and
that will bring you out by the Douane on the Quais. An even better way
is to take the Rue de la Vicomte, quite parallel to this, but further
east, which passes the western gate of St. Vincent, and is full of
interesting old houses from the Rue de la Grosse Horloge to the
river. As you pass down it now there are some wonderful old houses on
your right, and a fine courtyard at No. 25. Still a third choice is
the Rue Harenguerie, which takes the same direction from the south
door of St. Vincent, and by this I usually passed myself, for the sake
of weaving stories in my mind about No. 21, a house that Balzac would
have delighted to describe, with an open staircase in the corner of
its old courtyard.

The names of streets have often a fascination in themselves, and this
one has probably been called the same ever since the herring market
was set upon the quays in 1408. I wish I had had space to tell you
more of these old names, which nearly all preserve a little local
history, when they have not been stupidly and unnecessarily changed.
But you may take this as a type of what many another will suggest, and
in the laborious pages of the excellent M. Periaux you may discover
much more for yourself. The sale of herrings, which was always a large
and an increasing business on the northern coasts, was organised in
1348, and by 1399 a barrel of "harengs caques" was sold for 110 sols.
"Brusler tout vifz comme harans soretz," says Rabelais, of the poor
regents of Toulouse University; and your salt herring from Guernsey,
Scotland, and Biscay was in much request at the old market on the quay
between the Porte St. Vincent and the Porte du Crucifix, where on
large tables and slabs of stone the fishwives hired places from the
Sergents de la Vicomte d'Eau to sell their eels from the Marne,
congers from La Rochelle, trout from Andelys, fresh herrings from Le
Havre. You may see the scene still in a stained-glass window of the
Cathedral, and you may well imagine the state of mind of the old
poet:--

"Nul n'orra toute la dyablerie
Ny le caquet de la Pessonnerie."

Like everything else, it was under holy patronage, and fishwives
prayed at the shrine of St. Julien l'Hospitalier, the saint whose
story Flaubert, another child of Rouen, has so wonderfully told. The
wags of the seventeenth century called these ladies "non angeliques
mais harangeriques"; but on fast-days every burgess and innkeeper and
monk was glad enough to go to