, breaks the uniformity of the elevation, is perhaps the
part that more than any other merits such encomium. But it is only half
the front that has been allowed to continue in its original state: the
other half has been degraded by alterations, or stripped of its
ornaments.--The room in which the parliament formerly met, and which is
now employed for the trial of criminal causes, still remains
comparatively uninjured. Its ceiling of oak, nearly as black as ebony,
divided into numerous compartments, and covered with a profusion of
carving and of gilt ornaments, not only affords a gorgeous example of
the taste of the time, but immediately strikes the stranger as well
suited to the dignity of the purpose to which the apartment was
appropriated. But the open-work bosses of this ceiling are gone, as are
the doors enriched with sculpture, and the ancient chimney, and the
escutcheons charged with sacred devices, and the great painting, by
which, before the revolution, witnesses were made to swear.[180]

The building that fronts the _Salle des Procureurs_, and forms the third
side of the court, was not erected till after the year 1700. Its front
is an imitation of the Ionic order, a style which harmonizes so ill with
the rest of the quadrangle, as to produce an unfavorable effect An
accident which happened to the wood-work of the upper part of this
front, on the 1st of April, 1812, unfortunately involved the destruction
of a painting held in the highest estimation; the representation of
Jupiter hurling his thunderbolts at Vice, executed by Jouvenet, upon the
ceiling of an apartment called _la seconde Chambre des Enquetes_.
Jouvenet, who commonly passes under the name of the Michelagnolo of
France, was born at Rouen, in 1664; and, in conjunction with Fontenelle
and the great Corneille, forms the triumvirate, of which the city has
most reason to feel proud. The painting in the Palace of Justice was
regarded as one of the happiest efforts of his pencil, and was not the
less remarkable for having been executed with his left hand, after a
paralytic stroke had deprived him of the use of the other.

NOTES:

[177] See p. 51.

[178] See plate 64.

[179] Plate 63.

[180] Upon this subject Mr. Turner is in error: it appears, from his
_Tour in Normandy_, I. p. 193, that he was informed that the painting,
now actually over the judges' bench, is the same by which it was
originally customary to take the oath; but M. Jolimont, who is,