ais
and the Rue Salamandre and the Rue de l'Epicerie itself, were all
crowded to suffocation. Every Ascension-tide, from the reign of the
Norman dukes until the Revolution, not these streets only, but every
window in the houses, and the very roofs above, were crammed with
people waiting for the great annual procession in which the prisoner
was set free. I have quoted many extracts from the records kept by the
Chapterhouse of these occasions, because the list has provided typical
instances of men and manners in Rouen from the thirteenth century
onwards. And I can close my tale of the most brilliant portion of
Rouen's history in no better way than by suggesting to you something
of the interest and the excitement created by a processional ceremony,
which may itself be taken as typical of the people's life.

From the earliest hour at the breaking of the dawn of Ascension Day,
the whole of Rouen was thinking and talking of nothing else except the
prisoner, and in every quarter of the city the interest in him took a
different form. All the countryside of Vexin and of Caux had trooped
into the town with women and children in their Sunday best. From the
attic windows of the Rue de l'Epicerie girls in flapping white
head-dresses leant across the road and screamed their good fortune to
the neighbours opposite; for these were some of the best places to see
the ceremony, and in 1504 the crowd who scrambled for them was so
great that the roofs fell in. The open square itself was gradually
filling up; the gay Cauchoises who were chambermaids at the Auberge de
la Herche were doing a roaring trade; soldiers of the Cinquantaine in
green velvet doublets were taking their morning draught at the Trois
Coulombs, before each man shouldered his arquebus and went off to keep
his guard; even the Crieurs des Trepasses had come out into the light,
their strange black cloaks all sewn with silver skulls. At last eight
o'clock struck, and there was a general movement towards the Parvis,
for the luckiest in the front rows of the crowd could look through the
Chapterhouse door and actually see the preliminary meeting of the
canons about the choice of their prisoner. But the door was soon shut,
and at last the crowd could only hear the solemn notes of the "Veni
Creator" sounding from within, as the good ecclesiastics prayed for
divine direction in their solemn office. At last a name was written
down, sealed up and given to the Chaplain de la Confrerie d