Meaux is a small and handsome town on the Marne, divided into three parts. The town itself and its suburbs are on this side of the river towards Paris, and over the Marne lies another portion--the third--a large suburb known as the Marché, surrounded on all sides by the river and a well-constructed ditch, and containing many houses and inhabitants. This place was formerly strongly fortified by high and formidable walls and towers, but in the second period of our Huguenot troubles, the greater part of the inhabitants being of that party, all these defences were thrown down. This quarter also withstood the attack of the English, the other portions of the town being ruined, and by way of reward the inhabitants of the Marché are still exempted from payment of _taille_ and other taxes. They point out in the Marne an island, two or three hundred feet in length, which was, they say, originally an embankment made by the English as a position from which the fortress of the Marché might be bombarded by warlike engines, the artificial work having become firm ground in the course of time.[4] In this faubourg we saw the abbey of Saint Faron, a building of great antiquity, where they show certain chambers in which Ogier the Dane[5] is said to have dwelt. There is also an ancient refectory, with tables of stone, very long and massive, and of an unwonted size, and in the middle of this hall was formerly a spring of fresh water which served for drinking. To this day most of the monks are men of gentle birth. Amongst other things is to be seen an ancient and stately tomb, upon which are carved in stone the figures of two knights of abnormal stature, and legend says that these represent Ogier the Dane and one of his paladins. It has neither inscription nor armorial device, nothing save a sentence in Latin which an abbot caused to be set thereon some hundred years ago, recording that two unknown heroes lie buried below; and in the treasury they still show the bones of these knights, the bone of the arm, from shoulder to elbow, being about the length of the entire arm of a man of average stature in these days, and a little longer than that of M. de Montaigne. They show likewise two of their swords, about the length of our own two-handed swords, the edges gapped by strokes of battle. At Meaux, M. de Montaigne paid a visit to the treasurer of the church of St. Stephen, one Juste Terrelle,[6] a man of note amongst the savants of France, a little old man, sixty years of age, who has visited Egypt and Jerusalem, and lived seven years in Constantinople. He showed us his library and the curiosities of his garden, where the most wonderful thing we saw was a tree of box of round growth, and so thick by artificial cutting, that it seemed to be a circular ball, massive and trim, about a man’s height.