ove it. The motto reads:--

"Passe temps legers nous valent argent
Silz ne sont dargent ils sont de bergers."

[Illustration: NOVS SOMES DES FINS: ASPIR[=A]S A FINS

CARVING FROM THE TURRET OF THE MAISON BOURGTHEROULDE]

Turning to the other side of the tower, the carving beneath the
highest window represents a jovial picnic under the same idyllic
conditions. Out of a big bowl placed on a tree-stump, a shepherdess
helps her lover with a spoon, another man makes his dog beg for a
morsel of the food; music is provided behind by a self-sacrificing
person with the bagpipes, and a fourth shepherd stands in the distance
with some sheep, like a martyr to his duty. The window beneath this is
decorated with a sheep-shearing scene, which I have reproduced from
the outline drawing by E.H. Langlois, published by Delaqueriere in his
"Description Historique des Maisons de Rouen" (Paris: Firmin Didot.
1821). The presiding shepherdess carries on her work with the usual
embarrassing distractions. By her side a musician plays his hautbois
to a dancing dog. Just behind them a spirited chase after a marauding
wolf is in full cry; more houses, clouds, and birds complete the
picture. The motto is "Nous somes des fins: aspirans a fins." The last
scene represents men fishing, some with nets out of a boat, others on
land with various uncouth patterns of fishing-rod; everyone appears to
be making a fine catch, but the extraordinary occurrence on the bank
will entirely divert your attention from the fish; for a knight, who
had evidently ridden down to see the sport, has been snatched out of
his saddle by a burly flying griffin, and his servant looks
frantically after his disappearing body in the clouds. Untroubled by
these strange events, a young woman walks calmly towards the castle, a
little further on, carrying a basket of eggs and butter on her head,
and above her some new kind of osprey flies away with a protesting
pike. [See page 361.]

As carvings, these charmingly naive representations of country life
break absolutely every rule that is supposed to govern the art of
sculpture. Their relief is very slight indeed, they have no definite
limits, for they wander vaguely round the windows, with trees and
running water and clouds and birds and houses all on the same plane,
and all with equal "values." I have not the slightest doubt that just
as the Field of the Cloth of Gold was copied from a historical
tapestry of the event, jus