eighty-eight, of which two have disappeared, cost 6961 livres to make,
and the greater part of the figures were done by Pol Mosselmen (whose
Flemish name was a terrible puzzle to mediaeval scribes) and Francois
Trubert. Two other Flemish carvers, Laurens Hisbre and Gillet
Duchastel, occur in the complete list of eleven sculptors who were
paid by the piece as recorded in the Chapterhouse accounts. The
designs were made by Philippot Viart, "maistre huchier" de Rouen, who
received 5 sous 10 deniers a day for his work, and employed workmen so
nearly his equals in skill that they got from 4s. 6d. to 5s. for their
time. The names of the sixteen "carpenters" he had with him are all
preserved with the weekly account of their payments; and though most
of the work of the Flemish "sculptors" on the larger statues has
entirely disappeared, the more modest position of the little carvings
beneath the seats has probably saved them; and these are the work, as
I believe to be most probable, of the Rouen "carpenters" whom
Philippot Viart collected.

Their names are very ordinary ones; such as Eustache, Baudichon,
Lefevre, Fontaine, Lemarie, and the like; and their work is nearly all
dedicated to perpetuating either those arts and crafts of Rouen with
which they would be most familiar, or subjects similar to the
medallions on the north and south portals which I have already shown
to be the stock-in-trade of the mediaeval workman. Many of the
misericordes indeed are no doubt taken from the stone-work outside. As
you turn one seat after another to the light, the life and habits and
costume of four hundred years ago stand clear before you. There are
the musicians with their cymbals, drums, and stringed instruments; the
wool-combers with their teasels; the sheep-shearers and cloth-makers;
the cobblers and leather-sellers and patten-makers; the barbers and
surgeons; the schoolmaster with his pupils; the carver at work upon a
stall; the mason chiselling a Gothic arch or modelling a statue; the
blacksmith, the carpenter, the shepherd, the fisherman, the gardener
in his vineyard, the midwife, the chemist at work among his test-tubes
and alembics, the chambermaid cleaning up her rooms.

Besides these records of the different trades, in one of the
confreries of which every workman on these stalls must have been a
member,[60] there are many subjects more fanciful or grotesque which
urged the sculptor's chisel to its work. Harpies and sirens and l