these suggested to him the motive which underlies the
whole decoration of the house; for these are the two pillars which
were on each side of the English King's pavilion at the Field of the
Cloth of Gold. Whereof the one, in the words of the English
chronicler, was "intrayled with anticke works, the old god of wine
called Bacchus birlyng the wine, which by the conduits in the erthe
ran to all people plenteously with red, white, and claret wine, over
whose head was written in letters of Romayn in gold, 'Faicte bonne
chere qui vouldra.'" The other pillar was "of ancient Romayne work,
borne with four lions of gold ... and on the summit of the said piller
stood an image of the blynde God, Cupid, with his bowe and arrowes of
love, by hys seeming, to stryke the yonge people to love." But these
have gone, and so little is left of the beauty of the facade that it
really will require some courage to believe what I have just said, and
go through the wooden door in search of better fortune.

[Illustration: THE GALLERY OF THE MAISON BOURGTHEROULDE, SHOWING THE
CARVINGS OF THE FIELD OF THE CLOTH OF GOLD, AND ABOVE THEM THE
CARVINGS OF PETRARCH'S "TRIUMPH"]

It was the town house of the family of Le Roux,[65] a name which
already has artistic associations for any lover of the architecture of
Rouen, though I have found no trace of relationship between the
architect of the Cathedral facade, the Bureau de Finances, and the
Palais de Justice, and the lawyers who built and decorated this
"hotel." Indeed I cannot imagine it would be likely that a man of so
much originality and power both in architecture and in sculpture would
have lent himself to the methods of decoration employed here, which,
as you will see, are more appropriate to the accurately historical
than to the freely artistic frame of mind. The man who made the
fortune of the family was the second Guillaume Le Roux, husband of
Jeanne Jubert de Vely, and one of the fifteen lay councillors called
to the Perpetual Echiquier created by Louis XII. in 1499. He bought
the estates of Tilly, Lucy, Sainte Beuve, and Bourgtheroulde, and
built the "corps de logis" in the interior courtyard exactly opposite
the entrance. He also began the wings on the north and west, but left
the great southern gallery to be completed by his son Guillaume, "Abbe
d'Aumale et du Val Richer," who held several benefices under the great
Cardinal d'Amboise, and derived his chief claim to importance from
having b