CHAPTER XV

A MEDIÆVAL TOWN

Once out of Paris Gabriella’s spirits revived and her love of the novel and artistic asserted itself. Youth loves change, and indeed, for most sorrows there is perhaps no better cure than new scenes and new interests. Therefore when Rouen’s towers and belfries arose before the travellers it was Gabriella who appeared most enthusiastic.

They had something of an adventure at the very outset and Gabriella’s sense of humor was too great for her not to appreciate the situation and to be the merriest of the party which endured a long wait at the railway station. They had driven off gaily enough from Madame Morelle’s, themselves in one open carriage and their baggage piled high in another, arriving in ample time to secure their places. “Is this the train for Rouen?” asked Miss Cavendish, who had been told that there were no second-class carriages on certain of the trains.

“Oui, madame,” was the prompt reply of the guard, who hurried them into their places, and to their surprise they were on their way in less than five minutes.

“My watch cannot be so far wrong, and besides I looked at the clock in the station and we had a full half-hour,” said Miss Cavendish. “I imagined that it was a greater distance from the house, or I could have started later. We must have caught an earlier train.”

“So much the better,” was Gabriella’s prompt reply. “We shall get to Rouen that much the sooner.”

“But I told them our trunks were for the four-thirty train.”

“Never mind, we can either wait for them or can make a little turn about the town until the next train comes in.”

However they arrived in a drizzling rain and concluded not to attempt any tour of investigation. “It was an earlier train, you see,” said Miss Cavendish.

“Well, we can wait here just as well as in Paris,” said Sidney, and they stationed themselves upon a bench outside the waiting-room.

An official approached. Could he assist them? No, they told him, they were but waiting for the arrival of the next train. They thought he looked a little surprised, but they were not discomfited. They walked up and down; they watched the primitive method of switching off cars from one track to another by means of a rope and a small turn-table; they watched the clock. They began to feel the pangs of hunger, but they perceived no way of satisfying their appetites. There were no preparations visible for the arrival of their train. The woman who sold newspapers and postal cards shut up shop and went home. The men disappeared one by one. The place took on a deserted look.

“They can’t have told us wrong,” Miss Cavendish exclaimed at last. “Sidney, you speak the most fluent French; go ask again if our luggage came on the train with us.”

Sidney and Gabriella walked off to the baggage room, soon returning with the report that the familiar little hand trunks were not there.

“I know perfectly well that there was a train to leave at half-past four,” Miss Cavendish began again to explain, “and I as well know that we came on an earlier one, so now what has become of that later one? That is what I should like to know.” She approached the guard, who was now the sole representative of office to be seen. “When does the next train arrive from Paris?” she asked.

“A dix heures, madame,” he replied.

“Ten o’clock!” exclaimed Miss Cavendish, astonished. “But I was told in Paris that the train following the one on which we came would be here at seven-thirty.”

“Yes, madame, at the other station.”

“The other station!” Miss Cavendish stared aghast. She turned to the girls. Gabriella did not attempt to restrain her laughter, but Sidney gave heed to their astonished leader, who said: “There seems to be another station at which trains from Paris arrive, and our luggage is there, of course. Try to straighten this out, Sidney.”

Sidney came to her rescue, and after an animated conversation accompanied by many gesticulations on the part of the guard and expressions of regret that the ladies should have endured so long a wait for nothing, they learned that a certain tram would take them to the other station.

It was still raining drearily. It was after eight o’clock. They were hungry; they were weary. After leaving the car there was a long bridge to cross. “Why didn’t we take a cab?” groaned Sidney.

“Because the man told us to take a car,” snapped Gabriella; then she began to laugh. “It is so funny,” she cried, “to think we should have spent hours in that stuffy old station when we might this minute have been comfortably lodged and fed.”

“Whoever could have imagined that the trains would be so erratic,” complained Miss Cavendish. “No one could possibly surmise that an orderly train would take it upon itself to be so unaccommodating.”

“Perhaps we should then have taken an accommodation train,” suggested Gabriella.

“Oh, do hush,” exclaimed Miss Cavendish, more out of sorts than they had ever seen her. “If one leaves a certain station in Paris and arrives at a certain station in Rouen, what more reasonable to suppose than that the next train would do the same? Who could dream that they could go flying off in this absurd way?”

“Nobody could dream of any such thing, Gem dear,” said Gabriella soothingly.

“And I needn’t be cross about it, need I?” returned Miss Cavendish, rather ashamed of her ill humour.

They found their trunks without difficulty and snugly established in a cab they were driven to their lodgings where, late as it was, they found a supper awaiting them, and were pleased to discover that they had secured a pleasant abiding place in the home of an Englishwoman who lived at the edge of the town.

