-baston and Guillaume Marc to furnish
forth a hostelry, much as we may imagine the Hotel des Bons Enfants
was furnished in its youth. "Four casks of good wine at ten livres,"
says this document; "twelve good beds with twenty-four pairs of
sheets; eight cups and a goblet with a silver foot; a dozen 'hanaps'
of pewter," with pots and pans and pewter dishes innumerable.[36]

[Footnote 36: No. 41 Rue des Bons Enfants is a capital example of the
Fifteenth Century Timbered inn. To the right of the inner yard a
gallery juts out on crooked pillars, the "avant-soliers" so common in
mediaeval streets, and shown in Lelieur's drawings. Queer gables rise
into the air at odd corners, and if you are sufficiently hardened to
mediaeval atmospheres you may discover other stables than the big shed
at the entrance, and you will understand the reason for the Notice "On
ne repond pas des accidents qui peuvent arriver aux chevaux." Through
a dark narrow slit the phantom of a cobwebbed stable-boy will lead you
into the blackened aged stables, and the spire of the abandoned church
of St. Croix des Pelletiers rises above them. Lunch here upon
omelettes and sound wine; but sleep were possibly unwise, though "Room
Number Ten" is almost too fascinating an apartment to resist.]

[Illustration: A COBBLER OF ROUEN, FROM THE STALLS OF THE CATHEDRAL]

In such an old courtyard as this of the "Bons Enfants," with its
overhanging balcony, and queerly managed stables, or in other old inns
like No. 19 Rue des Matelas, or No. 4 Rue Etoupee with its charming
"signboard," men sat and talked of their various trades, the cobbler,
for instance, who is carved on the Cathedral stalls, with the
clog-maker, and the wool-comber, and the carpenter, all met and
gossiped of their latest piece of profitable business, while the
lawyers discussed the never-ending question of the Privilege de St.
Romain with some learned clerk over their "vin blanc d'Anjou." By the
fourteenth century the list of the prisoners released by the Cathedral
Chapter begins to be very full and detailed, and we can quite imagine
what was talked about in every tavern of the town as Ascension-tide
drew near.

In 1360, for example, the King's Mint was already established in the
Rue St. Eloi, and you may still see it at No. 30 in that street as you
go up on the right hand from the river to the Place St. Eloi. The
"Hotel des Monnaies" has been all whitewashed over, but there is a
strong and ancient loo