To me Rouen is like no other city. The effect it makes on one is immediate, indescribable, bewildering. It speaks to one out of its vast antiquity. It has a thousand mediÆval voices sounding solemnly in the ears of those who can recognise them; it has stories of adventure and daring; of bloodshed and tragedy; of calm stoicism and undeterred resolve; of plagues and burnings; that would fill many and many a thick volume. And it has its modern side, which flares blatantly and noisily across the other. The effect, for instance, of the modern electric tram in the midst of a city like Rouen is nothing less than extraordinary.

We took "our ease at" an "inn," which faced one of the chief streets appropriated by this blustering modern mode of progression, and I shall never forget the effect it had on me. The persistent, reiterated strumming, as it were, with one finger on its one high note, as it came tearing along up the street every three minutes, hurriedly, fussily, with loose disjointed jolt, humming always with a deep whirr in its voice, (often the octave of its much-used high note), or anon singing up the scale, with a burr on every note, was the most absolute contrast to the Other Side of Rouen; the "other side" of the deep, quiet, wonderful past. The tram was like some enormous bee flying restlessly, tiresomely, out of one's reach with incessant buzz: a buzz which seemed, after a time, to have got literally inside one's head.

I defy anyone to find a more complete contrast in noise anywhere than could be found between the great, deep, ponderous boom of the many-a-decade-year-old bell of the Cathedral de Notre Dame and the fussy, flurried, treble ping-ping of the electric tram. It was a perfect representation of "Dignity and Impudence," as illustrated in sound.

The next evening I was reminded of this again while standing in the square facing the cathedral of Our Lady. A group of students strode cheerfully and briskly up the street under its shadow, which lay like a great, dark mass lined off by the moonlight, shining white on the cobbles. As they walked along, one of them struck into a song, which had, at the end of each stanza, a peculiarly inspiriting refrain, which was taken up in turns by students across the street, crossing it, and far ahead. When all this had died away, a passing fiacre, rolling over the stones, broke the silence again, and then the clocks began to strike the hour.

As the sweet, mellow, solemn bell of the cathedral sounded, and before it had struck three notes, a blatant tin kettle of a clock, from a hotel near by, raspingly announced its own rendering of the time. Then here, then there, from all quarters, came shrill, discordant editions of the same fact, and the great thrilling, arresting reminder of the dignified past was silenced. So have I sometimes seen a modern, fashionable woman, decked out in all the tinsel fripperies of Paris, outshine some quiet, delicate, other-world beauty in a crowded room, so that the latter was, to all intents and purposes, completely shelved, so to speak. She needed her own environment, her own quiet background before her personal note could be heard; before she could shine in people's eyes, as she should have shone.

What is it that makes foreign churches a living centre of daily concern? That they are so, can hardly be disputed. Why they should be so is another matter, and reasons are bandied about. But whether they have a reasonable basis, is questionable. The reason chiefly given, of course, is the influence of the priest, and the background he can produce at will to the home life picture, if his suggestion in daily life are not carried out. But it remains to be proved if this reason can carry the weight that is laid upon its back by its supporters.

One afternoon about two o'clock I waited in the square opposite the cathedral for forty minutes, in order to see what manner of men and women were constrained to go through the little swinging door underneath one of those splendid archways. Every other moment, for the whole of that forty minutes, some one passed in and out: well-dressed women; countrywomen in white frilled cap, apron and sabots; hatless peasants; beggars; "sisters;" infirm people, healthy people; old people, young people, children. Some would come out slowly, stiffly; some with mackintosh flying behind; some accompanied, some unaccompanied.

There was no service; (for I went inside myself, to see, and found a quiet church—no one about but those who had come for a quiet "think," or a quiet prayer); it was evidently done simply to satisfy a need—a need that affected equally all sorts and conditions of men and women. Just as someone, during a sudden pause in the middle of the day's business, takes a quiet quarter of an hour aside for a chat with some chosen comrade; just as a mother, perhaps, during the "noisy years" of her children's lives, steals a quiet ten minutes of solitude to restore the balance of her thoughts, which have been unsettled by the quarrels and disputes of baby tongues. It is the time when the soul puts off the official robe of pressing business for a few short minutes and takes a deep drink at "the things that endure;" the time when the soul can stretch its tired, cramped spiritual limbs, and take a long breath; the hour when the burden that each of us carries is slipped for a time, and shrinks in stature. To bring the spiritual and the material to speaking terms has always been a crucial point of difficulty. England, to-day, belongs pre-eminently to a materialistic age, and it is full of people who are trying—some of them fairly successfully—to persuade themselves—knowing how difficult a matter it is to combine the spiritual element and the material,—that it is safest and happiest to divorce them as completely as possible. Where in this country does one see the compelling necessity at work with all classes on a week day, to go aside into some quiet, empty church, and draw from spiritual stores? One may safely affirm that this occurs somewhat rarely, out of London.

