s, may have produced that impression on some critical
spirits of his own day.

The portress who showed me into the building was a dear little old
woman, with the gentlest, sweetest, saddest face--a little white, aged
face, with dark, pretty eyes--and the most considerate manner. She took
me up into an upper hall, where there were a couple of curious
chimney-pieces and a fine old oaken roof, the latter representing the
hollow of a long boat. There is a certain oddity in a native of
Bourges--an inland town if ever there was one, without even a river (to
call a river) to encourage nautical ambitions--having found his end as
admiral of a fleet; but this boat-shaped roof, which is extremely
graceful and is repeated in another apartment, would suggest that the
imagination of Jacques Coeur was fond of riding the waves. 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 recognise them in the composition on
top of one of the fireplaces which represents the battlements of a
castle, with the defenders (little figures between 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 jurisconsult who revived