lying near the road.

After a time, at the end of the long white perspective, appear the towers
of the great church of St Germain that dominate the town where Henry II.
was staying when he made that rash exclamation concerning his "turbulent
priest." It was from Argentan that those four knights set out for England
and Canterbury to carry out the deed, for which Henry lay in ashes for five
weeks in this very place. But there is little at the present time at
Argentan to remind one that it is in any way associated with the murder of
Becket. The castle that now exists is occupied by the Courts of Justice and
was partially built in the Renaissance period. Standing close to it, is an
exceedingly tall building with a great gable that suggests an
ecclesiastical origin, and on looking a little closer one soon discovers
blocked up Gothic windows and others from which the tracery has been
hacked. This was the chapel of the castle which has been so completely
robbed of its sanctity that it is now cut up into small lodgings, and in
one of its diminutive shops, picture post-cards of the town are sold.

The ruins of the old castle are not very conspicuous, for in the
seventeenth century the great keep was demolished. There is still a fairly
noticeable round tower--the Tour Marguerite--which has a pointed roof above
its corbels, or perhaps they should be called machicolations. In the Place
Henri IV. stands a prominent building that projects over the pavement
supported by massive pointed arches, and with this building in the
foreground there is one of the best views of St Germain that one can find
in the town. Just before coming to the clock that is suspended over the
road by the porch of the church, there is a butcher's shop at the street
corner that has a piece of oak carving preserved on account of its interest
while the rest of the building has been made featureless with even plaster.
The carving shows Adam and Eve standing on either side of a formal Tree of