a sanctimonious calm that
gave him his first tremor of uncertainty. Demoiselle Alice was
formally summoned into the family gathering, and announced her
intention of remaining single with all the innocent and unaffected
purity of a novice at a convent. After which, Madame presented the
disappointed suitor with a letter for the King, wherein was duly set
forth how that "she had received the royal letter asking for the hand
of her daughter in marriage for the King's squire; that as for herself
and her family, both themselves and their goods were at the service of
His Majesty; that unfortunately her husband had not yet returned from
market, and therefore other answer was as yet impossible save that her
daughter in presence of the family had declared her unwillingness to
marry; that she prayed God to bless His Majesty with long and happy
life, and was his humble and obedient servant, Estiennotte, wife of
Jehan le Tellier."

The wrath of King Louis, the sarcasms of Tristan l'Hermite, the
laughter of Olivier le Daim; these things you must imagine for
yourself, when that letter was read before His Majesty. But the fact
remains that other and more pressing business called Desile away to
foreign wars, and Demoiselle Alice consoled herself for her royally
appointed suitor by giving distinct encouragement to the merchant
opposite who had laid such stress upon the inviolable privileges of
the "Charte aux Normands." The story went the round of Rouen, from the
Rue du Hallage to the Hotellerie des Bons Enfants and back again, and
you can almost hear its echoes still in that old Rouen

"des vieux pignons aigus
comme des epines dorsales
Bombant les angles contigues
Sur les solives tranversales.--
Les logis causent de tout pres,
Et l'ombre leur est coutumiere,
On jurerait qu'ils font expres
De manquer d'air et lumiere."

[Illustration: HOTEL DES BONS ENFANTS]

And you will pardon me that for a moment I have listened to that
muttered gossip, to the scandal that one old roof-tree whispered to
another whilst it leant across the narrow street, as some old woman
mumbles secrets to her neighbour with bleared eyes winking beneath her
shaggy brows. There was far more talking in the streets then than
there is now, especially in such crowded little passage-ways as this
old Rue du Hallage, a corruption from the Maison du Haulage where
taxes on the corporations and on goods sold in the market-h