wed to keep
the honour of the title, and even to take a seat in the court, which
was soon to be called the "Parlement de Normandie" by Francois
Premier. Louis de Breze's second wife was the famous Diane de
Poitiers, who called herself "La Grande Seneschale" until she died,
and who put up the magnificent tomb in alabaster and black marble
which has preserved her husband's memory ever since his death in 1531,
long after the "Palais de Justice" had been built to carry on for ever
those legal functions which had once been a portion of the duties of
his office.

CHAPTER XI

_Justice_

'Or ca'--nous dit Grippeminaud, au milieu de ses
Chats-fourrez--'par Stix, puisqu' autre chose ne veux dire,
or ca, je te monstreray, or ca, que meilleur te seroit estre
tombe entre les pattes de Lucifer, or ca, et de tous les
Diables, or ca, qu'entre nos gryphes, or ca; les vois-tu
bien? Or ca, malautru, nous allegues tu innocence, or ca,
comme chose digne d'eschapper nos tortures? Or ca, nos Loix
sont comme toile d'araignes; le grand Diable vous y chantera
Messe, or ca'.

To appreciate what was involved by the building of the famous "Palais
de Justice," which is perhaps the greatest pride of Rouen, I must
needs bring before you a little more of the social life which made a
court of law and justice necessary; and I can make no better beginning
than by quoting again, from the Record of the Fierte St. Romain, those
instances after 1448 which throw the greatest light upon the manners
and customs of the years when the Echiquier de Rouen first became a
permanent assembly in its own House.

In 1453 occurs an entry which suggests that the modern idiot who plays
with a loaded revolver and shoots his friend "by accident" has been in
existence ever since deadly weapons were invented. A carpenter named
Guillaume le Bouvier drew his bow at a bird which was sitting on a
tree-top. The arrow glanced off a bough, rebounded from a stone, and
killed the son of the Sieur de Savary. Twenty-two years before, a
woman had been killed by a bolt from a crossbow in almost the same
way, and in 1457 a boy was shot by his brother in an exactly similar
manner. In 1474 Bardin Lavalloys provided another particularly
unfortunate example during a game which was in great favour at
Christmas time, and consisted in throwing sticks at a goose which was
tied by the leg to a tall pole. Jehan Baqueler missed his shot, and