Beside a panelled door, hanging loosely on its hinges, hopped a tame rook, rather out at elbows as touching its wing plumage, pecking at the rain-water which had dripped into an old silver plate of quaint design which lay tilted against the kerb stone. Further up was a house with a bulging front, as of someone who has lived too well and attained thereby his corporation. In some streets the houses are slated down the entire frontage, and only the ground floor timbered. Many of the houses are labelled "Ancienne Maison," and the name beneath, and some—but only some, alas!—have the date over the door. There are some exceedingly quaint dedications over one or two of the shops in Rouen. One, which specially arrested our attention, was over a shop in the Rue Grosse-Horloge, and ran thus:—"Au pauvre diable et à St. Herbland réunis!" Another was to "Father Adam"; another to "Petit St. Herbland,"; another to "St. Antoine de Padue:" this last was a very favourite dedication, and one came across it in all parts of the city. Though, when one saw how often he was the patron saint of "Robes and Modes," I must say one wondered what the connection was between the saint and a milliner's shop. Was it a reminder of that one of his temptations in which three beautiful maidens, scantily attired, appeared and danced before him? Only, if so, surely the double entendre suggested by the dedication would act as a deterrent, if it acted at all, on those who were tempted by the chiffons, draperies et soieries, displayed in the shop window, to go within. One could see that there was a singular fitness in "Father Adam" being the patron of an eating shop, as was the case in one street.
At midday the street leading into the cathedral square is a scene of multitudinous interests. A little boys' school, marshalled solemnly by a master—spectacled and sticked—the boys all stiff-capped and starched looking; a square, closed-in cart, with neatly packed rows of those appetising long loaves lying cosily side by side; a huge cart, messageries Parisiennes, drawn by splendid cart-horses, five bells on each side of their splendid collars—collars edged with brass nails, and brass facings with pink background—the peasant conducting it, wearing the high-crowned black hat and loose, navy-blue blouse reaching to knee, and opening wide at collar; a barrow of some sweet-smelling stuff pushed over the cobbles by a costermonger who, as he passed, stretched out a disengaged hand to re-arrange his truck of oranges to make the vacant places of those gone before seem less deserted and more enticing to a possible customer. The stream beside the way was swinging merrily along in a succession of weirs, forming itself into different patterns as it went along, owing to its course being over rough, uneven cobbles. Here, as it turned a corner, the sun shone full on it, and from being a stream of doubtful reputation—being in most instances the receptacle of the castaway Flotsam and Jetsam of many a household—it straightway became a river of pure molten steel.
Then, down another street as I accompanied it, its tide turned—the tide which is swelled by many pailfuls from the doors that lie beside its route—and like the bottle imp, it dwindled into a tiny thing, and flowed along weakly—creased and lined.
The Guide-book urges one on from Rouen, to Caudebec-en-Caux. But I found so much to see in the way of old streets and old buildings in Rouen itself, that I postponed our day's journey to Caudebec till just before we were leaving. Then our choice fell on a day when the powers of the weather fought against us in our courses, and it rained almost continuously for the whole day long. But there are special beauties which are abroad in these times, which those who have seen them once, recognise at their true value, and would not forego.
In this case there was a driving white scud of rain slanting across the meadows. It swept over steep slopes redly orange with fallen leaves lying thick in layers everywhere. The tree trunks stood, yellow in contrast, over streams in which the rain made spear pricks, which swiftly became pin-point centres of ever widening circles. Cows moving lazily on, in their grazing, stepped in the squelching gravel of the deeply-rutted roads, shining up dully, in dark slate colour. Here and there, but not often, black-timbered barns came into sight, sparsely covered with vivid green moss.
Then would come a field with mangy patches of colourless grass, the trees standing sharply outlined in all shades of vivid emerald green: an orchard of gnarled branches of the very palest green imaginable—a sort of etherealized mildew, backed by a fine old slated farm-house. Close beside it a farmyard, the ground literally dotted all over with black hens, busy over remunerative pickings. A little further on was another orchard, this time filled with whitened skeletons of trees, their bark all being stripped from off the trunks. The hedgerows were crowned with quick successions of briary—the grey hair of the dying year—and at the end of one of them was an avenue of gnarled dwarf willows bordered by a winding stream; their rounded heads shewing soft purple against the green meadow.
At Duclair it was evidently market-day. The train was ushered in by a clatter and jabber of voices, shrill and hoarse mixed: all shouting at the top of their voices. The platform was littered with various coloured sacks, well filled out; market baskets in all positions, and little wooden barred cages for the poor cramped domestic fowl. Beyond Duclair the trees look like brooms the wrong way up: as if grown on the principle of the received tradition in London markets as to the correct complexion of asparagus—long bare trunks and only at the latter end a little bit of spread green to shew that it was the business end.
These trees were presently merged in a dark belt of forest, standing clear against a soft grey lilac horizon of distant land shouldering the sky. Deep-roofed cottages, velveted with moss and lichen; an old château with steep slate gables; alternate green and red brown meadow, picked out in places with sombrely dark brushwood, with delicate, incisive, clear cut edge against the softer foliaged trees. Then a broad band of glittering steel encircling the hills which rose abruptly behind it.
Most of the cottages here have a sort of hem of arabesque ornamentation from the flowers which grow freely all along the tops of the roofs. The Seine, like the Jordan of old, overflowed its banks pretty considerably this autumn, to judge by the look of the land in this district. Just before the train slowed into the little primitive terminus of Caudebec, the rain, which had held up for half an hour or so, came on again, whipping the river's surface into long weals.