ame.]

[Illustration: THE ORIGINAL FONTAINE "CROIX DE PIERRE" NOW IN THE
MUSEE DES ANTIQUITES]

The inner quadrangle, which you reach through the rooms of the Museum,
is the best thing it has to show. Remote from the dust and bustle of
the highway the little cloistered square is gay with flowers upon the
turf, and statues from various churches are set here and there, like
pensioners in Chelsea Hospital, after their active service in
religious wars has left them mutilated and useless, but not without
honour in the days of their old age. From the walls and windows
sculptured saints and angels look down with an air of gentle
approbation on the scene, and in the very middle a little bishop
raises his hand in benediction over pious strangers from the centre
of a rosebed.

But it is in the galleries within that we must seek for those records
of primitive habitation that we have come to see. Hatchets of silex or
of bronze, rude clay vases that were found nine yards beneath the
soil, bear witness to the remotest ages of humanity in Rouen. The town
grew very slowly, for its name was unknown in any form to Caesar, and
it is not till the second century that Ptolemy mentions Rotomagos as
the capital of the tribe of Velocasses who have left their name to the
Vexin. The unhealthy marshes in the valley between the hills and the
river were not likely to be tenanted by the first Roman conquerors who
fixed their centre at Julia Bona, and their amphitheatre may still be
seen, near the ruins of a Norman castle, in the midst of the
manufactories of Lillebonne. But as the importance of Lutetia grew
upon the upper waters of the Seine, the value of this elbow of the
stream grew greater every year; and by the days of Diocletian,
Rotomagus had become the sea-gate of the capital, and the chief town
of the province. Already Strabo speaks of its commerce with the
English ports, and it appears as the natural point of exchange between
southern civilisation and the barbarism of the north, the gate through
which goods came from Italy, travelling by Rhone, by Saone, or Seine,
to England.

Its first fortifications found a natural southern base upon the
river's bend; to east, to west, and north it was protected by hills
and by the marshes, and unhealthy as it was, the Roman colonists were
compelled, when danger came, to leave the Julia Bona they preferred in
peace, and fly for safety to the fine strategical position Nature had
marked out at Rouen. H