la Pucelle_: that is, the place where the famous JEANNE D'ARC[62] was
imprisoned, and afterwards burnt. What sensations possess us as we gaze on
each surrounding object!--although, now, each surrounding object has
undergone a palpable change! Ah, my friend--what emotions were _once_
excited within this small space! What curiosity, and even agony of mind,
mingled with the tumults of indignation, the shouts of revenge, and the
exclamations of pity! But life now goes on just the same as if nothing of
the kind had happened here. The past is forgotten. This hapless Joan of Arc
is one of the many, who, having been tortured as heretics, have been
afterwards reverenced as martyrs. Her statue was, not very long after her
execution, almost _adored_ upon that very spot where her body had been
consigned with execrations to the flames. The square, in which this statue
stands, contains probably one of the very oldest houses in Rouen--and as
interesting as it is ancient. It is invisible from without: but you open a
wooden gate, and quickly find yourself within a small quadrangle, having
three of its sides covered with basso-rilievo figures in plaster. That side
which faces you is evidently older than the left: indeed I have no
hesitation in assigning it to the end of the XVth century. The clustered
ornaments of human figures and cattle, with which the whole of the exterior
is covered, reminds us precisely of those numerous little wood-cut figures,
chiefly pastoral, which we see in the borders of printed missals of the
same period. The taste which prevails in them is half French and half
Flemish. Not so is the character of the plaster figures which cover the
_left_ side on entering. These, my friend, are no less than the
representation of the procession of Henry VIII. and Francis I. to the
famous CHAMP DE DRAP D'OR: of which Montfaucon[63] has published
engravings. Having carefully examined this very curious relic, of the
beginning of the sixteenth century, I have no hesitation in pronouncing the
copy of Montfaucon (or rather of the artist employed by him) to be most
egregiously faithless. I visited it again and again, considering it to be