As carvings, these charmingly naive representations of country life break absolutely every rule that is supposed to govern the art of sculpture. Their relief is very slight indeed, they have no definite limits, for they wander vaguely round the windows, with trees and running water and clouds and birds and houses all on the same plane, and all with equal "values." I have not the slightest doubt that just as the Field of the Cloth of Gold was copied from a historical tapestry of the event, just as the Triumphs of Petrarch were copied from tapestries that might well have decorated the town of Ardres on the occasion of the royal meeting, so these window decorations, which betray their origin even more than the carvings on the other wing, were taken direct from tapestries which may have been at Ardres in June 1520, and certainly might have been seen in any great chateau of the period. Their very position on these walls is very like what tapestries were so frequently used for in the lavish mural decoration of the time. Every house hung out its best embroideries and tapestries and gaily coloured cloths; and the way in which these windows break into the background of each design represents the very probable result of draping a long piece of tapestry round the window of a house. The Chateau of Blois is known to have contained just such "bergeries" in the rooms of Anne of Brittany; at another chateau in Touraine, the Chaumont of Georges d'Amboise (the friend of the builder of this house in Rouen), may be still seen needlework, in pink and old rose, of country scenes, in the rooms used by Catherine de Medicis. Finally, in the inventory of the tapestries of Philip the Bold of Burgundy, drawn up soon after his death, you may read such entries as the following:-- "Ung autre petiz tapiz de bergerie, sur champ vert, seme de bergiers et de bergieres ... ung autre vielz tapiz de haulte lice ouvre de jeunes hommes et femmes jouans de plusieurs jeux ... arbres, herbaiges, ciel fait a faucons." This might really represent the original needlework from which Abbe Leroux chose the subjects for his carving, and that the origin was some tapestry of this fashionable kind I see no reason to doubt, especially in the town which preserves in the Church of St. Vincent some of the finest sixteenth-century tapestries in France. [Illustration: INNER FACADE OF THE MAISON BOURGTHEROULDE.]