elligible. The niches on each side of the dragon contain six
statuettes; a bishop, a Virgin and child, St. John the Baptist, St.
Romain, a saint, and an archbishop blessing. Above them curves a
large arch, with three pierced pendentives and a frieze delicately
carved with birds and angels. Above this rises the highest division of
the monument, on the same plane as the sarcophagus below; seven small
niches of the prophets and sibyls divide the six larger panels, in
which the Apostles are shown in pairs. Beyond these again is a crown
of pinnacles in open-work, alternating with statuettes in smaller
niches. The lowest portion, the sarcophagus itself, is divided by
seven pilasters, each adorned with the figure of a monk, with six
compartments holding the statuettes of Faith, Charity, Prudence,
Strength, Temperance, and Justice. All this amazing complication of
delicate handiwork was done for the sum of 6952 livres, 16 sols, 4
deniers, which represents about 60,000 francs, or L2400 to-day.

[Illustration: TOMB OF LOUIS DE BREZE IN ROUEN CATHEDRAL]

On the opposite side of this chapel is the great tomb of Louis de
Breze, Grand Seneschal of Normandy, of which I have already spoken. As
an architectural composition it is, to my mind, infinitely finer than
the other, though there is not only a lack of the obvious sincerity
that inspired Leroux, but there is also the too evident appearance of
that triumph of Death which has been described in this chapter. Nor
can I help fancying that it represents too the somewhat sinister
triumph of a widow's cunning. For as I have drawn elsewhere the life
and the ambitions of Georges d'Amboise as the owner of Chaumont on the
Loire, so I have become acquainted with that typical figure of the
sixteenth century, Diane de Poitiers, at the home she took from Bohier
at Chenonceaux; and therefore her kneeling figure in the widow's weeds
of a conventional sorrow suggests nothing better to me than the
fashionable grief of the mistress of Henri II., the ostentation in
mourning of the most rapacious and unfeeling woman of her time.

Though the magnificent workmanship of the dead man at whose head she
kneels reminds me more of Germain Pilon's methods, I can well believe
that Jean Goujon may have been responsible for the general design of
the whole monument during the year we know he spent at Rouen in 1540,
when he was twenty years of age. Men seem to have matured more quickly
in those days than is possibl