“Two pictures stand out before me when I think of Rouen,” said Miss Cavendish when they started out on their pilgrimage the next day. “One is that fearful siege when for months Henry Fifth’s troops lay before the city, and the other is the trial of poor little Jeanne d’Arc.”

“Poor dear,” sighed Sidney, “I expect to be wrought upon to the last degree here in Rouen.”

“I am sorry the old town walls are not standing.”

Gabriella looked down the broad street. “I should like to look over them and imagine the English soldiers encamped before them.”

“I am rather glad they have been done away with,” confessed Miss Cavendish, “for when one thinks of that haggard, starving, hopeless company of refugees gathered in the moat outside the city wall, the little children perishing for bread, the gaunt, bony, skeleton-like men and women, the fifteen thousand from other cities who had taken refuge within the walls of Rouen and for whom there was no food within the walls, when one thinks of those it is well not to have the picture made more vivid. Think of them, girls, feeding upon such a pitiful supply of roots and grass as could be dug from that barren moat. Think of the babies born but to be drawn up in a basket for baptism and lowered again but to die. No wonder that hundreds perished each night and that others went mad. No wonder that Canon de Livet stood high on the ramparts and cursed the English.”

“Oh, don’t, don’t, Gem,” cried Gabriella, her eyes filling, “you are making the picture too ghastly, too horrible.”

“It is Rouen’s history.”

“I know that it is, but let us take the romantic, happy side of the town’s story.”

“No, go on,” Sidney gravely encouraged a continuation of the tale. “We ought to know the misery of life as well as the joy. How did the siege end, Gem? I forget the details.”

“On Christmas day the English sent out food to the starving band. Some say it was refused, but I think we may rely upon others who tell us that it was only too horribly accepted with cries like those of wild animals. But the little food only prolonged the agony, for the English lines were not again opened in mercy and the siege went on. Toward the middle of January, the people having starved long enough, the terms of capitulation were made. The lives of nine persons only were demanded; the rest could go free. Only one, however, suffered death.”

“And who was he?”

“Alain Blanchard was beheaded. He was captain of the Arbalétriers, and was the moving spirit of the town’s resistance. There is a street now named for him; we will hunt it up, for though for many years he was regarded as a half mythical hero, later investigations proved that he was actually a loyal, brave man who died for his country after having made every sacrifice to rescue it from English rule.”

“How long after that did Jeanne d’Arc come upon the scene?” Sidney asked, as she wandered down the wide boulevard which followed the line of the former city wall.

“The end of 1419 saw the end of Normandy’s resistance to the English. Jeanne d’Arc was then a little country girl running after the pigs and chickens in the farmyard at Domremy. She was not quite thirteen when the ‘voices’ came to her, poor little lass, so young, so helpless, so scared. ‘I am a poor girl, I cannot even ride,’ was her first answer to the voices, you remember.”

“But she didn’t give up.”

“She gained strength of purpose as time went on, and at last she did appear before the king, but you know the rest of the story.”

“Such a pitiful one, and here in Rouen the dear, sweet maid was burned to death.” Gabriella spoke with pathetic regret as if La Pucelle had been a personal friend.

“Yes, that happened in the Vieux Marché. We will find the place. There is the tower where she was taken to be tried before her judges. At first she was kept in an iron cage, there in one of the castle towers, with four soldiers to guard her as she lay chained to a log of wood. The donjon, however, is the scene of her splendid courage in answering her judges as she did. The tower, aside from this interest, is a fine example of a mediæval donjon tower. It was the dungeon of the castle of Bouvreuil.”

“Dear Gem, how she does cram for our benefit,” remarked Gabriella. “I watch her poring over her books with a sense of helpless idleness.”

“She loves to do it,” Sidney assured her, “and after, Rella, she gets the best of it, for I don’t doubt but she reads up a great deal more than she tells us.”

They crossed the street and entered the old tower. The moat had given place to a fresh green sward, but the thick walls, the little slits of windows from which the young prisoner must have looked wistfully forth, the massive masonry of the entire building all evidenced the age of the structure and gave the visitors a sense of its strength. They crept up the spiral stairway to the upper rooms, deserted and silent reminders of bygone tragedies.

“I feel as if it had all been but yesterday,” said Sidney, as they issued into the open air and beheld the beds of flowers sweetly blooming under the free sky at the very threshold of the grim old dungeon. “It gives me a catch at the heart, and I feel as if I could almost hear that poor little peasant girl’s last words as she was borne along in that rough cart through the uneven streets,” Sidney went on.

“It is too much for me,” said Gabriella. “If I follow up the Maid of Orleans’ last hours I shall not be fit for anything. Let us pass over the moment when they scattered her ashes upon the Seine and take up some other subject.”

“But we must go to Bonsecours and see the memorial.”

“Oh, yes, but that was an afterthought, a late and very insufficient expiation. How could they think her guilty?”

