“To number seventeen, Marie,” said this majestic personage, handing me over to a pretty little chambermaid who attended the summons.  “And, Marie, on thy return, my child, bring me an absinthe.”

We left this gentleman in a condition of ostentatious languor, and Marie deposited me in a pretty room overlooking an exquisite little garden set round with beds of verbena and scarlet geranium, with a fountain sparkling in the midst.  This garden was planted in what had once been the courtyard, of the building.  The trees nodded and whispered, and the windows at the opposite side of the quadrangle glittered like burnished gold in the sunlight.  I threw open the jalousies, plucked one of the white roses that clustered outside, and drank in with delight the sunny perfumed air that played among the leaves, and scattered the waters of the fountain.  I could not long rest thus, however.  I longed to be out and about; so, as it was now no more than half-past three o’clock, and two good hours of the glorious midsummer afternoon yet remained to me before the hotel dinner-hour, I took my hat, and went out along the quays and streets of this beautiful and ancient Norman city.

Under the crumbling archways; through narrow alleys where the upper stories nearly met overhead, leaving only a bright strip of dazzling sky between; past quaint old mansions, and sculptured fountains, and stately churches hidden away in all kinds of strange forgotten nooks and corners, I wandered, wondering and unwearied.  I saw the statue of Jeanne d’Arc; the chateau of Diane de Poitiers; the archway carved in oak where the founder of the city still, in rude effigy, presides; the museum rich in mediaeval relics; the market-place crowded with fruit-sellers and flower-girls in their high Norman caps.  Above all, I saw the rare old Gothic Cathedral, with its wondrous wealth of antique sculpture; its iron spire, destined, despite its traceried beauty, to everlasting incompleteness; its grass-grown buttresses, and crumbling pinnacles, and portals crowded with images of saints and kings.  I went in.  All was gray, shadowy, vast; dusk with the rich gloom of painted windows; and so silent that I scarcely dared disturb the echoes by my footsteps.  There stood in a corner near the door a triangular iron stand stuck full of votive tapers that flickered and sputtered and guttered dismally, shedding showers of penitential grease-drops on the paved floor below; and there was a very old peasant woman on her knees before the altar.  I sat down on a stone bench and fell into a long study of the stained oriel, the light o’erarching roof, and the long perspective of the pillared aisles.  Presently the verger came out of the vestry-room, followed by two gentlemen.  He was short and plump, with a loose black gown, slender black legs, and a pointed nose—­like a larger species of raven.

“Bon jour, M’sieur” croaked he, laying his head a little on one side, and surveying me with one glittering eye.  “Will M’sieur be pleased to see the treasury?”