A picture of the monastic life of Normandy, in the thirteenth century, has been drawn in the remarkable _Regestrum Visitationum_ of Eude Rigaud, Archbishop of Rouen. This wonderful diary has over five hundred pages, and covers a period of about twenty years. In 1248, Rigaud was appointed Archbishop of Rouen by Innocent IV. He proved a zealot for reforms in the Church; he undertook periodic inspection of the monasteries and nunneries, and his journals contain much "sensational" reading. The archbishop records that the rule in many of the convents was exceedingly lax, and that fasts and penances were not duly observed. He found that a number of the clergy were addicted to tippling, and he made clerical drunkenness an offence punishable by the deprivation of a living. Incontinence was very common among the monks. In the convents, Rigaud discovered "great disorders." But the archbishop relates that the offenders were so numerous that had he expelled them all, no priests would have been left in the diocese. When wandering in the streets of Rouen, we remember that Saint-Amant was born here in 1594. The life of this wine-loving poet is full of rare adventure and colour. He was a scholar, wit, soldier, statesman, and man of business by turn. Saint-Amant visited England, went to Rome with the fleet, and afterwards to Spain. He also started a glass factory, and was for a period a diplomat in Poland. His career is a long romance. Saint-Amant's name in full was Marc Antoine de Gérard, Sieur de Saint Amant. The name by which he is best known was taken from the abbey of Saint-Amant. He was one of the greatest of good livers, with an unquenchable thirst, and an infinite capacity for absorbing liquor. It is said that he and his boon companions often sat for twenty-four hours over their bottles. In those days of tavern revelry, the poet was respected as a master of deep-drinking and a model for the bibulous. Théophile Gautier wrote of the poet of Rouen: "Saint-Amant is assuredly a very great and very original poet, worthy to be named among the best of whom France can boast." This exquisite singer and devoted worshipper of Bacchus died in Paris in 1661. CHARTRES The city of Chartres stands on a bold hill, rising from a wide plain on the south-west of Paris, watered by the River Eure, a tributary of the Seine. This commanding position was favourable for a fortified town, and long before the Romans came to Gaul, kings had a stronghold here of great importance.