Even now it is pleasing. Indeed, the west front, as seen from the Rue des Forges, though, perhaps, a little stiff, is most striking, especially when the bright sun of Burgundy is picking out in warm light and pitchy shadow the triple row of strange eager faces, that, craning their necks out over the street, gaze down upon the passers-by. These grotesque beasts, and the friezes in which they dwell, are among the best examples of Burgundian sculpture to be seen anywhere. They have all the vigour, individuality, and vivacity that are characteristic of the Province. The façade, as a whole, with its double arcade, between the friezes, surmounting the triple porch, is one of the most original in France, and would be much more effective than it is, could it be better seen. The tower, too, and the flanking turrets, are boldly designed, and relieved with little sculptures, grinning suns and grimacing heads, on the corbels and the springings, that suggest an art lively and alert compared with the conventional dulness of St. Bénigne. The sense of realism is increased by the many pigeons--not of stone--who glide all day over monsters' backs, and coo into old monks' ears. [Illustration: · EGLISE · ST. MICHEL · DIJON] The Jacquemart clock on the tower was brought to Dijon by Philippe le Hardi, after the sack of Courtrai, in 1383. Froissart, charmed with it, declared it to be "ouvrage le plus beau qu'on put trouver deçà ni delà la mer." Philip may have thought so, too; since he chose it for his trophy. Nearly every street in this central part of old Dijon, around the palace of the Dukes, has many good things. Late Gothic buildings meet you at every turn, and in no town of France that I know, except, perhaps, Toulouse, will you find better Renaissance houses. The fronts of the Maison Milsand and the Maison des Caryatides, are both charming of their kind; and so is the courtyard of the Maison Richard, or Hotel des Ambassadeurs, with a magnificent mediæval staircase, and a fifteenth century gallery of perpendicular woodwork. Behind Notre Dame is the old Hotel Vogué, with one of the fine snake-skin roofs that are a feature of Dijon. [Illustration: Sculpture; Notre Dame de Dijon] But of all the quiet haunts in the city, the best are the little garden without, and the courtyard within, the Palace of the Dukes. Looking up through green boughs at the beautiful windows of the Salle des Gardes and the Tour de la Terrasse, or, from a post upon the inner flag-stones, peering into the dark shadows of the lovely Renaissance staircase that mounts by the Tour de Bar,[177] you may go back again into the days when Dijon was more famous, more alive, than mustard and gingerbread can ever make it.