has square windows.
What Rouen had asked from Charles VII. a century before she only obtained when Francis I. gave her a Cour des Comptes separate from the Financial Committee in Paris; but the boon was scarcely appreciated when it was discovered that the King not only levied taxes on local merchandise to pay his new judges, but also made quite a good thing out of selling theoffices to the highest bidder. In 1580 the need of this Court began to be felt again, in a town which possessed its own High Court of Justice, suitably housed, and also its Financial Bureau in the Parvis. But all receivers of taxes had to go to Paris to settle their accounts, so had all proprietors of fiefs, all men who wished to register their letters of naturalisation, nobility, exemption, or enfranchisement, and many others. So in December of that year the Sieur de Bourdemy, then President of Parliament, established a separate Cour des Comptes at Rouen, modelled upon the Court in Paris, and held its first meetings in the Priory of St. Lô. In 1589 the house just described in the Rue des Carmes was bought by Tanneguy le Veneur for eight thousand crowns, and the arcaded wing was consecrated as a chapel in 1593. In 1790 it was swept away like every similar organisation in France, and to the fact that it was probably forgotten and built over, we owe the preservation even of what little still remains.
COUR DES COMPTES, FROM THE RUE DES CARMESBefore you leave the atmosphere of Finance and Justice, which in this chapter I have striven to realise for you round those monuments that alone recall the spirit of the age which built them, there is one more tale of Justice in Rouen which may perhaps leave a more charitable impression of the Palais de Justice and its officials. It has been told before by Étienne Pasquier, but it will bear translation (and even shortening) for an English audience. In the days when Laurent Bigot de Thibermesnil was first King's Advocate in the Parliament of Normandy, one of those brilliant intellects of which the sixteenth century was so full, it chanced that a merchant of Lucca, who had lived long and prosperously in England, desired to come home and die in Italy. So he wrote to his relations to prepare a house for him in six months' time, and started from England with his servant, carrying his money and bonds with him. On his way to Paris he was known to have stopped at Rouen, but he was never heard of again.
His servant, however, appeared in Paris, cashed his master's papers, and returned. Meanwhile the family at Lucca waited for a whole year and heard nothing. At last they sent a messenger for news to London, who was told that the merchant was known to have started for Rouen, and traces of the man were also found at the hotel in Rouen, where he had lodged before setting out for Paris. Then all searches and inquiries proved useless; the merchant seemed to have vanished into thin air; and in despair the messenger applied for help to the High Court in the Palais de Justice of Rouen. An officer was at once appointed to conduct investigations in the town, while Laurent Bigot searched for evidence outside. The first thing the officer found out was that a new shop had been started in Rouen soon after Zambelli the Italian had disappeared. He at once determined to examine its owner, who was a stranger in the town, named François; and with this object he had him arrested on a trumped-up charge and put in custody. On his way to prison the man denied the charge, but asked, "Is there anything else you have against me?" The officer at once went a little further, and taking the prisoner apart he roundly charged him with having robbed and murderedZambelli, but intimated at the same time that "the matter might be arranged quietly."
François evidently imagined this to be a hint that a bribe might not be unsuccessful, and admitted that his crime must have been discovered, but by what miracle he could not understand, for he had been alone at the time. However, when he was asked to swear to this, he withdrew hastily, recognising his mistake. The officer then remanded him, and searched for further evidence. Bigot meanwhile had been making inquiries all along the road from Rouen to Paris, until at Argenteuil he found a Bailly who had held an inquest over a dead body found among the vineyards. While Bigot was taking a copy of the minutes of this inquest, a blind man came up to the hotel where he was lodged asking for alms, and, as he listened to their conversation, asserted that he had heard a man crying out on the slopes above Argenteuil, and that when he had tried to find out what was happening, a second voice had told him it was a sick man in pain, and he had therefore gone on his way thinking no more about it.
Bigot took him back to Rouen forthwith, and made him give the same story on oath before a justice, with the addition that he would certainly be able to recognise the second of the two voices he had heard. The new shopkeeper, François, was then brought into Court, and after twenty other men had spoken, the blind man picked out his voice among them all, as that which had spoken to him on the slopes above Argenteuil. The test was repeated again and again, and invariably the blind man picked out the same voice. François, who had weakened visibly as each test proved successful, at last fell on his knees and confessed that he had murdered his master and taken the papers to Paris; and the Court immediately condemned him to be broken on the wheel.
