rusty sconce fitted fast into the wall to support a lantern no longer needed in these days of gas and electricity,—­an ancient fountain overgrown with weed, or a projecting vessel of stone for holy water, in which small birds bathe and disport themselves after a shower of rain,—­those are but a few of the curious fragments of a past time which make the old place interesting to the student, and more than fascinating to the thinker and dreamer.  The wonderful “Hotel Bourgtheroulde,” dating from the time of Francis the First, and bearing on its sculptured walls the story of the Field of the Cloth of Gold, in company with the strangely-contrasting “Allegories”, from Petrarch’s “Triumphs”, is enough in itself to keep the mind engrossed with fanciful musings for an hour.  How did Petrarch and the Field of the Cloth of Gold come together in the brain of the sculptor who long ago worked at these ancient bas-reliefs?  One wonders, but the wonder is in vain,—­there is no explanation;—­and the “Bourgtheroulde” remains a pleasing and fantastic architectural mystery.  Close by, through the quaint old streets of the Epicerie and “Gross Horloge”, walked no doubt in their young days the brothers Corneille, before they evolved from their meditative souls the sombre and heavy genius of French tragedy,—­and not very far away, up one of those little shadowy winding streets and out at the corner, stands the restored house of Diane de Poitiers, so sentient and alive in its very look that one almost expects to see at the quaint windows the beautiful wicked face of the woman who swayed the humours of a king by her smile or her frown.

Cardinal Bonpre, walking past the stately fourteenth-century Gothic pile of the Palais de Justice, thought half-vaguely of some of these things,—­but they affected him less than they might have done had his mind not been full of the grand music he had just heard in the Cathedral, and of the darkness that had slowly gathered there, as though in solemn commingling with the darkness which had at the same time settled over his soul.  A great oppression weighed upon him;—­ almost he judged himself guilty of mortal sin, for had he not said aloud and boldly, while facing the High Altar of the Lord, that even in the Church itself faith was lacking?  Yes, he, a Cardinal-Archbishop, had said this thing; he had as it were proclaimed it on the silence of the sacred precincts,—­and had he not in this, acted unworthily of his calling?  Had he not almost uttered blasphemy?  Grieved and puzzled, the good Felix went on his way, almost unseeingly, towards the humble inn where he had elected to remain for the brief period of his visit to Rouen,—­an inn where no one stayed save the very poorest of travellers, this fact being its chief recommendation in the eyes of the Cardinal.  For it must be conceded, that viewed by our latter-day ideas of personal comfort and convenience, the worthy prelate had some very old-world and fantastic notions.  One of these notions was