that, admitting a new church had been erected, it could not fail to have
been destroyed during the incursions of the heathen Normans, whose track
throughout Neustria was ever marked by fire and sword, and whose avarice
prompted them, no less powerfully than their superstition, to make the
religious edifices the principal objects of their vengeance. Prior to
the arrival of these barbarians, the archiepiscopal chair had been
filled by four prelates, eminent for their sanctity, St. Godard, St.
Pretextat, St. Romain, and St. Ouen. The second of these, assassinated
before the altar, at the instigation of Fredegond, queen of Chilperic,
holds nearly the same place in the martyrology of the Gallican church,
as Thomas-a-Becket in that of England. St. Ouen was a prelate who had
few rivals in munificence and splendor. Numerous monasteries throughout
the province, and, above all, the splendid one that bore his name,
testify the greatness of his mind, as well as the extent of his power:
his sovereign, Dagobert, honored him with his friendship, and conferred
upon him the dignity of chancellor of the realm.

But the fame of St. Ouen, and of all the others, was eclipsed by that of
St. Romain, by virtue of whose _privilege_, as it was generally called,
the chapter of the cathedral continued till the revolution annually to
exercise the right of delivering a criminal, whatever his offence,
except treason, from the hand of the secular power. This singular
privilege, according to general tradition, had been earned by the
destruction of a dragon, called the _Gargouille_, which was long the
terror of the adjacent country; and in his expedition the saint had been
unable to procure himself any other aid than that of a murderer, already
under sentence of death. Hence, the prelate has commonly been regarded
as little less than the tutelar divinity of the city. Portraits of him,
all of them designated by the attendant dragon and criminal, were to be
seen on the celebrated windows of stained glass in the church of St.
Godard, as well as at the entrance of the town by the _porte Bouvreuil_,
and probably in many other places: a building at the top of the
staircase, leading into the cloth-hall, was called his chapel; another
chapel is to the present day consecrated to him in the cathedral itself;
the northern tower of the same building bears his name; his shrine is
still preserved among the choicest treasures of the sacristy; and even
the bases of some