The public buildings of La Rochelle are fine, but the narrowness of most of the streets in which they are placed, prevents their showing to advantage. If the Palais de Justice stood in the fine square opposite the cathedral, for instance, it would have a very imposing effect; but, as it is, one passes under its arcades, and under the arcades opposite, half-a-dozen times before its beauties become apparent. It is a modern building of great taste and delicacy, in the style of the Renaissance; the friezes and entablatures being executed with extreme skill and grace. The Bourse is also a beautiful building, having a gallery supported by a colonnade, which connects two of its wings, and which separates the court from a pretty plantation of ornamental trees, which agreeably adorns the edifice. But the ancient building of the Hôtel de Ville is that which most attracts, both for its beauty and its recollections. The taste of Francis I. and Henry II. is evident in its architecture. Henry IV.'s additions are also obvious, and more modern _improvements_ have considerably altered its original appearance. The entrance is comparatively modern and ugly; which is the more to be regretted, since, from this spot the Maire Guiton--the great hero of La Rochelle, spoke to the people when obliged to consent to the capitulation of the town. However, the site itself cannot but be interesting; and all that surrounds it remains as it must have been at his time. The singular gallery, and its ornamented roof in compartments, with a thousand interlaced letters and devices, as mysterious as those at the house of Jacques Coeur, at Bourges, the façade, and statues, and foliage, and ornamental mouldings, the curious windows, the ancient screen, the outer walls, and _tourelles_ of the thirteenth, and battlements and door-ways of the fifteenth century, all are singular and attractive. It was, probably, in this palace that the accident happened to Charles the Seventh, _Le Bien Servi_, told with so much characteristic simplicity by Mezeray.