On the 29th of september 1500, this cardinal gave 4,000 livres, to be used in the casting of a bell; wishing, that it might be _the finest in the kingdom_. The furnaces were already built at the foot of the tower; and the mould commenced; but, they remembered that the wood work of the tower would not be strong enough to bear such a colossus. The mould was broken, and they made another which was smaller. The operation was commenced on monday the 2nd of august 1501, at eight o'clock in the evening, after a general procession round the Cathedral and the archbishop's palace. The circumference of this bell was thirty feet, its height ten feet and it weighed 36000 pounds. It is said, that the founder, John le Machon, of Chartres, who cast it, was so satisfied in having succeeded in this enterprise, that he died of joy twenty six days after. On the visit of Louis XVI to Rouen, in 1786, the bell called George d'Amboise was cracked. In 1793, it was converted into cannons. Some pieces bearing the following inscription were made into medals and are now very rare. MONUMENT DE VANITÉ DÉTRUIT POUR L'UTILITÉ L'AN DEUX DE L'ÉGALITÉ. MONUMENT OF VANITY DESTROYED FOR UTILITY THE SECOND YEAR OF EGALITY. The door _of the librarians_, at the northern extremity of the transept, has been named so, from the booksellers shops formerly situated on each side of the court. Commenced in 1280, this portal was only finished in 1478. It was the usual entrance of great personnages, except the king and the princes of the blood, who entered the church by the great western porch. The bas-relief over the door had never been finished: the two lower compartments are the only ones. The court, which is before the porch of the librarians, was formerly a burying ground. They ceased to inter, because a murder had been committed in it and it had not been purified. This entrance to the church is ornamented with an infinite number of bas-reliefs, some representing subjects from the bible, others extremely comical and even licentious; several of these sculptures have of late been cleaned to be moulded. To the left, when facing the door, we perceive a man without his head, negligently leaning on his elbow: in his right hand a head is seen, which is that of a pig. If we wish to view the northern side, we must enter the _cour de l'Albane_.[12] The collateral chapels are lighted by nine windows, which are surmounted by different ornaments. We also perceive, on some of the lower windows of the tower of Saint-Romain, the round arch of the XIth century; from which one may conjecture that this portion of the tower was spared from the conflagration, in the year 1200.