Begun by Jourdain Delestre, the clock was finished by Jehan de Félanis, began to go in September 1389 with two small bells to mark the quarters, and was mounted on its proper platform in 1396. The King's charter of 1389 had made special and approving mention of the virtuous Cache-Ribaut, so he was set to ring the hours. But the wicked Rouvel had been given to two of the King's household; and the town would not rest content without him, until, after many emphatic reminders of his royal pardon, the King was prevailed upon to give him back again, and he rings the curfew to this day. But he was not hung up until October 1449, when, after Talbot had left the Vieux Palais, the Council joyfully gave orders to Laurent des Loges, "pour pendre et asseoir certaine cloche nommée Rouve estant en la tour du beffroy"; and in the town accounts stands the cheery item of "Sept sous six deniers pour vin donné aux ouvriers," when it was hung on the very Saturday on which the Duke of Somerset was handing to Charles VII. the articles of capitulation. So when a French king at last came through the famous street again, Rouvel, who had remained in the dignified silence of the conquered for sixty-seven years, made his joyful note heard again above all the clamour of the citizens, and rang a welcome to the freedom of the city, to deliverance from the English, to the return of the King who confirmed the ancient privileges of the Charte aux Normands, maintained the Échiquier de Normandie, and did, in fact, everything that was expected of him except re-establish the Mayor. For the revolt of the Harelle had entirely deposed the Mayor from office. In 1389 his councillors were reduced to six, and it was only three centuries later that, in 1695, the King once more appointed a real mayor out of the usual three candidates presented by the town.
Then the bell "Cache Ribaut" came down, as was but right of him, from his high place within the campanile, and Rouvel swung again on his home-beam, "à la seconde croisée en ogive," and proceeded on his old business of proclaiming elections, festivals, and fires and curfews, and does so still. Affectionate flattery once called him a "cloche d'argent," from his peculiar tone; but the most open-minded foreigner can hardly, I think, now take any other interest in his voice than that aroused by his long history, for he has grown somewhat hoarse from ringing no less than 650 strokes at nine each evening for so many years.
The old clock shares with that of the Palais de Justice in Paris the honour of being the first in France. Guillaume Thibault and Guillaume Quesnel painted with fine gold and azure the face towards the Vieux Marché, which Olivier had made when he decorated both sides of the old Porte Massacre, and they set upon it the figures of the lamb and of the four evangelists. Its face was carved as it is now in the days of François Premier, and on its one hand is still seen the lamb of Rouen pointing to the hours. You must by no means omit to mount the tower and see the guardian wind it up, for the swing of its pendulum and the simplicity of its internal arrangements will be of the greatest interest. The astronomical part, showing the phases of the moon, is quite modern, and is set in a separate place just behind the clock-face. As you turn into the belfry out of the arch or arcade you are actually walking on the old ramparts of the city; and on the wall you may read the number of strokes rung to mark disaster in each portion of the town, two for St. Sever, six for St. Gervais, one for Mont Riboudet, and so forth. From the topmost gallery look out at the many towers and spires which even now rise in such profusion above the roofs of Rouen—St. Pierre du Chastel, St. Eloi, the front of the Palais de Justice with the Tour St. Laurent beyond, St. Ouen looking (to my mind) far finer from that point of vantage than the Cathedral, which almost hides the delicate beauties of St. Maclou. Just below you is the Hôtel de Ville, and the courtyard which M. Détancourt filled with queer mythology in various stages of undress, "pour son agrément," says the guide.[31] To east and west runs the great arm of the river, with that amphitheatre of hills which holds the town pressed against the outside of the bow like an arrow-head ready to be launched, and on the left of Mont St. Catherine you see the Darnétal valley where every siege of Rouen had its natural beginning. If you are fortunate enough to find one still alive who saw the seventeenth summer of this century, Le Père Pepin will show you too the "tinterelles" presented by the Sieur de Mon in 1713, which hang round Cache Ribaut to strike the hours; and the sun and moon, which are set in their old place again above the pavilion.
I have already mentioned the name of Jacques Lelieur. His chief fame rests on the admirable plan he made in 1525 of the water-supply of Rouen, and incidentally of many of her streets. In Lelieur's map, which is a fascinating mixture of plan and elevation, the Porte Massacre (in the Rue de la Grosse Horloge), is shown to be separated from the Hôtel de Ville by a few shops. Two years after his drawing was made the great gate (which had shown signs of weakness a century before) was taken down and the present vaulted archway begun, which was finished in 1529. Miss James has made for me a careful drawing of the central panel of the entrados, which is now just above the street, and shows the Good Shepherd (which was, no doubt, suggested by the lamb in the arms of Rouen), copied from the seal of the Drapers' Company. "Pastor bonus," says the legend, "animam suam ponit pro ovibus suis." Within the semicircular panel on each side are more sheep pasturing in a landscape, and on all the strapwork, or "bandeaux," are carved delicate arabesques. The "pavilion," with its high roof above it, holds the famous clock of Jehan de Félanis.
