Little is known of the circumstances either of Chartier’s birth or his death, though of his actual life several records exist. He is known to have been one of the most brilliant men of letters of his time, probably rivalled only by Charles d’Orléans, and--since a court minstrel is always a picturesque figure--he has come down to our times surrounded by a certain halo of romance. His many writings, both in prose and verse, are very little known to modern readers, though he had many disciples among the men of his own time, and his “Bréviaire des Nobles” was considered such a standard for courtly manners that it was apportioned out, so Jean de Masles tells us, into daily passages for the youth of the court--that court of which Chartier knew every turn, every corner, every glittering folly and every dark intrigue--to learn by heart. A modern statue in his native town at the end of the Rue Général de Daïs shows him in furred cap and flowing robe, a pen in one hand, and in the other a sheaf of papers from which he is apparently declaiming some gay rondel or pathetic ballad. His house in the Rue des Bouchers is also shown, with an inscription to the effect that he was born there with his two brothers, Jean and Guillaume; but it has now become a very small and dingy shop, and one goes away with a feeling that a link with the past has been broken. But although Chartier’s house would scarcely be singled out as an ancient landmark, one or two there are in the quiet grey line of the Bayeux streets that seem to belong to a better time, a time when watchmen walked the streets by night and armed men clattered down them by day: and among these stands out the really beautiful gabled specimen at the corner of the Rue St. Martin. Here cross-timbers, black and white, tall gables and lattice windows call for our admiration on our road to the Cathedral; and nearer the great church itself is the sixteenth-century Maison du Gouverneur, and another “Maison d’Adam.” It is curious how often street and house names in France reverted in this way to our common origin. In countless places do we find Maisons d’Adam (Eve sometimes has a share in the patronage of the house), with their figures of Adam, Eve and the Serpent; sometimes, as at Rouen, a whole street bears the name of the Père Adam. It would be interesting to know if this is a cropping up of the Revolutionary _êgalité_--a wooden form of “When Adam delved and Eve span, Who was then the gentleman?” If so, the idea is certainly before its time, since many of these houses and streets were built, and presumably named, when the Revolution was as yet in its cradle.