At Le Mans, As At
Bourges, My First Business Was With The Cathedral, To
Which, I Lost No Time In Directing My Steps.
It suf-
fered by juxta-position to the great church I had seen
a few days before; yet it has some noble features.
It
stands on the edge of the eminence of the town, which
falls straight away on two sides of it, and makes a
striking mass, bristling behind, as you see it from
below, with rather small but singularly numerous flying
buttresses. On my way to it I happened to walk
through the one street which contains a few ancient
and curious houses, - a very crooked and untidy lane,
of really mediaeval aspect, honored with the denomina-
tion of the Grand' Rue. Here is the house of Queen
Berengaria, - an absurd name, as the building is of a
date some three hundred years later than the wife of
Richard Coeur de Lion, who has a sepulchral monu-
ment in the south aisle of the cathedral. The structure
in question - very sketchable, if the sketcher could get
far enough away from it - is an elaborate little dusky
facade, overhanging the street, ornamented with panels
of stone, which are covered with delicate Renaissance
sculpture. A fat old woman, standing in the door of
a small grocer's shop next to it, - a most gracious old
woman, with a bristling moustache and a charming
manner, - told me what the house was, and also in-
dicated to me a rotten-looking brown wooden mansion,
in the same street, nearer the cathedral, as the Maison
Scarron.
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