urban, with big bare arms and a dramatic pose--would be to think of him
as a kind of truculent sultana. He wore the dress of his period, but his
spirit was very modern; he was a Vanderbilt or a Rothschild of the
fifteenth century. He supplied the ungrateful Charles VII. with money to
pay the troops who, under the heroic Maid,

[Illustration: Bourges--THE HOUSE OF JACQUES COEUR]

drove the English from French soil. His house, which to-day is used as a
Palais de Justice, appears to have been regarded at the time it was
built very much as the residence of Mr. Vanderbilt is regarded in New
York to-day. It stands on the edge of the hill on which most of the town
is planted, so that, behind, it plunges down to a lower level, and, if
you approach it on that side, as I did, to come round to the front of it
you have to ascend a longish flight of steps. The back, of old, must
have formed a portion of the city wall; at any rate it offers to view
two big towers which Joanne says were formerly part of the defence of
Bourges. From the lower level of which I speak--the square in front of
the post-office--the palace of Jacques Coeur looks very big and strong
and feudal; from the upper street, in front of it, it looks very
handsome and delicate. To this street it presents two tiers and a
considerable length of facade; and it has both within and without a
great deal of curious and beautiful detail. Above the portal, in the
stonework, are two false windows, in which two figures, a man and a
woman, apparently household servants, are represented, in sculpture, as
looking down into the street. The effect is homely, yet grotesque, and
the figures are sufficiently living to make one commiserate them for
having been condemned, in so dull a town, to spend several centuries at
the window. They appear to be watching for the return of their master,
who left his beautiful house one morning and never came back.

The history of Jacques Coeur, which has been written by M. Pierre
Clement in a volume crowned by the French Academy, is very wonderful and
interesting, but I have no space to go into it here. There is no more
curious example, and few more tragical, of a great fortune crumbling
from one day to the other, or of the antique superstition that the gods
grow jealous of human success. Merchant, millionaire, banker,
ship-owner, royal favourite and minister of finance, explorer of the
East and monopolist of the glittering trade between that quarter o