The interior is scarcely less interesting, though it has suffered very much from modern religiosity. Only forty-seven and a half metres long, by scarcely twenty-five in width, its height is nearly twenty-three metres in the three bays of the nave, rising to thirty-nine at the lantern. Its greatest treasure now is the exquisite Escalier des Orgues, from which the staircase to the organ loft at Ely was imitated. This was built in 1519 for two hundred and five livres by Pierre Gringoire, "Maistre Machon de Rouen." In examining more closely that fragment of it, of which a plaster cast has been made for the Musée du Trocadéro in Paris, I could not help being struck with the general resemblance of its plan to the more famous staircase which adorns the exterior of the wing of Francis I. at the great château of Blois in Touraine, which was built almost at the same time, from the designs (as I have attempted to prove elsewhere) of Leonardo da Vinci, and was decorated later on with statues by Jean Goujon. This sculptor was only born the year after St. Maclou's staircase was finished, but the main lines of the structure are so suggestive of the earlier work that I cannot but imagine this fine piece of French Renaissance to be a deliberate copy, by a master strong enough to retain his own originality of treatment, of the main design that appears in the courtyard of Blois.
Not all the churches of which Rouen is so full can boast even that measure of preservation which storm and time and the more devastating hands of man have spared to the three noblest of her religious monuments. Of St. André, for instance, only the tower remains, that stands alone above the Rue Jeanne d'Arc, like the Tour St. Jacques in Paris, as an admirable specimen of the later Gothic architecture. A still finer relic of an older past is that old church of St. Pierre du Chastel, which is now turned into a stable and coach-house at No. 41 Rue Nationale. Unless you look for it, you will miss altogether the great statue of David and his harp, which is the one massive decoration of its strong and simple tower, and the carvings which may still be traced through the neglect and mutilation of centuries upon its western door. More degraded still, to even baser uses, is the Church of St. Cande le Jeune, which has become some kind of an electric manufactory, and may now be chiefly traced by the huge chimney which obstructs the sky as you look up the Impasse Petit Salut towards the Tour de Beurre of the Cathedral. Just opposite the entrance to the public library is another instance of barbarous neglect: the Church of St. Laurent. Once used as a magazine of shops of every kind, sometimes a lost home for decrepit carriages, sometimes a drying-house for laundry-women, these exquisite ruins of Renaissance architecture have at last been rescued by the civic authorities, if not from evident decay, at any rate from further mutilation. The tower alone—but one among so many in Rouen—would be the proudest possession of many a larger English town. The balustrade is decorated by a pattern of letters, which pathetically express their hope of better treatment in the battered legend: "Post Tenebras Spero Lucem."
Close to these eloquent ruins is a church that has had a somewhat better fate, for if St. Godard has been rather roughly treated, the beauty of its stained-glass windows has saved it from absolute destruction. In the chapel of St. Peter, due east at the end of the north aisle, is the great window that was made in 1555 to represent St. Romain, who is shown at the top, on the left hand, dragging the Gargouille of Rouen to destruction with his sacred stole (see [p. 39]). Lower down, on the right, you must look at the King seated in his royal chair, and the hounds at play before him on the carpet. In the south aisle the corresponding window to the east has a tree of Jesse in its upper part, and beneath is one of the finest examples of sixteenth century painting in Rouen, work that reminds you of the work of Rembrandt. Of these five figures of old men, the last two on the right are especially worthy of attentive study. They were done in 1535. To the right of this window in the same chapel, looking southwards, is another fine window of about the same date, said to be copied from a design by Raphael and his school, of the life and genealogy of the Blessed Virgin; but it is not so strong or original in treatment as the last. Beneath it are two kneeling figures carved upon the tomb of the family of Bec de Lièvre.
In the Rue Jeanne d'Arc is another church, St. Vincent, that must be visited. I have spoken already of the little labourer in tunic and breeches, with a sack of salt upon his back, who stands upon the outside of the buttress to the south of the choir, and looks towards the river. It commemorates the fact that, by letters patent delivered by Charles VI. in 1409, the church (which was then much nearer to the river) was allowed to take toll of every cargo of salt which came into the port, a privilege which was exchanged in 1649 for an annual payment of 140 livres. Begun in 1511—or, as some say, 1480—after the plans of Guillaume Touchet, St. Vincent certainly comes after St. Maclou in order of merit. Its choir alone is a magnificent specimen of the architectural possibilities of the smaller churches, and must have been finished before 1530, when Touchet's supervision ended. The splendid flamboyant western porch is not shown in Lelieur's plan of 1525, and was probably a later addition. The name of Ambroise Harel has also been connected with the work, but I have been unable to satisfy myself of the exact portions for which he may have been responsible.
It is chiefly admired, and wrongly so to my mind, for the treasures of its interior. These consist not merely in the wonderful series of sixteenth century tapestries, of which M. Paul Lafond has published a detailed description, but in the stained-glass windows, of which the most celebrated represents the ass of St. Anthony of Padua kneeling before the Holy Sacrament. The design is taken, it is said, from a drawing of Dürer, to whom also is ascribed the original suggestion for the window at the west end of the first aisle, of the Virgin and Apostles. North of the choir is an interesting glass-painting of the buildings of Rouen.
But slightly west of the northern end of the same street you will find windows in the Church of St. Patrice which I think infinitely preferable, of their kind, to those which are the especial pride of St. Vincent. They are very justly placed in the first class of the "monuments historiques" de France. As you enter the transept, turn due south, and the first window on your right is the "Woman taken in Adultery," which was moved here from the old church of St. Godard. The inscription on it is "Honorable homme maître Nicole Leroux licentie es loix advocant et Marie Bunel sa feme ont donne ceste vitreau moys de may lan de grace 1549 priez dieu pour eulx." In the right hand corner you may see the good William praying with his son behind him, and his wife in black is further off to the left with her six daughters behind her, two of them in "cramoisy taffetas, trimmed with northern peltry." In the Chapel of the Virgin in the north transept, the left hand window of the three over the altar depicts the life of St. Fiacre and St. Firmin, and was put up in 1540 in the days when Pierre Deforestier was in office, and François Baudoin was prévôt. Of the three you see when looking due north, the farthest to the right in the transept was placed there in 1583, "à l'honneur du grand roy des roys de St. Louis roy de France;" the middle window shows St. Eustace suffering martyrdom in the brazen bull which is being heated red hot, while above St. Hubert meets his miraculous stag. The farthest window to the left is dated 1538; it is the best, and Jean Cousin has been suggested as its designer. The donor prays in the right hand corner, and his wife with a daughter behind her is in the left. A well-drawn figure of an angel announces his message to the Blessed Virgin who is reading, and in the middle of the composition, near the bottom, lies a corpse in a winding-sheet.
The large window at the extreme end of the north aisle is also very fine. At the top is a woman in a car triumphing. Below, on the left, are Adam and Eve. Next to them is the Devil, and Death, whose swarthy skin is wrapped in a winding-sheet that seems to belly in the blasts of Hell. The story of Job that is painted in the first window on the left in the north aisle, also came from old St. Godard. And all this wealth of stained glass is shown off wonderfully well in a church that is not too large to lose its full effect, and is planned with only a few light columns in the interior to impede the view of all of them from the centre of the nave.