“Because they accused her of witchcraft. We did not do much better two hundred years later. It was the English who were responsible.”

“That is what I insisted to--” Gabriella bit her lip and turned to look up at the beautiful towers of St. Ouen.

“The most beautiful Gothic church, the purest example, it is said, to be found on the continent.” Miss Cavendish gave the information as they approached the stately edifice. “As you know, there is little left of old Rouen, and even mediæval Rouen is fast disappearing in the progress which insists upon new boulevards and modern architecture.”

“It is a pity, don’t you think?” said Sidney.

“It is from an artistic point of view, yet for health’s sake streets must be widened, foul old buildings must be done away with. The people need fresh air and cleanliness if they would advance and cope with the rest of the world. There is, however, discretion used in making changes and we shall see some truly mediæval streets and houses. The church was named for St. Ouen who was buried here in 689, but the present building is the fifth on the site. The earliest was at that time without the city walls. The former abbey of St. Ouen was supposed to have been founded in 523, but there is also a tradition that a church was founded nearly two centuries before, and that its name was changed to the present one when St. Ouen’s body was brought to it for burial.”

“It certainly is a noble church,” remarked Gabriella, as they stepped inside. “It satisfies me, Gem, in almost every detail. That cauliflower window is bad, but the others are a delight. It is more delightful than the cathedral. I shall want to come in here many times before we leave Rouen.”

“The centuries have left too many impressions of the various hands which have wrought out the cathedral for it to be altogether satisfactory,” remarked Miss Cavendish, “though, like the curate’s egg, ‘it is excellent in parts.’”

“I like the dear little old crypt of St. Gervais,” Sidney said. “It is so early and so Christian. It dates from before the time of the cathedral and is as interesting as anything we have seen. Dear me, we shall get deeper and deeper into legend and history the longer we tarry here. The stories are fascinating; that one of Fredegond and Brunhilda, and the fable of St. Romain who delivered Rouen from a dreadful monster, and which gave rise to the Privilege du St. Romain.”

“I like the tale of Rou or Rolf or Rollo, or whatever his name was,” rejoined Gabriella. “It pleases me to think of a yellow-haired viking coming out of the north, blowing upon his ivory horn and waving his blood red banner. Rolf the Ganger, the sea king, who took possession of this submissive land, but who was willing to become vassal to the king’s daughter. I like the way the record reads: ‘he received from the Karoling King all the lands from the river Epte and westwards to Brittany with the hand of the Princess Gisela.’ It is delightful to think he could hang his golden bracelets on a tree in his hunting forest where they remained till he came that way again.”

“That was because of the strictness of his laws more than because of the honesty of his followers, I am inclined to think,” Miss Cavendish observed. “Those old pirate dukes and their followers could scarcely have been distinguished by a modesty which forbade them to take what they found.”

“I like the story of Richard the Fearless, too,” Sidney went on, “and of the Sacristan of St. Ouen. Oh, yes, Rouen can supply us with legends and fables for months to come.”

“But just now,” Miss Cavendish reminded her, “I think we must remember that our _déjeuner_ will be served in just five minutes.”

Normandy cider and clotted cream were among the other local delicacies offered them, and so refreshed were they by their good repast that they decided to start out again immediately, making their way through the older and more tortuous streets to the river where they would find a car for Bonsecours. This took them to a height which overlooked the valley and the town, and here they could gaze upon the memorial to Jeanne d’Arc, that statue which represents the young peasant in all her girlish simplicity. For an hour they lingered, lounging on the grass and looking down on the valley below, reading snatches of legend and history from the book they had brought. Then they returned to wander about the quaint old streets, up the Rue de la Mesure, and down the Rue Damisette, hanging over the enticing shop windows and gazing upon the Grosse Horloge, then to step in to view St. Ouen by afternoon light and to buy bits of Rouenese faience on their way up the Rue de Romain.

A second visit to the cathedral brought them unexpectedly the next morning upon the market place where the Normandy peasants were crying their wares and where fresh fruits and vegetables, meats and fish, rabbits, pigeons, ribbons, laces, clothing and books, jostled each other on the stands. Their exit was made through a huge old archway which framed the market scene appropriately as they looked back.

More churches, St. Maclou, exquisite in its symmetry and its beautiful carvings, St. Godard and St. Patrice with their splendid stained glass, St. Vincent with its little laborer standing on the outside of one of the buttresses, and looking out over the river. Then again to take a parting look at St. Ouen and the great cathedral, a last glance at the Tour de Beurre, at the beautiful Cour d’Albane, and then to turn with a sigh from all that Rouen represented, feeling that rich in history, legend and architecture, and lovely in situation as the city was, they would have missed much in passing it by, for it would remain as one of the treasured memories of their trip.