The wrath of King Louis, the sarcasms of Tristan l'Hermite, the laughter of Olivier le Daim; these things you must imagine for yourself, when that letter was read before His Majesty. But the fact remains that other and more pressing business called Desile away to foreign wars, and Demoiselle Alice consoled herself for her royally appointed suitor by giving distinct encouragement to the merchant opposite who had laid such stress upon the inviolable privileges of the "Charte aux Normands." The story went the round of Rouen, from the Rue du Hallage to the Hotellerie des Bons Enfants and back again, and you can almost hear its echoes still in that old Rouen "des vieux pignons aigus comme des epines dorsales Bombant les angles contigues Sur les solives tranversales.-- Les logis causent de tout pres, Et l'ombre leur est coutumiere, On jurerait qu'ils font expres De manquer d'air et lumiere." [Illustration: HOTEL DES BONS ENFANTS] And you will pardon me that for a moment I have listened to that muttered gossip, to the scandal that one old roof-tree whispered to another whilst it leant across the narrow street, as some old woman mumbles secrets to her neighbour with bleared eyes winking beneath her shaggy brows. There was far more talking in the streets then than there is now, especially in such crowded little passage-ways as this old Rue du Hallage, a corruption from the Maison du Haulage where taxes on the corporations and on goods sold in the market-halls were levied. For in the fourteenth century for the 228,000 inhabitants of Paris there were only twenty-four "hotels" and eighty-six "taverns," and the similar disproportion in Rouen was only made up for, in the case of the "genuine traveller," by the unstinted hospitality of such monasteries and hospitals as those at St. Catherine, St. Vivien, or St. Martin. But the taverns or wine-shops did a roaring trade. On their benches the burgesses sat every afternoon discussing business matters with their lawyers over the light "vin du pays," or bought a few bottles of the "vin de choix," which was the recognised offering to preachers, judges, councillors, and kings alike.[35] It was, in fact, no bad thing to be the advocate in a case when a rich monastery was concerned, for the Abbey of St. Gervais records about this time that it gave its judges and lawyers in one very critical lawsuit, a dinner at their favourite hotel, comprising fish and pears and meat and hypocras (no less!) and ginger and sugar and a hundred oysters. Not in that order let us hope, though the bowels of men of law are traditionally tough, and the hospitality of the intention is undoubted. [Footnote 35: The Town Accounts are filled with such cheerful business entries as the following: "Avec Mons. Jehan Delammarre qui fu clerc de la ville, a l'Escu de France aupres la Madeleine le darrenier jour de septembre, 28." "Pour boire au matin avec les advocas chiez Jehan le Bucher, 4s. 6d."