Standing close to it, is an
exceedingly tall building with a great gable that suggests an
ecclesiastical origin, and on looking a little closer one soon discovers
blocked up Gothic windows and others from which the tracery has been
hacked. This was the chapel of the castle which has been so completely
robbed of its sanctity that it is now cut up into small lodgings, and in
one of its diminutive shops, picture post-cards of the town are sold.

The ruins of the old castle are not very conspicuous, for in the
seventeenth century the great keep was demolished. There is still a fairly
noticeable round tower--the Tour Marguerite--which has a pointed roof above
its corbels, or perhaps they should be called machicolations. In the Place
Henri IV. stands a prominent building that projects over the pavement
supported by massive pointed arches, and with this building in the
foreground there is one of the best views of St Germain that one can find
in the town. Just before coming to the clock that is suspended over the
road by the porch of the church, there is a butcher's shop at the street
corner that has a piece of oak carving preserved on account of its interest
while the rest of the building has been made featureless with even plaster.
The carving shows Adam and Eve standing on either side of a formal Tree of
Life, and the butcher, who is pleased to find a stranger who notices this
little curiosity, tells him with great pride that his house dates from the
fifteenth century. The porch of St Germain is richly ornamented, but it
takes a second place to the south porch of the church of Notre Dame at
Louviers and may perhaps seem scarcely worthy of comment after St Maclou at
Rouen. The structure as a whole was commenced in 1424, and the last portion
of the work only dates from the middle of the seventeenth century. The
vaulting of the nave has a very new and well-kept appearance and the side
altars, in contrast to so many of even the large churches, are almost
dignified in their somewhat restrained and classic style. The high altar is
a stupendous erection of two storeys with Corinthian pillars. Nine long,
white, pendant banners are conspicuous on the walls of the chancel. The
great altars and the lesser ones that crowd the side chapels are subject to
the accumulation of dirt as everything else in buildings sacred or lay, and
at certain times of the day, a woman may be seen vigorously flapping the
brass candlesticks and countless altar