he would at least delay it for six months to come.  “Then, by heavens!” replied Henry, “I will change his months into days, and grant him absolution;” and; so saying, he commenced a furious cannonade, which soon caused a breach, and, in seven days, he carried the town by assault.  Brissac, who, on the capture of the fortress, had retired into the keep, found himself shortly afterwards obliged to capitulate; and I am sorry to add, that the terms which he proposed and obtained, were not of a nature to be honorable to his character.  The security of his own life and of that of seven of his party, was the principal stipulation in the articles.  The rest of the garrison were abandoned to the mercy of the conqueror, who contented himself with hanging seven of them in memorial of the seven days of the siege; but, if we may believe the French historians, always zealous for the honor of their monarchs, and especially of this monarch, Henry selected the sufferers from among those, who, for their crimes, had, subjected themselves to the pain of death.

From these various attacks, but principally from those of 1417 and 1589, the fortifications of Falaise have suffered materially; and since the last no care has been taken to repair them.  The injuries sustained at that period, and the more fatal, though less obvious ones, wrought by the silent operation of two centuries of neglect, have brought the walls and towers to their present state of dilapidation.

The people of Falaise are commonly supposed to be Normans IºI+-I” I muI3/4I?I‡I.I1/2 [English.  Not in Original:  pre-eminently, especially, above all]; and when a Norman is introduced upon the French stage, he calls himself a Falesian, just as any Irishman, in an English farce, is presumed to come from Tipperary.  The town in the French royal calendar is stated to contain about fourteen thousand inhabitants; but we are assured that the real number does not exceed nine thousand.  Its staple trade is the manufacture of stockings, coarse caps, and lace.  The streets are wide; and the public fountains, which are continually playing, impart a freshness, which, at the present burning season, is particularly agreeable.—­The town now retains only four churches, two within its precincts, and two in the suburbs.  The revolution has deprived it of eight others.  Of those which are now standing, the most ancient is that situated near the castle, and dedicated to the Holy Trinity.  Langevin assures us that it was built upon the ruins of the temple of Fele, Isis, Belenus, and the heavenly host of constellations, and that in the fifth century it changed its heathen for its Christian patrons.  The oldest part (a very small one it is) of the present structure, appertains to a building which was consecrated in 1126, by the Archbishop of Rouen, in the presence of Henry Ist, but which was almost entirely destroyed by the cannonade in the fifteenth century.  An inscription in gothic letters, near the entrance,