I have been able to suggest but a very few of the thoughts which the Palais de Justice of Rouen should arouse in you; and of many points in its history I have no space to tell; as of the "Clercs de l'Échiquier" called the "Basoche," a merry company established in 1430, and enlivening the records of the law for many centuries afterwards, as you will see at the visit of Henri II. But after all, the main impression is a very sombre one. The bitter sarcasms of Rabelais are but too well founded. Mediæval justice was almost as terrible as mediæval crime, and both were followed only too frequently by death. For these old judges let no money go, however prodigal they were of life and suffering; they scarcely ever let a prisoner go who had once got into the grim machinery of their courts; and any miserable victim who was once cast into one of their many dungeons must have welcomed his release from lingering agony in death.
DEAD BODY OF DE BRÉZÉ
THE DEAD BODY OF DE BRÉZÉ, FROM HIS TOMBIN ROUEN CATHEDRAL
Sedentes in tenebris et in umbra mortis, vinctos in mendicitate.
... Comme sur un drap noirSur la tristesse immense et sombreLe blanc squelette se fait voir....... Des cercueils lève le couvercleAvec ses bras aux os pointus,Dessine ses côtes en cercleEt rit de son large rictus.
THE artist who first truly understood the rendering of light is also the workman whose shadows are the deepest in every scene he drew. If I were to leave you with an impression of the sixteenth century either in Rouen or elsewhere—that was composed of gorgeous ceremonial, of exquisite architecture, of superabundant energy and life, and of these only, you would neither appreciate the many influences which wrought upon the men and women of those days, nor estimate at their true worth the changing events, on which we now look back in the large perspective of so many generations. And in that strange century the sorrow and the pain of a world in travail are as evidentas its joy. The feverish excitement with which it grasped at life and pleasure is counterbalanced, and explained by the ever-present horror of death in its most ghastly forms.
When a fact of this eternal and natural significance is once frankly recognised and bravely faced, men do not think much about it afterwards, and say less. In the ages when the greatest of the cathedrals were built the personification of death is practically unknown. Archæologists may imagine they discover it; but I shall never believe that a single carving of it existed before the close of the fifteenth century. Life they knew, not only in all its varied forms, but as the soul. Sin they knew, and carved not merely in the full shame of the act but in the person of the father of sin, the devil, bat-winged and taloned, hovering over his prey on earth, or driving his victims after death into gaping Hellmouth where his torturers awaited them. But it was only when printing excited men's imaginations, when the first discovery of the ancient classics roused their emulation and stimulated their unrest, when the Renaissance in art increased their eagerness to express their thoughts and multiplied their methods of expression, when the Reformation turned their conscience to the latter end and to the unseen world—only at such a time of speculation and disquiet did Death himself appear, personified and hideously exultant. The waters were troubled and the slime beneath them came up to the surface. Instead of the bold imaginations of God or man or beast which the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries knew, you find a crowd of tiny imps and monkeys, like the verminous throng upon the Portail des Marmousets at St. Ouen; the higher forms of creation disappeared before the presence of the Arch-Enemy.
There arose not only a great contempt for the value of human life, but a gross familiarity with death.The poor man, dying in his unregarded thousands, clutched to his starved heart the one consolation that the rich could not escape contagion. To the judge upon his bench, to the queen in her palace, to the cardinal in his state, to the king at his high festival, to the very Pope himself, death came as unerringly as to the ploughman sweating in his furrow. And the rich made haste to enjoy the little time they had. The best of that old life which remains to us is its buildings. From them and from the carvings on them we can imagine the fruitful, busy, breeding existence of that hurrying sixteenth century. Painters and sculptors worked as in a frenzy, covering canvas by the acre and striking whole armies of statues into serried ranks of stone. Men fought with swords that weaker generations can with difficulty flourish in the air; they wore armour that would make a cart-horse stagger. Quarrels, duels, riots, rapes, drinking-bouts, gallantries, and murders followed one another in a hot succession that takes away the breath of modern strait-laced commentators. Life that came easily into the world was spent as recklessly, and blood flowed as plentifully as wine. Rough horseplay and rude practical joking were of the essence of humorous courtliness. Immense processions filled with life and colour, jesting at everything sacred or profane, crowded with symbols decent and indecent, made up the sum of public happiness. Close at men's elbow lay the heavy hand of a merciless and blood-stained law. Once beneath the power of "Justice" the miserable prisoner had little hope of escaping before the legal Juggernaut had crushed him, and he was lucky who died quickest at the executioner's hands. The very criminals themselves sinned in a more stupendous fashion than they have had the courage to do since.
