France from sea to sea . Rouen itis not only impossible to describe but even to namethem. Take a guide-book, and make your own selec-tion of a favorite. But the house which excels inbeauty and historical interest is the Maison Bourg-theroulde, within whose court the buttressed Gothicwalls are covered with purely Renaissance decorativecarvings. To the left is the wing whose pictorialrecord is historically valuable as a contemporaneoustranscript of the meeting between Henry VIII, Kingof England and France, as he described himself,and Francis I. That useless and costly pageant wascalled, for its
France from sea to sea . Rouen itis not only impossible to describe but even to namethem. Take a guide-book, and make your own selec-tion of a favorite. But the house which excels inbeauty and historical interest is the Maison Bourg-theroulde, within whose court the buttressed Gothicwalls are covered with purely Renaissance decorativecarvings. To the left is the wing whose pictorialrecord is historically valuable as a contemporaneoustranscript of the meeting between Henry VIII, Kingof England and France, as he described himself,and Francis I. That useless and costly pageant wascalled, for its extravagance, The Field of the Clothof Gold; and the chroniclers declared that more thanone of the French knights wore on his back the valueof woodland and water-mill. To many, however, the most interesting buildingin Rouen is a restored round tower, all that is leftof the Chateau de Rouen, built in 1205 by Philippe-Auguste. In it Joan of Arc was questioned, withinstruments of torture and executioners gear before [ 274 ]. ROUEN her eyes. We will not linger over the hideous trag-edy. Suffice it that she was burned to death in theOld Market Place, May 80, 1431—the spot is markedplainly in the pavement. The story seems English attitude we can comprehend: they hadcaptured a dangerous enemy. But the French—here was a king she had given his crown; here apeople she had made a nation. The recent beatifica-tion of the white, heroic soul that passed upward onwings of fire that May afternoon in the Old MarketPlace is tardy, paltry recompense for the crime offive hundred years ago. Good and Glorious St. Joan of Arc they labelher now! And high on the hill of Bon Secours theyhave reared a huge, ugly, triplicate monster in herhonor. Why, with all the exquisite work of threegreat architectural periods to draw from, couldFrance not have built a fitting shrine, one worthyto be an expiatory offering.^^ It is worth remembering that less than twentyyears after the tragedy, the En
Size: 1275px × 1961px
Photo credit: © The Reading Room / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, bookpublishernewyo, bookyear1913
