Page:The reign of William Rufus and the accession of Henry the First.djvu/309

The eastern side of the city.

The archbishopric. precinct, does in some faint way preserve the memory of the dwelling-place of Rolf.^[1] But by the days of Robert, the dukes had moved their dwelling to the south-eastern corner, also near the river, where the site of the castle is marked by the vast halles, and by the graceful Renaissance porch, where the chapter of our Lady of Rouen yearly, on the feast of the Ascension, exercised the prerogative of mercy by saving one prisoner condemned to die. Here the memory of the castle, though only its memory, lives in the names of the Haute and the Basse Vieille Tour, one of which is soon to be famous in our story. On the eastern side the wall was washed by a small tributary of the Seine, the Rebecq, a stream whose course has withdrawn from sight almost as thoroughly as the Fleet of London or the Frome of Bristol.^[2] On this side of the city lay a large swampy tract, whose name of Mala palus still lives in a Rue Malpalu^[3], though a more distant part of it has taken the more ambitious name of the Field of Mars. Within the wall lay the metropolitan church of our Lady and the palace of the Primate of Normandy. If this last reached to anything like its present extent to the east, the Archbishops of Rouen, like the Counts of

1. This earlier castle of the dukes must be carefully distinguished from the Vieux Palais, which, though it is no longer standing, still lives in street nomenclature. This last was the work of our Henry the Fifth, and lay to the west, between the Roman wall and the wall of Saint Lewis. On this side of the city the modern street lately called Rue de l'Impératrice, and now promoted to the name of Rue Jeanne Darc, is not a bad guide. It runs a little outside of the Roman wall and may fairly represent its fosse. So the other great modern street called Rue de l'Hôtel de Ville, and now Rue Thiers, runs a little further outside the northern wall of the ancient city, which is marked by the Rue de la Ganterie.
2. On this side again a modern street helps us. The Rue de la République, lately Rue Impériale, marks, though less accurately than the others, the eastern side of the city. The Rebecq may be traced for a little way, but it presently loses itself, or at least is lost to the inquirer.
3. Ord. Vit. 690 B. See below, p. 255.