If I have not wearied you with quotations from the record of the Fierte St. Romain, I will pick out buttwo more instances in this century to show you that I do not speak without book at Rouen. In 1516, Nicolas de la Rue, whose sister had been married in Guernsey, discovered her in an intrigue with the commandant's son, and slew them both with one stroke of his sword. Thereon the commandant of the island called out 120 foot-soldiers, but De la Rue armed the crew of his vessel, drove them off, killed two with his own hand and sailed away to Normandy. There he fell desperately in love with a lady near Surville-sur-Mer, and taking his men with him carried her off from the Château de Commare. After keeping her with him for some time under promise of marriage, he captured an English vessel on the high seas after peace had been declared on both sides of the Channel, and was condemned to two years' banishment. At the end of this time he returned to Harfleur to recover some twenty thousand livres (the produce of former piracies in the English Channel) which he had left in the keeping of Mademoiselle de Commare.
But the lady had returned to her own family and carried off his money with her. When he followed to her house, she offered him only ten crowns, so he stayed in the village near by until he could devise a plan to get back his treasure. The lady called her friends and relations, and they tried to arrest De la Rue one morning in the market, with the result that several of them were badly wounded. At last a larger force managed to secure him, and threw him into a prison at Rouen on the capital charge of abduction. While there it was proved that he had stabbed a man to death in Harfleur in a quarrel about a woman; that at Janval, near Arques, he had punished a fellow called Bonnetot for insulting a comrade, by running him through with a rapier, from which Bonnetot died; and that in a quarrel about another woman he had dangerously wounded a naval officer with his dagger; and in these littleescapades no mention is made of the countless acts of piracy on the high seas, which can seldom have been accomplished without considerable loss of life.
But this record is nothing to the second and last example which I shall take from the prisoners of the "Fierte." In 1541 a young gentleman named François de Fontenay, Sieur de Saint-Remy, aged twenty-nine, was pardoned by the canons after a career which I can only sketch in the roughest outlines. When he was only fifteen, he got some friends to help him and killed a sergeant who had displeased him by carrying stories of his behaviour to his mother. When a little older, in a village of the Côtentin, at the request of a young lady he professed to love, he laid an ambush with some friends for a Monsieur des Mostiers, but only succeeded in wounding him severely, and barely escaped the execution that punished one of his comrades in the same affair. Developing rapidly into a bravo of the first water, he attacked a man "at the request of le sieur de Danmesnil," and wounded him mortally with his rapier in the thigh. Being at a house in Montgardon with his mother and brother, he held it against forty armed men who had come in the name of the law to arrest them both, shot an arquebusier with his own hand, and beat the troop off before the help for which he managed to send had had time to arrive. Nor was he without friends who were quite worthy of their company.
In the year before de Fontenay himself enjoyed the Privilège de St. Romain, it had been extended, at the express wish of several members of the royal family, to four sons of the Baron d'Aunay, the Duke of Orléans being especially urgent in pointing out that these poor fellows had done nothing in his opinion that should debar them from the privilege. They were, as a matter of fact, merely charged with the following peccadilloes, among others. In the course of rescuinga friend from the Communal authorities at Saint-Avon, they used the town-folk so roughly that a man and a woman fell into a well during the dispute, and were drowned. On their way to the wars they met a man with his wife upon the bridge near their home, and annoyed at not having enough room left for their horses, they dismounted, tied up the man's hands and feet, and beat the woman cruelly before her husband's eyes. On the death of their grandmother, who had married twice, they visited her second husband to get possession of certain legal papers, and when he resisted they ran him through the stomach with a rapier. Enlisted for once upon the side of justice, they were clamouring at a house for the surrender of a murderer who had taken refuge there, and when the owner opened the door they killed him with a slash across the body. Pursued themselves by the officers, they waited till they were on their own land, then turned and charged the men, sword in hand, secured their horses, and thrashed one of them with knotted thorns. Before they were finally taken by the sergeants of Rouen they had thrown themselves into the church of Aulnay and defended it against forty armed men, wounding several of them with crossbow-bolts before they surrendered.
