close whose strange religious atmosphere has never changed in more
than four and a half centuries. Close to the gate, there rises an
ivy-covered column of dilapidated ancient masonry, which holds a much
more modern seventeenth-century shrine, still commemorating "Notre
Dame des Roses," as the laundresses call her.

Far behind your right shoulder rise the spires of Rouen; away to the
left is the church tower of Darnetal; in the opposite horizon the
great slope of St. Catherine rises to the sky. Within this quiet
square Archbishop Guillaume de l'Estrange built the Chartreuse de
Notre Dame de la Rose, in 1386, rather more than a mile from the Porte
St. Hilaire, in that cool valley between St. Catherine and Darnetal,
which is shut in by the interlacing arms of Robec and Aubette. Some
fifty yards beyond the shrine I have just mentioned, you will see a
half-ruined mediaeval building, which must have been the great hall of
the convent. Traces of fourteenth and fifteenth century work have been
found in it by the eye of faith, though the lower floor is now a kind
of granary, and the upper storey is used as a big drying-ground by the
laundry girls who live close by in the pretty old house that used to
form a set of lodgings for the monks. Above its walls in 1418 floated
the royal flag of England, and within them the last act in the tragedy
of the siege of Rouen was played out. It is my good fortune that the
drawing of this historic spot, made for me by Miss James, happens to
be yet another picture in this little volume of a scene that has
never, to the best of my belief, been given to English readers before.
The King's headquarters, though close to Mont St. Catherine were
beyond the range of the cannon of those days, and between him and the
fortress Lord Salisbury's men were placed, with Lieutenant Philip
Leech on the south side, and Sir John Gray to the west. Opposite the
Porte Martainville was the Earl of Warwick's camp; and Edmund
Beaufort, Count of Mortain, who became Duke of Somerset when he was
made governor of Normandy, held the north side of the Aubette and
completed the investment of St. Catherine's.

North of the King's camp, Sir William Porter had at first held the
ground before the Porte St. Hilaire, but the Duke of Gloucester was
given the position as soon as he came up from Cherbourg, placing his
two lieutenants on each side of the stream, the Earl of Suffolk to the
south, the Marquis of Abergavenny northwards.