It is one of the most beautiful types of a fifteenth-century town-house that can possibly be imagined--a veritable remnant of the ancient prosperity of Bourges, of a time when such houses were no uncommon feature in the streets--when men who had made their fame and fortune loved to build for themselves a beautiful home in their native town, and enrich it with every conceivable ornament. Modern _nouveaux riches_ indeed do the same, though perhaps not in their native place, where their memory as butcher or baker might, in their eyes, tell against them; but the difference between their “mansions” and the hotel of Jacques Cœur is the difference between an age when the Renaissance was in its early freshness and an age when it has suffered the degradations of many modern horrors in the style that is popularly designated “handsome.” No one looking upon the delicate sculptures, the wonderful wood carving, the courtyard with its cloister, the lovely porticos and galleries, can doubt the taste of the man who built and lived in this “maison pleine de mystères.” [Illustration: THE MUSÉE CUJAS, BOURGES] The Cathedral of Bourges, which, as Freeman points out, is essentially French, although at the head of the Aquitanian churches, is well seen in approaching the town, where it rises above a base of grey tiles and warm white walls--a long flank of choir and nave, unbroken by transepts. The thrust of the heavy vaulting is stopped by a perfect forest of flying buttresses, between whose walls are built chapels, either for chantries or family monuments. From inside the town it is not much in evidence until one ascends the Rue Royale, where one comes upon it quite unexpectedly at the end of what Mr. Henry James calls a “short vague lane,” somewhat in the same manner as one comes upon St. Paul’s bursting into view at the top of Cheapside. The absence of transepts accounts naturally for the want of any central tower or lantern, and as there are no heavy transept pillars supporting the arches at the crossing, to intercept the view, the elevation of the Host is visible to every worshipper, and the eye travels in one sweep through nave and choir to the beautifully jewelled windows of rich old glass, ranging from the twelfth to the seventeenth century. The east terminal vaulting springs so low as to mask part of the side-lights of the apse. This is also very noticeable in the east end of Sens Cathedral, the beauty of whose windows is marred by the vaults cutting across the heads of the lights. At Bourges, however, the spandril or cheek of the vault is pierced by a foliated light, showing a certain amount of the window behind, and thus taking away the appearance of depression in the low springing vaulting of the apse.