Our friend François de Fontenay was acquainted with this gallant band of brothers through the house of Créance, with which both were connected; and their sturdy resistance to the law of the land must have soon created a strong feeling of sympathy and admiration; for the five men are found all joined together to accomplish the murder of one Boullart near Caen. Wherever de Fontenay went it soon became the fashion among the villages to oppose his progress; but this made little difference, for both at Neufbourg and at Fert-Macé, either by his own hand or by his servants, several "common people," who were so ill-advised as to get in the way were killed, and at Dun-le-Roy hewas compelled to fight his way out, using the edge of his rapier right and left, "with considerable loss of life among the peasants." They had been the centre (and their swords were never idle) of similar riots, near Bourges, in the streets of Falaise, at Lisieux, and elsewhere. More high-born foes were treated in just as summary a fashion. With his brother Jehan, François attacked his enemy St. Germain (a Côtentin magistrate) on the bridge at Lyons, wounded him four times, and left him dead. His shoemaker was late in delivering some boots, so François visited him, sword-in-hand, carried off two other pairs, and "has not yet been known to pay for them." Other necessities he had not scrupled to provide himself with in a similar way. Oxen and sheep from a farmer called Lemoyne, chickens from a priory near Bayeux, more sheep from the Sieur de Grosparmy, horses from another farmer, flour from a third. A husband who objected to giving up his wife at St. Lô was promptly wounded, so severely that he could only watch her helplessly as she was carried off.
Such are a few of the crimes, of which Monsieur de Fontenay confessed the astonishing number of forty-two. After his acquittal of them all, by virtue of the Fierte, the canons were for some six months kept hard at work dealing out similar deliverances to the crowd of his accomplices who kept on appearing from every side, and clamouring for the mercy of the Chapterhouse. Though I can conceive no worse precedent for the future of the Fierte, I need make no further comment upon the fact of de Fontenay's deliverance, except that he was so well aware of the detestation he had inspired in many of his victims that he was afraid to make any public appearance in the streets of Rouen for fear of assassination.
ENTRANCE TO THE AÎTRE ST. MACLOURemembering this man's career, turn out of the Place des Ponts de Robec, down the Rue Damiette,southwards, and I will show you the spot in Rouen that has made me tell you something of his history as a type of the young gallant of the sixteenth century. As you pass the "Rue du Rosier" (on your left at No. 54), the "Impasse des Hauts Mariages" appears a little further on. Any budding romance the name may suggest will not survive a walk of a few yards up its narrow and noisome recesses. But at the end of the Rue Damiette, behind the vista of old houses, the arches of St. Maclou will tempt you irresistibly towards the end of the road that curves out at the north-west corner of the church, just opposite the famous fountain which has been so mutilated by the Huguenots. At this point turn sharply to the left, down the Rue Martainville eastwards. To the south the Rue Molière flings its quaint legendary shadows towards the river. A little further on, a dark square opening makes a patch of black beneath the gabled windows of No. 190. That is the entrance to the Aître St. Maclou, the oldest cemetery in Rouen, and one of the most interesting in Europe. Pass through the dark passage into the open space beyondthat is surrounded by old timbered houses, and go straight through to the little stairway that is opposite the entrance. From that slight eminence you may look back upon the strangest scene you have yet visited; if it is an autumn afternoon the little charity children will be running to and fro beneath the emblems of death carved on the timbers above their heads, while the religious sisters, in their grey gowns and wide white head-dresses move slowly to and fro beside them. It is the picture of another century, in its appropriate setting.
As the sun sets slowly and the shadows gather, this aged sepulchre of the dead of Rouen gradually gives up its secrets, and the ancient city of past centuries reappears to the grating of the rebec of the "Danse Macabre." The broad boulevards of the morning sink into the soil, and in their place there gapes a mighty moat with massive buttresses above it. The Seine of yesterday grows wider, pushing the Quais back to the foot of the town walls, and above his youthful waters slope the rounded arches built by the Empress Matilda, wife of Geoffrey Plantagenet. The streets and houses shrink into a narrower limit, bounded by a line of bastions, with crenelated towers at intervals, and eight gates each with its watch-tower and drawbridge and portcullis.
