On each side, as you enter the dark tunnel, great warehouses stretch out to right and left, still on the same spot where Charles V. gave Rouen the Halle aux Drapiers in 1367. Since then they have been constantly filled and constantly rebuilt. Beneath your feet are immense vaults that have been used since 1857 for storing oil and goods under warrant, and in the South Hall are piled the famous "Rouenneries" and coloured cottons, and those "draperies" which have been famous almost since Edward the Confessor allowed the Rouen merchants to use his Port of Dungeness, and the town was granted the monopoly of the Irish trade, with the exception of one ship a year from Cherbourg.
When Warwick the Kingmaker made a memorable visit to Rouen in 1467 as an ambassador, King Louis XI. ordered the town to furnish the English with all they wanted at his expense, with the result that "tous les gens de l'ambassade s'en retournèrent chez eux, vêtus de damas et de velours, et de ces draps fins et précieux qui asseurent au commerce de Rouen la supériorité sur toutes les villes du royaume." That "superiority" lasted well through the sixteenth century, and when Huguenots fled from Rouen to Westminster and Rye and Winchester, they were nearly all cloth-makers and silk-weavers. Such names as the Rue aux Anglais, the Rue aux Espagnols and others preserve the memory of commercial ventures that are even more picturesquely suggested by the ships carved here and there upon old house-fronts in the town. Nor did Rouen commerce stop at England, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Flanders, or other countries of the old world. Her citizens, as we have seen, had known long ago a "King of the Canaries," and it was no doubt at the suggestion of either Spanish or Portuguese companions that Rouen ships sailed on towards the Guinea Coast, to the Cape Verde Islands, and "the Indies," even across the Atlantic to Brazil, whence they brought back the rare wood called by Jean de Lery "araboutan."[70]
Though various "savages" were seen there earlier, the most famous occasion of the appearance of real Brazilians in the streets of Rouen was the particularly magnificent reception given by the citizens to Henri II. and Catherine de Médicis in October 1550. They were accompanied by Marie de Lorraine, daughter of the Duc de Guise and Queen-Dowager of Scotland, who met at Rouen her little daughter Marie Stuart then eight years old and receiving a perilous education at the French Court which she was soon to rule during the short reign of François II. Marguerite de France, daughter of François I. was there too, and Diane de Poitiers, just over fifty years of age, who maintained over the King the same influence she had exercised over the Dauphin when she first came to Court from Normandy. It is interesting to note that her nephew Louis d'Auzebosc was pardoned by the Fierte St. Romain seven years afterwards.
Besides the "théatres" and "Mystères," which you will remember were presented to François I., the citizens determined that in case mythology and symbolism had lost their pristine charms, an absolutely novel entertainment should be given to the King on this occasion. So on the fields between the Couvent des Emmurées and the left bank of the Seine a great sham fight was arranged between a number of Norman sailors and fifty "Brazilian savages" of the newly discovered tribe of Tupinambas, "naivement depinct au naturel," which may be understood as "clad only in their own skins and a few stripes of paint." They must have felt the climate of Rouen in October slightly raw, but no doubt the sham fight kept them warm, and everything seems to have gone off very pleasantly. The ladies were especially interested in these unknown creatures, and the King devotedly displayed the triple crescent of his lady Diana throughout the entire performance. There was much singing of anthems and decoration of the streets, but the Indians were evidently the "pièce de resistance."[71]
Besides the music in the town, of which I reproduce an example at the end of this chapter, an entertainment was provided for the King and Queen and all the ladies in the great Palais de Justice, with which those rogues, the gay members of the "Basoche," must have been heartily in sympathy. For Brusquet, the Court jester, went into the Advocate's Box, and before the Queen upon the seat of justice, with all her ladies round her, he pleaded several important causes both for the prosecution and for the defence, "et faisait rage d'alleguer loix, chapitres, et decisions, et luy croissoit le latin en la bouche comme le cresson à la guelle d'un four," the whole being a satire on the well-known Norman passion for a lawsuit, which was appreciated as much by the good people of Rouen as by their royal visitors.
But to finish this chapter with a glimpse of the people themselves, I must take you back to that old Rue du Hallage, in which our memories of Rouen's trading voyages suggested the festivities of this royal entry. And I can imagine few greater contrasts than that from the spacious courtyard of the Palais de Justice to the view of the queer twisting streets and common habitations that you will get by standing in the Place de la Calende and looking down the Rue de l'Épicerie towards the river. As you wander down it you must look at No. 14, an excellent type of early sixteenth-century building, with its old figured tiles and high gable, and the division between the ground floor and the next storey strongly marked by carvings and brackets. You are now not only in a typical part of the old city, but on ground that has borne the name since the fourteenth century, and earned it (as did the Rue Harenguerie) from the kind of commerce carried on there. You have already passed the Rue des Fourchettes on your right, and a little further on is a still more fascinating name, the Marché aux Balais, where brooms were sold in 1644, after their modest commerce had been forbidden near St. Martin sur Renelle. On one of the small houses round it is the date 1602, and near it the carving of a salamander, which evidently gave its name to the Rue de la Salamandre, which had originally been known as "Mauconseil" ever since 1280, a name that is almost as appropriate to its darkness now as "Salamandre" must have been suggestive of its condition in the sixteenth century. It needs very little imagination to conceive amid these surroundings just such a "Cour de Miracle" in Rouen as Victor Hugo described in Paris. And, indeed, it is but quite lately that a conglomeration of tottering and leprous houses, without owners, and never entered by the police, was torn down. The Rue Coupe-Gorge, the Rue de l'Aumône, especially the horrible Clos St. Marc, have not long been swept away. Every cellar and every attic seemed to communicate by tortuous and filthy passages with the next. No visitor was admitted who had not the hallmark of crime visibly upon him, or was not a member of that loathsome confraternity of thieves and beggars who lived by their raids upon society at large.
Straight out of the Marché aux Balais the Rue du Hallage burrows under the ancient houses towards the river, hemmed in by walls on all sides, that catch up every breath of air that moves, and shut out nearly all the light. The backs of its crowded dwellings you can see from the great square into which the Rue de l'Épicerie directly leads, the Place de la Haute Vieille Tour, where you must go forthwith and see the beautiful little building that was set up for the great ceremony of the Fierte St. Romain.
This was the ceremony that gave their one great day in all the year to the drowsy archways of the Rue du Hallage; for the Marché aux Balais and the Rue Salamandre and the Rue de l'Épicerie itself, were all crowded to suffocation. Every Ascension-tide, from the reign of the Norman dukes until the Revolution, not these streets only, but every window in the houses, and the very roofs above, were crammed with people waiting for the great annual procession in which the prisoner was set free. I have quoted many extracts from the records kept by the Chapterhouse of these occasions, because the list has provided typical instances of men and manners in Rouen from the thirteenth century onwards. And I can close my tale of the most brilliant portion of Rouen's history in no better way than by suggesting to you something of the interest and the excitement created by a processional ceremony, which may itself be taken as typical of the people's life.