"As to the pavement, even that which is in the choir as well as that which is in the chapel of my said Lady Marguerite d'Autriche, it is in truth a thing as pleasant and delicious to see as may possibly be found, being all such joyous and singular leadwork mingled with very divers picturing ... which so pleases spectators that almost with regret one walks upon it. I remember that, being there, was a gentleman who feeling scruples at walking on this pavement, spat in the face of a great rascal of a pastrycook, whose nose was all beflowered with knobs of scarlet tint, saying that there was no spot in all the church more dirty to spit on than that." "I remember also having seen descend (here), the late King Francis[213] when he came to Bourg, who, having seen this church, was ravished with admiration, saying that he had never seen nor heard of a temple of such excellence for what it contained. And true it is that he noted (as he was a Prince exceeding in good sense all the kings of his time) that this white stone of which the Church is built, would not well endure frost, being too rare and tender. And it was since found that he spoke truly; for long after there fell from the clock tower some of the great bastions or gargoyles which take the water over the roof, on the side of the cloisters, a thing which did much hurt to the building." The revolutionary mob were proposing to do still greater hurt to the building, and would have done so, had not the wisest man in all Bourg filled the church with hay which the sans-culottes could not bring themselves to burn. So Brou is ours, we hope, for many centuries to come. [Illustration: THE END; Princess Marguerite d'Autriche] FOOTNOTES: [198] The English public are supposed to be extraordinarily tolerant, yet the French are undoubtedly more so. The inconveniences of such a large railway station as that at Dijon, for example, with its almost impassable doors and swinging gates that bang all day long with a report like that of heavy artillery, are such as would be dealt with sternly by an English public. But the French take quite good-humouredly the evils of railway monopoly--and other ills besides. [199] Azulejos--from the Arab word _Azul_, blue. [200] "Within this tomb the sweet Margot is laid, Who has two husbands and is still a maid." [201] "Eglise de Brou," by Jules Baux, p. 22. [202] Beaux's "Eglise de Brou," 52. [203] The Château de Pont D'Ain does not seem to have met with general favour, to judge from the following humourous lines which Jean Lemaire imagined himself addressing to Marguerite.