f his
forefather.

So I have somewhat altered the plan of the next chapters in accordance
with what I suspect to be the sympathies of those who have done me the
honour to follow me thus far.

If you are content to let me guide you further among the many
buildings, whose very origin I have not yet had time to trace, you
will find that to nearly every one of them may be attached some
brilliant episode that stands out in a century, or some overshadowing
personage whose life-story dominates a generation of his
fellow-citizens. So that, as we visit these old walls together, they
shall speak to us in no uncertain voice, of the lives of those who
built them, and of the progress of the town. Until now, there have
been but few buildings to which I could point as the visible witnesses
of my written word. So that my story has had to proceed but slowly on
its way, without the illustration which your eyes in Rouen streets
could give it, making a gradual ground-work of which there are hardly
any traces left. But with the building of the Cathedral I have reached
a point where the tale of civic, or religious, or private houses that
are still to be seen, is the tale of Rouen, told on pages well-nigh
imperishable. These mile-stones on our road henceforth become so
frequent, that in passing from one to the other, I shall have hardly
any need to fill the gaps in a history that is at once more modern,
and more easily understood. And as we left off with the highest
expression of religious fervour, the Cathedral, we may well pass on,
for the sake of contrast, to the most visible sign of purely municipal
development, the belfry of the old Hotel de Ville, the famous
buildings of the Rue de la Grosse Horloge.

CHAPTER VII

_La Rue de la Grosse Horloge_

Une rue delicieuse ou le monde se pourmene, ou tousiours il
y ha du vent, de l'umbre et du soleil, de la pluye et de
l'amour. Ha! Ha! riez doncques, allez-y doncques! c'est une
rue tousiours neufve, tousiours royale, tousiours imperiale,
une rue patrioticque, une rue a deux trottoirs, une rue
ouverte des deux bouts ... brief, c'est la royne des rues,
tousiours entre la terre et le ciel, une rue a fontaine, une
rue a laquelle rien ne manque pour estre celebree parmi les
rues.

The cluster of old buildings which are beneath the shadow of the
belfry are perhaps better known to strangers than any other piece of
architecture in the town. I