t is the focal point of Rouen, the centre
of its civic life, and if you are fortunate enough to live quite close
to it, as I did, you will find yourself in the best place for starting
on nearly every expedition that your fancy may dictate.[28] The Rue de
la Grosse Horloge itself is one of those memorable thoroughfares of
which nearly every old French town possesses at least one fascinating
example, the kind of street that, in his "Contes Drolatiques," Balzac
has so admirably described in making mention of the Rue Royale at
Tours. A glance at even the few streets marked upon Map B will show
its structural importance in the economy of the town. For the
Cathedral has stood in different forms upon the same spot since the
fifth century, and this street starts from immediately opposite its
western gate. In the earliest days it was stopped at the other end by
the gate through which the Roman road passed, across the Vieux Marche,
towards Caletum (Lillebonne). In later times the Porte Massacre was
built there, which takes its name, not from the wholesale murder of
the Jews in the adjoining quarter, but from the butchers who
congregated close by in the Rue Massacre, or Rue des Machecriers
(Wace's word for a butcher), which is called the Rue de la
Boucherie-de-Massacre in a title-deed of 1454.

[Footnote 28: In venturing to suggest a few such expeditions in my
appendix, I have found it convenient to assume that even if my reader
were not a guest in the Hotel du Nord, he would invariably come to the
archway of the Grosse Horloge to meditate on the programme for the
day.]

The Place du Vieux Marche is a spot almost as historic in its way as
the Parvis of the Cathedral, so that there is interest at both ends of
the Rue de la Grosse Horloge. Its most terrible memory is the burning
of Jeanne d'Arc, which (as I shall show from Lelieur's plan in a later
chapter) took place at the angle of the modern halls, and close to the
cemetery of the vanished church of St. Sauveur, on the same spot in
the Vieux Marche used since the earliest history of Rouen as one of
the many places of public execution. The Rue de la Grosse Horloge has
also been called the Grande Rue, and several other names which need
not be recorded here; for both by geographical position and in its own
right it has always claimed a large share in the interest of the
citizens of Rouen.[29] Much of its once beautiful architecture has
vanished altogether. The church of St. Herbla