At Le Mans as at Bourges, my first business was with the cathedral, to which I lost no time in directing my steps. . . . It stands on the edge of the eminence of the town, which falls straight away on two sides of it, and makes a striking mass, bristling behind, as you see it from below, with rather small but singularly numerous flying buttresses. On my way to it I happened to walk through the one street which contains a few ancient and curious houses,--a very crooked and untidy lane, of really mediæval aspect, honored with the denomination of the Grand Rue. Here is the house of Queen Berengaria. . . . The structure in question--very sketchable, if the sketcher could get far enough away from it--is an elaborate little dusky façade, overhanging the street, ornamented with panels of stone, which are covered with delicate Renaissance sculpture. A fat old woman, standing in the door of a small grocer's shop next to it,--a most gracious old woman, with a bristling moustache and a charming manner,--told me what the house was. * * * * * This admirable house, in the centre of the town, gabled, elaborately timbered, and much restored, is a really imposing monument. The basement is occupied by a linen-draper, who flourishes under the auspicious sign of the Mère de Famille; and above her shop the tall front rises in five overhanging stories. As the house occupies the angle of a little _place_, the front is double, and carved and interlaced, has a high picturesqueness. The Maison d'Adam is quite in the grand style, and I am sorry to say I failed to learn what history attaches to its name. * * * * * I remember going around to the church, after I had left the good sisters, and to a little quiet terrace, which stands in front of it, ornamented with a few small trees and bordered with a wall, breast high, over which you look down steep hillsides, off into the air, and all about the neighboring country. I remember saying to myself that this little terrace was one of those felicitous nooks which the tourist of taste keeps in his mind as a picture. HENRY JAMES, _A Little Tour in France._ [Illustration: XV ROCHER-ST.-POL _The Town and the River Merle_] A COUNTRY TOWN