UNCLE JOHN IN ROUEN
9 a.m.
"Well, girls, are you ready to get up and out and set about improving your minds? I've been reading the guide-book and spilling my coffee with trying to do two things at once, ever since eight o'clock. But what your Uncle John doesn't know about Rouen now isn't worth stopping to look up in the index. Why, I've even got the real French twang to the pronunciation. It's Rooank; only you stop short of the 'n' and the 'k,' so to speak. The waiter who brought my breakfast showed me how to do it—said he never saw a foreigner catch on to the trick so quick before. I gave him one of those slim little quarters they have here, and he was so pleased that he taught me how to say 'Joan of Arc' for nothing. It's Shondark—Shondark. I learned it in no time. Well, come on, if you're ready. I've been waiting almost an hour.
Rouen—Maison du XV siècle
"I declare, but this fresh, free atmosphere is refreshing! As soon as you get outside of your bedroom door you begin to get the full benefit of the Continental climate. I presume, if you're poor, you get it as soon as you get outside of your bed clothes. Rather a medieval staircase, eh? And four orange-trees at the bottom to try and fool us into feeling balmy. However, I don't mind little discomforts: all I mind is being shut up on a ship with a darned fool like that man Sibbilly. I shouldn't wonder if his mother was his wife, after all. I could believe anything of him. I didn't like him.
"We'll go to take in the cathedral first; it isn't far, and I've got it all by heart. Thirteenth century and unsymmetrical—you must remember that. There, that's it ahead there—with the scaffolding. They're bolstering it up somewhat, so as to keep on hooking tourists, I presume. The biggest tower is the Butter Tower, built out of paid-for permissions to eat butter in Lent. Rather a rough joke, its being so much the biggest, isn't it? The whole cathedral's lopsided from eating butter, so to speak. I believe it's the thing to stop in front and act as if you were overcome; so we'll just call a halt here and take in the general effect of the scaffolding.
"Now we'll walk around the whole thing. I haven't come abroad to take life with a hop, skip, and jump; I've come to be thorough, and I want you girls to form the habit of being thorough, too. What I didn't like about that fellow Edgar was his not being thorough. When he went down to look at the ship's machinery he only stayed an hour. Now, I didn't go at all; but if I had gone, I should have stayed more than an hour. Good job of scaffolding, isn't it? You see, they make the scaffolding out of young trees withed together, and use them over and over. Economical. Just about what you'd expect of Sibbilly. Those gargoyles and saints around the top stick their heads out pretty interested-like, don't they? But their view is for the most part blocked. Now this cheerful old jail at the back is the palace of the archbishop. I wish, young ladies, that you would note those little bits of high windows and the good thick bars across them as illustrating the secure faith that the dead and gone archbishops had in their loving people. I'll bet there's been plenty of battering and rioting around under these walls, first and last; plenty of fists and sticks and stones. It's big, isn't it? Big as half a block, and things look so much bigger here than they do at home. They slide a roof up slanting and cock it full of little crooked windows, and you feel as if you must tip over backward to take in the top. I vow, I don't just see how it's done; but—oh, here's where we go in. This dark, damp little stone-paved alley is the celebrated 'Portail des Libraires,' so called because those arcades used to be full of book-stalls. We go along on the cobble-stones,ont throw ourselves hard against this little swinging door; it creaks, it yields, we enter—hush!