Standing at a fork in the middle of the town is the Church of Notre Dame, whose outline is marred by an uncompleted tower, but whose profusion of the most elaborate fifteenth-century carving leaves the wondering spectator almost breathless. The writer once, several years ago, commenced a drawing of the south aisle and porch, but it remains to-day as unfinished as the tower just mentioned! All the lacework carving is on the most obvious side of the church, and is an addition of the Flamboyant period. Its extraordinary wealth of detail repays the closest scrutiny, for among canopied niches and flame-patterned parapets are the grotesque heads of gargoyles and representations of such creatures as the monkey and the bat. The north side of the church shows the greatest contrast imaginable to all this delicate beauty. It is plain and bare thirteenth-century work, with the fortified tower built about the year 1366, a few years after the town had been half destroyed by the English, when the citizens set to work to fortify their town, which hitherto had relied for protection solely on the fact that Louviers was a possession of the Archbishop of Rouen. The thirteenth-century interior, with its double aisles, giving wonderful perspectives of pillars, is one of the most remarkable in Normandy. Gisors (see Section XXVII.) also has double aisles, but their loftiness gives an entirely different effect to those at Louviers. The dark brown pulpit has its sounding-board supported by a couple of carved wooden palm-trees. Some picturesque old houses remain in the old part of the town near the church, and although the town is given up to a considerable extent to woolen factories, it is still a pleasant place, surrounded by the beautiful pastoral scenery of the River Eure. A terrible incident of the Hundred Years’ War took place in 1418, when Louviers fell into the hands of the English, in spite of its newly built wall, and 120 of its most wealthy merchants were condemned to death. In 1431, in spite of an heroic defence, the English again entered the town, and burnt and destroyed so heartlessly that it is a wonder that the town ever recovered, and yet in the last years of the same century the amazing mass of ornament was added to the south side of the church. THE ROAD TO EVREUX Continuing through the main street of Louviers in a straight line past the church, the road runs by the side of the River Eure, with wooded hills on the right. A picturesque half-timbered château, with pepper-box turrets, is passed on the left, and [Illustration: THE ROAD NEAR ROUEN. A typical corner on the road between Rouen and Pont de l’Arche.] old church lying a little way from the road on the same side. [Illustration: No. 3. ROUEN TO EVREUX.]