Above the battlemented walls, the airy spires and mighty pyramids of the City of Churches rise from thirty-five parishes, and from four and thirty monasteries. Three donjon keeps dominate the town. Upon the St. Catherine's Mount a fortress holds the hill, and above it rise the towers of the Abbey of St. Trinité du Mont. Within every church the monuments and carvings are still fresh and unmutilated. The royal statues, long since lost, sleep peacefully in the Cathedral choir, and the pomp of death spreads its sombre magnificence in every sacred building. The oldfountains are playing in the squares and streets. The fountain of St. Maclou, which had two figures like the Mannekin of Brussels; the Croix de Pierre, with statues in every niche; the St. Vincent, with its great daïs overshadowing a group of the Nativity, and water spouting from the mouths of oxen in the manger; the Lacrosse with the Virgin and her Child; the Lisieux, whereon was carved the Mount Parnassus with Apollo and the Muses, Pegasus too, and a great triple-headed matron for Philosophy, and two bronze salamanders vomiting streams of water; all the fountains that Jacques Lelieur has traced for us are perfect and are playing in the town whose streets he drew in 1525.
The sky grows darker, and the rain falls, as it fell then, even more frequently than now; but we can pass beneath the "avant-soliers," those covered galleries that line the squares and market-places to give shade or shelter to the merchant and his purchasers, and behind their heavy timbers we shall be safe from the great wains of country produce, or the lumbering chariots of the town, with their leather hangings stamped in gold, dragged by the heavy Norman horses. The streets are as narrow as they were first built in Pompeii; sixteen feet is thought enough for the principal arteries of traffic, others measure but ten feet, or even six, across. They are so crooked and the line of houses on each side is often so uneven that it seems as if the windings of some country footpath have been left in all their primitive irregularity, and decorated here and there with casual dwellings, while the gaps are filled in roughly as time goes on and space grows more precious every year. This haphazard arrangement has no doubt resulted in a certain picturesqueness of disposition and perspective, and even in a tortuous maze of buildings very difficult for any foreign enemy to assault; but it is obvious that the city's internal plan has owed nothing either to military oræsthetic considerations at the outset. For these streets that were not paved at all until the fifteenth century, are only covered with rude stones, and look more like the interior of a vast open drain than anything; pigs and other animals stroll into them from the open doorways of the commoner houses, and even the richer families seem to consider that the highway is little more than a commodious dust-bin.
Above the mire and stench of the street rise houses which seem to topple forward into the morass beneath; each storey overhangs the last, until the trowsy gables almost rub against each other at the top, and nearly shut out every breath of air or glimpse of sky. Close above the pavement, and swinging in the rain, a multitude of signs and strange carvings blot out the little light remaining; Tritons, sirens and satyrs are cheek by jowl with dragons, open-mouthed, their tails in monstrous curves. Vast gilded barrels, bunches of grapes as huge as ever came out of the Promised Land, images of the Three Kings of the East, six-pointed stars, enormous fleurs de lys, great pillars painted blue or red, cockatrices and popinjays and bears and elephants; a whole menagerie of fabulous creatures hang over the lintels of almost every house; for in the days when numbers are not, many habitations have to be distinguished by a sign besides the taverns and the hostelries and shops. Higher up still the long thin gargoyles peer into the clouded air; clutching at the outmost edge of wall, they stretch as far forward as they may and are every one in actual service, spouting showers of rain and refuse from the roof into the crowded road. Upon the walls themselves, in low relief, every panel has its medallion, a classical head within a wreath of bay-leaves, a more modern celebrity ringed by the mottoes and emblems of his lineage. Above the doorway of the merchant is carved his galleon in full sail; the armourer displays a brave scene, of a soldier hackinghis way with an irresistible rapier through the mob of caitiffs who had been so foolish as to buy their swords at other shops; over the next porch is carved a horse without a rider, hastening across the bridge to bring the tidings of the murder of his master in the suburbs; elsewhere is sculptured the Holy City with a humble wayfarer approaching from one side, and a noble from the other. Every building has a character of its own, a personality apart from other houses in the street, and nearly all are gay with paint and gilding, and instinct with a natural feeling for artistic decoration that was only appreciated at its true worth after the Huguenot iconoclasts had wrecked it.
