he glory of God and the good of his country
ended his pilgrimage at Bastledon ye xxv of April 1599."

[Illustration: DES TODES WAPPENSCHILD]

[Illustration: VIEW OF ROUEN, DRAWN BY JACQUES LELIEUR IN 1525]

CHAPTER XIII

_Life_

"Les gens de Rouen sont honnetes,
Grans entrepreneurs d'edifices
De theatres et artifices
Es entrees des grans seigneurs,
Roy prelatz et aultres greigneurs."

Though Henri Quatre could not get through the gates of Rouen while the
town remained faithful to the League, and considered him a heretic,
the sturdy citizens were ready enough to accept a king of their own
religion, and when the "Vert Galant" made his first solemn entry into
the place in 1596, they welcomed him as heartily as any of his
predecessors. You will remember that there were Englishmen with him
when he was trying to get into Rouen a few years before, and it was to
Rouen again that the Earl of Shrewsbury and a brilliant suite brought
the Queen of England's greeting to her cousin of France, and sent him
the famous Order of the Garter. The Ambassador was most appropriately
lodged in a very famous house in Rouen, which itself formed a
remarkably complete memorial of the friendship between the same two
thrones earlier in the century. The Maison Bourgtheroulde, at the
corner of the Place de la Pucelle and the Rue du Panneret, contains
indeed one of the best pictorial records that exists in Europe, not
only of the meeting of the Field of the Cloth of Gold, but also of the
decorations that were displayed there.

The house is a good example of the transition between "Gothic"
domestic architecture and that of the Renaissance. Built about the
same time as the Palais de Justice and the Bureau de Finances, it
formed a part of that brilliant series of beautiful dwellings in which
the early years of the sixteenth century at Rouen were so fruitful.
Its exterior facade upon the Place de la Pucelle is so terribly
changed and mutilated now, that unless you will refer to Lelieur's
drawing, reproduced with Chapter IX., no view of its present condition
can suggest to you the original design. Of that high roof with lofty
crested windows, of the side-turret at the angle of the street, of the
beautifully carved door, not a trace remains. The principal entrance
built on the old Marche aux Veaux was placed between two heavy
pillars, which had statues on them, and even before the traveller had
passed inside,