There was a good deal of garden drapery at our hotel, (a good deal of drapery too, as to prices, but this we did not find out until the last day of our stay!) Every night white tablecloths were spread over the beds of heather and chrysanthemums in the front garden. Every morning a very curious effect was caused by the snow, which had fallen during the night, having made deep folds in their sides and middles, so that at first sight it looked as if some enormous hats had been deposited there in the night. One evening, between eight and nine o'clock, while sitting quietly at the table d'hÔte, which was presided over by a youthful master of ceremonies, who walked up and down in goloshes, (his invariable, though unexplainable, custom) there came the distant but rousing sound of bugles. Instantly chairs were pushed back, diners rose hastily, and presently the whole room emptied, and a shifting population tumultuously made its way across the hall, and through into the garden where the table-clothed flowers slept in their night wrappers,—and away to the gates. As we reached them the dark street was raggedly lit up by the flickering jerk of the red glare from moving torches: there was a sudden stir of music in the air: the bugles came nearer, accompanied by the quick tramp past of many feet: the rattle of the drums worked up the tune to its climax: then the call of the bugle again, exciting, questioning, hurrying: a moment later, the music dancing and edging off by rapid paces, till all the awakened emotion and excitement, stirred to vivid life of the passing, trenchant movement, sank—as it seemed, finally—quite suddenly, to a flicker in the socket, and ceased. The street in front of us grew emptier; and, the requirement of the inner man and inner woman again beginning to re-assert themselves, the garden witnessed the return to the deserted table d'hÔte, of most of the crowd, who had, some minutes earlier, started up to follow the drum.

But I still waited on at the gate. The whole scene, but just enacted, had put me back many, many years, to a night long ago in very early childhood; when the torches and tar-barrels of a certain fifth of November celebration at St. Leonards, had flashed as startlingly, as brilliantly, an arrestingly on the panes of our sitting-room; and I, a little child playing quietly by myself on the floor, had been roused suddenly to instant attention by the glare and fantastic dancing reflections on the wall as the procession of shouting torch bearers came striding up the street to the stirring sound of the bugle. The whole incident had made an ineffaceable impression on my mind, and I had often recalled to myself the dark window, the sudden flickering glare, the roar of the flaming tar-barrels, the whole scene swaying ruddily up the street outside, the excited sense of something strange and new happening; but never till this evening, had I been taken right back, and my feet, as it were, planted once again on the same spot of the old sensation, from which the push of so many passing years had displaced the "me" of those days when the spring of life's year was but just beginning.

In the Rue des Ours there is a little humble restaurant to which I went again and again. It stands in a narrow, cobbled street, with old black timbered houses opposite it and beside it. It is itself of no mean age. Most of the more well-to-do restaurants in Rouen have indeed cartes fixed up in prominent places outside, but they are cartes without the horse of "Prix fixe" harnessed to them.

But if you once know your restaurant, then the thing to do is, in this case not to "find out men's wants and meet them there," but to "find out" what particular dish it is really good at cooking and "meet it there" by coming regularly for that very dish, not venturing out into the unknown, and often greasy, waters of a stew, a hors d'oeuvre, or entremet. This is knowledge acquired by experience, for I have, in the craving that sometimes beseiges one for variety, gone much farther and—fared much worse, so now I am content to stay where I fare fairly well, if plainly, at moderate expenditure. One can pass a very happy hour at the little restaurant in the Rue des Ours; they can fry kippers to a turn, and one or two other simple things. Some people I know wouldn't care to come in and have kippers for second dÉjeuner: all I can say is, then they can stay out—go somewhere else and make greater demands on their trouser pockets.

But for those who can appreciate plain fare, the little restaurant in the Rue des Ours will answer well their midday needs. There are few things more difficult to get than plain things done to perfection at a restaurant which thinks great guns—I mean great entrÉes—of itself. The most appetising breakfast dish I have ever had in my life—even now my lips long to make a certain appreciative sound in memory of it!—consisted of certain slices of bacon cooked at a little fire on an island, during a camping-out excursion on the river near Marlow some years ago. I may as well add that I had no share in the cooking of it, only in the eating of it.

