Justice

’Or ca’ nous dit Grippeminaud, au milieu de ses Chats-fourrez ’par Stix, puisqu’ autre chose ne veux dire, or ca, je te monstreray, or ca, que meilleur te seroit estre tombe entre les pattes de Lucifer, or ca, et de tous les Diables, or ca, qu’entre nos gryphes, or ca; les vois-tu bien? Or ca, malautru, nous allegues tu innocence, or ca, comme chose digne d’eschapper nos tortures? Or ca, nos Loix sont comme toile d’araignes; lé grand Diable vous y chantera Messe, or ca’.

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 Fierté 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 lé 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 from a 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 Bezet 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 she snatched 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 lé 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 Etienne 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 Clerot, 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 “couturiere” the heroine of the Fierté. 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 an apparition 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.

Priests 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 to get 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, where the betrothal was solemnised. The next day they rode to Cambremer, and the happy pair were married, “lé sieur de Boissey,” says the manuscript, “espousa sa fiancee 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 Fierté 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 Fierté; 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 Etrepagny received the Fierté 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 Morissiere, 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 Etienne lé Monnier, her relation, resolved to avenge her, and took 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 Morissiere 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 lé 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 Fierté 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 Maitre Houeel, and by a clause in the marriage-settlement it was arranged that the father-in-law should board and lodge the young couple for three years. 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 Fierté 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,” in the 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 Fierté which I suppose no one will ever be able to unravel.

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 Fierté 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 escape from 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 no doubt did some good in this direction, and by 1490 the first printer in Rouen, Martin Morin, was established in the Rue St. Lo, 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 Marche. 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 engendre de sang damne ne peut avoir, comme hoir, aulcune succession d’heritage.” 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, Bretignieres 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 Bretignieres’ 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.

Bretignieres 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 their father 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 Bretignieres 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 Bretignieres, 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 Damne.”

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. made the 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 Chateau 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 Chateau 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 “Rentree de la St. Martin,” and in which St. Romain’s chosen prisoner knelt before he went out to the procession of the Fierté. Beneath are the prisons and dungeons of the High Court of Rouen. This is the building that Louis XII. ordered to be set up, and into which he transferred the Échiquier from the Chateau 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.

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 Hotel 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 Hotel 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 the town 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 este bien traictez par mes prédécesseurs, 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 Breze, 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 cortege 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 Ecuyer,” Galeas 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 Normandy were 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, Évreux, 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 singulière
Lors estaignit l’horrible feu de Mars
Quant au grant ours emporta la baniere
Et 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 lé 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, Francois 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 as easily 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.

But 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 Ampere; the other is the “Cour des Comptes,” whose Eastern façade and courtyard has just 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 “Hotel des Generaux 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 lé Roux, whose work on the Cathedral façade you will remember , 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 mediaeval 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 chaussee 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 General des Finances for Normandy was Thomas Bohier, whose fortunes I have traced at his Chateau 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 Semblancay, his life was scarcely less troubled; and after leaving his bones in Italy with so many of the best of Francois’ courtiers, he bequeathed little but embarrassment to his son, and Diane de Poitiers took his chateau. 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 regime they lived under than to their own shortcomings.

After 1587 the prisons of the Hotel des Generaux 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 N Rue Ampere, which tradition assigns to the “Filles Repenties” of the eighteenth century. In 1554 the Hotel des Generaux was called Cour 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, with another entrance on the Rue des Quatre Vents. This was originally the property of M. Rome, 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 the offices 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. Lo. In 1589 the house just described in the Rue des Carmes was bought by Tanneguy lé 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.

Before 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 Etienne 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 Francois; 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 murdered Zambelli, but intimated at the same time that “the matter might be arranged quietly.”

Francois 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, Francois, 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. Francois, 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’Echiquier” 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. Mediaeval justice was almost as terrible as mediaeval 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.