swallowing a
fish; by a band of sweet music and of singers chanting melodiously
their "cantiques and motets"; by all the burgesses of Rouen walking
decorously two by two; by the choir-boys of the Cathedral and two
hundred of the clergy, the canons in violet, and the greater
dignitaries in soutanes of red silk; by the officiating canon, and
lastly by the Archbishop himself, blessing the people as he went
along.

As the chanting died away, after a short interval came the beadle all
in violet livery bearing the great "Gargouille" of the town, and
followed by a rabble of laughing, screaming lads in motley, swinging
bladders, and throwing flowers and cakes about the street--that note
of ribaldry without which no such procession was complete--and then
came suddenly a silence, for the most holy shrine of St. Romain passed
by, borne by the prisoner and a priest. The last seven prisoners
followed him, bareheaded and with torches. And then the laughter and
the cheering broke out again as more burgesses tramped along with
bouquets in their hands, and young girls all in white with garlands of
flowers about their bosoms scattered blossoms on the bystanders, and
more guards and soldiers closed up the procession and kept the crowd
from breaking through its ranks.

By this time the first line had reached the Parvis, and as the voices
of two priests singing on the summit of the Tour St. Romain floated
down upon the people, all men passed in through the Portail de St.
Romain of the Western Front, under the great shrine held crosswise, so
that all who went beneath received the blessed influence. When
everyone had entered, and the shrine was once more on the High Altar,
the Grand Mass was sung, and the prisoner was once more publicly
exhorted by the Archbishop, before he was taken away again by the
Confrerie St. Romain to a great feast in the Master's House which was
the real celebration of his return to freedom.

The life of a sixteenth-century French town has often been described
before, but I am particularly fortunate in being able to sketch you
something of what went on in Rouen, not merely with the background of
Lelieur's drawing, but even with the sound of the music which was
heard in her streets; and, if I mistake not, the one is as unknown to
English readers as the other. It has been said that Guillaume le
Franc, a musician of Rouen, actually composed the tune known as the
"Old Hundredth," originally set to the 134th Psalm in t