THE GOOD SHEPHERD
CENTRAL MEDALLION FROM THE VAULT OF THE GROSSE HORLOGE
Besides the belfry and the archway of the clock, there was a public fountain set on this same spot ever since Charles VII. turned out the English. The oldest of these fountains in Rouen, drawn from the famous spring of Gaalor, had been in the Priory of St. Lô. The next was that set up by the Franciscans on the site of Rollo's castle, and for two centuries the pipe of this "Fontaine des Cordeliers" passed close by the belfry, before it struck the Town Council that it might be well to provide water supply for citizens near the Vieux Marché, both in case of fire, and for other obvious reasons. So by 1458, the Cordeliers having been duly "approached" on the subject, the "Fontaine de Massacre" was established at the foot of the belfry, and is drawn by Lelieur as a Gothic pyramid with five sides, as tall as the arcade. It showed signs of extreme dilapidation by the eighteenth century, and the wags wrote squibs about the broken statues of the Virgin and bishops by Pol Mansellement (or Mosselmen, see [Chap. X.]), in elegiacs as imperfect as their subject. So the Duke of Montmorency-Luxemburg, the Governor of Rouen and Normandy in 1728, magnanimously offered for the restoration of the fountains all those three thousand livres which the echevins had presented to him in a purse of cloth of gold. The affair progressed thenceforward with due solemnity. M. de Boze, "Intendant des devises et Inscriptions des edifices royaux," wrote from Paris that the authorities of Rouen were to decorate their new fountain with the loves of Alpheus and Arethusa, because, said he, "the Seine (which is Alpheus) comes from Burgundy and Champagne to your fountain in Rouen (which is Arethusa), to bear their mingled waters to the sea, by which is typified your fidelity to the King to whom the monument is to be dedicated." So the name of "Ludovicus XV." duly appears with that of "Franciscus Fredericus Montmorencius"; and mention is made of the allegory of Arethusa and Alpheus as aforesaid: "Quorum fluctus amor dat esse perennes." The first sketch was made by the King's painter, and being much approved of by the worthy Mayor Coquerel, was executed in stone by Jean Pierre de France, "architect, sculpteur et entrepreneur," for the sum of 5700 livres, as agreed upon in August 1733. In 1794 the whole was considerably mutilated; but in 1846 M. Chéruel put all in order as you see it to this day, and completed the strange harmonious mixture of buildings dating from the Middle Ages to the eighteenth century.
As I have already noted, the first "Hôtel Commune de la Ville" was set near the Porte Massacre, close by the Town Belfry, with the vanished church of Notre Dame de la Ronde as its first municipal chapel. It probably stood just where the Hôtel du Nord is now, when Henry Plantagenet granted the citizens of Rouen their earliest charter of municipal independence. The second "Town-hall" was that fief of the Count of Leicester on the opposite side of the street, which Philip Augustus gave to the burgesses in 1220 at an annual rental of forty livres, and it remained in a state of primitive simplicity for more than two centuries.[32]
In 1525 Jacques Lelieur, tracing the course of the spring Gaalor shows three large buildings on the old fief of Leicester, bigger than anything near them, with a Rez de chaussée, two stories above, and a third in the roof, the ground floor being arranged for open shops, with the principal entrance at one side. Lelieur himself is shown (as may be seen in his small view of Rouen which I have reproduced) offering his manuscript to four municipal officers seated round their council-table, with a clerk at a side-desk. The walls at the right and at the back are panelled, and decorated on the left with fleurs de lys.
The third Hôtel de Ville was built when the old shops of the Rue de la Grosse Horloge began to tumble down. In June 1607 the first stone was laid according to the plans of Jacques Gabriel. By 1658 Gomboust's map of Rouen shows that the façade on the street was finished. It was in the Italian style with "rusticated" blocks of stone, and had round arcades on the ground floor for shops. The building originally formed a square, and the retreating angle may still be seen northwards from the Rue de la Grosse Horloge. In the centre of the courtyard was a statue of Louis XIV.; a chapel stood at the north-east with a pyramidal steeple of wood covered with lead. A fountain was placed at the east end (no doubt supplied by the old "puits"). In 1705 the entry upon the Grosse Horloge was opened by Jacques Monthieu, just where the Passage de l'Hôtel de Ville is to-day. In 1796 the whole building was sold to various proprietors for 72,000 livres.