Amid all this life and colour death and the taint of death are ever present, for every church is little better than a charnel-house, and in the crowded city nearly eighty cemeteries are packed with dead. Magnificent processions of princes and of great prelates march through the town by day; they are followed by the riot of the Mascarade des Conards, a burlesque throng of some two thousand fantastic dresses careering madly up and down the streets, chased by the "Clercs de la Basoche," or racing after every sober citizen in sight. It is lucky if the Huguenots have not seized the town and filled the churches with a mob of fanatics, smashing everything with hammers, and making bonfires of the sacred vestments in the streets, or if the Catholics are not just taking their revenge by burning their enemies alive or murdering Protestant children in their little beds. Even on ordinary days there is horror enough only too visible. You need not go so far as the gibbets just above the town where corpses are clattering in chains beneath the wind; on the Place du Vieux Marché a sacrilegious priest is being slowly strangled; in the Parvis Notre Dame a blasphemer's throat is cut; close by the churchyard, a murderer's hand is chopped off, and he is hurried away to execution on the scaffoldby the Halles. From a by-street the leper's bell sounds fitfully, and out of the darkened house beyond, men in St. Michael's livery are bearing the last victims of the Plague to burial within the city walls. In 1522 there were 50,000 of such burials in Rouen alone in six months. Every gallant who goes by with his feathered cap and velvet cloak, his tightly-fitting hose and slashed shoes, every lady in her purple hat and stiff-starched ruff, her gold-brocaded stomacher, and her sweeping skirt, every soldier swaggering his rapier, every sailor rolling home from sea, every monk mumbling his prayers over a rosary—all alike are breathing an infectedpoisonous air. The young girls from the country feel it most and fly from it the quickest, coming in to sell their eggs and chickens, with their woollen petticoats and gaily coloured headdress, or meeting some lover of the town at a dark corner in the narrow, damp, ill-ventilated streets. Here and there a silent figure clad in blue stalks from one house to another and leaves the mark of a great white cross upon the fast-shut door or shutters, for within there is the Plague. And upon every passer-by outside there blows continually the invisible blast of pestilence from the countless graveyards pent up in the choking circuit of the walls. From the thirteenth century onwards the city has been swept with the desolating scourge of hideous disease. It was in 1348, when the ravages of the Black Death were at their highest and 100,000 persons died of it in Rouen that this cemetery of St. Maclou was founded.
CEMETERY OF ST. MACLOU
THE CEMETERY OF ST. MACLOU
Within the central space of the square court that you can see to-day is the actual ground which formed this ancient graveyard. Formerly there were two altars in it, one to the Slayer of the infernal Dragon, the mighty Saint of Sepulchres, the protector of the dead, St. Michael; the other to the souls of the dead themselves. In many a country churchyard in France at the present day you may see a tall lonely shaft that rises above the tombs, generally with a tiny belfry at its summit, which holds the bell that rings at midnight to call the wandering ghosts to rest; and at its base this "Lanterne des Morts" carries a small slab of stone on which offerings were placed at night. It was the Confrèrie de St. Michel who had charge of this, and of the burying arrangements of the city, and they bore upon their hats the image of their patron-saint as a badge of their sad calling. Twice before 1505 this graveyard had to be enlarged; by 1526 three of the galleries that now surround it had been built, those to the west and south and east. The northern side was finished only in 1640.Of the older work there are still thirty-one columns standing, some eleven feet apart, carved with subjects from the famous "Dance of Death," the "Danse Macabre" of Rouen.
But these curtains that circumscribe the Bed of Death have other emblems carved upon them too; there is a double frieze of oak above the pillars, and on it appears the skull and crossbones, the spade and mattock, the fragments of pitiful anatomy that marked the ghastly trade of sexton in the sixteenth century. In the covered galleries, as they were originally, the richer burgesses were buried, though not one of their memorial stones remains; into the open space were flung the poor proletariat, who had gone through life marked with a yellow cross upon their arms, and found in death an undistinguished and promiscuous burial. Looking down upon them all in their last troubled sleep, were the figures carved in high relief upon each pillar, groups that are so mutilated now that only by the careful drawings and descriptions left by M. Langlois long ago can we trace faintly what was placed there by Denys Leselin the carver and his brother Adam, and by Gaultier Leprevost, whose names are preserved in the church registers of St. Maclou.