Everybody sits at the little, narrow, long tables which are set at intervals over the little room with its sanded floor, at my restaurant, with the exception of those who sit at marble ones, which are there also, only in less numbers. I remember one special day when a paper had provided great food for excitement for two men who sat smoking in a corner and discussing matters of state over two cups of black coffee, which had been aided and abetted by two liqueurs. The woman, who was the middle-woman between the cook—or manufacturer—and the consumer, went to and fro rapidly, shouting from time to time, "Plats!" with the names of those required, with an added and imperative "Vite! Vite!"

From time to time a burning match from the pipes of the two conspirators fell as softly on the sanded floor as, on a November night, a shooting star sinks, and is extinguished on the dark sky. Presently, a bustling little man in a wide-awake entered with a huge pile of pink and yellow advertisement leaflets, it recommended some horloges, which had but recently swum "into the ken" of the inhabitants who live on the outskirts of Rue des Ours.

Immediately on entering, he saluted with confident and easy grace, and handed round with characteristic aplomb and dignity, the leaflets with which he identified himself for the time, though having no connection with the business with which they were concerned, save that of a purely temporary one. No Englishman could deliver leaflets like that. He would never take the trouble to attempt unfamiliar "airs and graces" to push someone else's concern. He would deliver simply and baldly, and would consider that good measure for his pay.

But the Frenchman's is "good measure running over," and his manner in doing it is half the battle, though the Englishman cannot understand how this can be so. I remember in this connection, an Englishwoman, who had lived much in France, saying to me the other day, À propos of Frenchwomen:

"They make charming speeches and compliments which one likes exceedingly to hear, until you find suddenly in some practical matter, some emergency, that they really mean nothing at all by them,—well then, when I recognised that, I just felt as if I'd no ground to go on at all, and I didn't care any longer for any of their professions.

"There is no real courtesy in the streets of Paris. Men jostle women right and left, it being at the passenger's own risk that the crossing of the street is performed.

"I never felt that I was a woman till I came to Paris: and there it is forced on one daily. The Parisian's view of a woman is not an ideal one."

To the diner, whose purse is light and whose needs are heavy and not satisfied by the fare of the restaurant in Rue des Ours, I would suggest the restaurant which is cheek by jowl with "Grosse Horloge." There, simplicity is more fully mated to variety, for you can depend upon three plats, and, unless one is a slave to luxury, these plats, well cooked even if plain, are amply sufficient to satisfy the cravings which begin below the belt, and end—in a good square meal. By the way, many waiters in these restaurants go upon some co-operative system, and all the "tips" that they receive at restaurants are put into a common box, which is placed on the desk of the chargÉ d'affaires. As each table empties, the waiter, in passing, drops his douceur through the narrow slit. My conviction is, that the workmen who are given pourboires do the same thing in the way of co-operation.

Over the little restaurant of which I have been speaking is the old gateway and tower of La Grosse Horloge. The bell here, called "Rouvel," dating back more than six centuries, has not been rung now for eight months, owing to its having become cracked. It weighs 1,500 kilogrammes. We went once into the belfry where the poor old bell, in its dotage, still hangs. Here in the draughty shuttered twilight, which is its constant environment, sounds unceasingly through each day and night, its mechanical heart-beats of "Teck-took"—"Teck-took"—"Teck—took," solemnly, slowly, unmelodiously.

Here in the half-lights, with stray gusts of wind blowing in through the interstices of the shutters which shut in the belfry, it has rung for ages on end, the warning couvre feu, the solemn message of the passing hours. The only sounds which came filtering in to one's ears from the world far below are the distant shriek of the engine, and the rattle of the carriages. Below is a chamber where the weight of the clock rising and falling is the only object between a wilderness of dark timbers and the planks of the stairs.

Here, at the first news of fire in the city, is sounded the fire-alarm. If the fire is at a great distance the alarm is prolonged.

Right at the top of the tower is a grand view of the hills standing round about the city;—(when I was there)—brown, befogged, misty,—the broad river lying clear cut and silvery in the middle distance; while nearer in, one could see old decrepit, black-timbered houses which abutted on to the flagged courts below them, on whose surface the hail dripped whitely, and leapt merrily. Two hundred steps lead up to the top of the tower through a winding, twisting stone stairway.

The gateway below, in the street, is the same age as the tower: but the age of the outer gilt clock, which faces the street, is not more than the sixteenth century.