As we neared Rouen, we could see the Seine flowing close below the line of rail. It was moonlight, and the trees which lined its banks shone reflected clear and delicately outlined in the swirling water below. Every now and then a ripple caught the dazzling, steely glitter, and blazed up, as if the facets of a diamond had flashed them back, as the waves rose and fell. To the right, in the middle distance, long lines of undulating hills lay gloomy and sombre. Then--the train slowed into the vast city of innumerable traditions, and mediæval romance--Rouen. CHAPTER X To me Rouen is like no other city. The effect it makes on one is immediate, indescribable, bewildering. It speaks to one out of its vast antiquity. It has a thousand mediæval voices sounding solemnly in the ears of those who can recognise them; it has stories of adventure and daring; of bloodshed and tragedy; of calm stoicism and undeterred resolve; of plagues and burnings; that would fill many and many a thick volume. And it has its modern side, which flares blatantly and noisily across the other. The effect, for instance, of the modern electric tram in the midst of a city like Rouen is nothing less than extraordinary. Illustration: LA GROSSE HORLOGE, 1902 [_Page 117._ We took "our ease at" an "inn," which faced one of the chief streets appropriated by this blustering modern mode of progression, and I shall never forget the effect it had on me. The persistent, reiterated strumming, as it were, with one finger on its one high note, as it came tearing along up the street every three minutes, hurriedly, fussily, with loose disjointed jolt, humming always with a deep whirr in its voice, (often the octave of its much-used high note), or anon singing up the scale, with a burr on every note, was the most absolute contrast to the Other Side of Rouen; the "other side" of the deep, quiet, wonderful past. The tram was like some enormous bee flying restlessly, tiresomely, out of one's reach with incessant buzz: a buzz which seemed, after a time, to have got literally inside one's head. I defy anyone to find a more complete contrast in noise anywhere than could be found between the great, deep, ponderous boom of the many-a-decade-year-old bell of the Cathedral de Notre Dame and the fussy, flurried, treble ping-ping of the electric tram. It was a perfect representation of "Dignity and Impudence," as illustrated in sound.