Indeed, As He Trafficked In Oriental Products
And Owned Many Galleons, It Is Probable That He Was
Personally As Much At Home In Certain Mediterranean
Ports As In The Capital Of The Pastoral Berry.
If, when
he looked at the ceilings of his mansion, he saw his
boats upside down, this was only a suggestion of the
shortest way of emptying them of their treasures.
He
is presented in person above one of the great stone
chimney-pieces, in company with his wife, Macee de
Leodepart, - I like to write such an extraordinary name.
Carved in white stone, the two sit playing at chess at
an open window, through which they appear to give
their attention much more to the passers-by than to
the game. They are also exhibited in other attitudes;
though I do not recognize them in the composition on
top of one of the fireplaces which represents the battle-
ments of a castle, with the defenders (little figures be-
tween the crenellations) hurling down missiles with a
great deal of fury and expression. It would have been
hard to believe that the man who surrounded himself
with these friendly and humorous devices had been
guilty of such wrong-doing as to call down the heavy
hand of justice.
It is a curious fact, however, that Bourges contains
legal associations of a purer kind than the prosecution
of Jacques Coeur, which, in spite of the rehabilitations
of history, can hardly be said yet to have terminated,
inasmuch as the law-courts of the city are installed in
his quondam residence. At a short distance from it
stands the Hotel Cujas, one of the curiosities of Bourges
and the habitation for many years of the great juris-
consult who revived in the sixteenth century the study
of the Roman law, and professed it during the close
of his life in the university of the capital of Berry.
The learned Cujas had, in spite of his sedentary pur-
suits, led a very wandering life; he died at Bourges in
the year 1590. Sedentary pursuits is perhaps not
exactly what I should call them, having read in the
"Biographie Universelle" (sole source of my knowledge
of the renowned Cujacius) that his usual manner of
study was to spread himself on his belly on the floor.
He did not sit down, he lay down; and the "Biographie
Universelle" has (for so grave a work) an amusing pic-
ture of the short, fat, untidy scholar dragging himself
_a plat ventre_ across his room, from one pile of books
to the other. The house in which these singular gym-
nastics took place, and which is now the headquarters
of the gendarmerie, is one of the most picturesque at
Bourges. Dilapidated and discolored, it has a charm-
ing Renaissance front. A high wall separates it from
the street, and on this wall, which is divided by a
large open gateway, are perched two overhanging
turrets. The open gateway admits you to the court,
beyond which the melancholy mansion erects itself,
decorated also with turrets, with fine old windows, and
with a beautiful tone of faded red brick and rusty
stone.
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