The Class left Étretat for Rouen. * * * * * "O Rouen! Rouen! it is here I must die, and here shall be my last resting-place!" said Joan of Arc at the stake. Rouen was hardly the resting-place of the heroic peasant girl, for her ashes were thrown into the Seine. But the thought of the stranger on coming to Rouen is less associated with its history under the sea-kings of the North, the Norman dukes and the English invaders, than with the hard fate and the public memorials of the simple shepherdess, who seems to have been called from her flocks to change the destiny of France. [Illustration: THE MAID OF ORLEANS.] The Class entered Rouen after a series of short, zigzag journeys, partly in coaches and partly on foot, going leisurely from town to town through roads that presented to view continuous landscapes of shining orchards, ripening gardens, and resplendent poppy-fields; stopping at Amiens, the birthplace of Peter the Hermit, meeting here and there a ruin, and finding everywhere the connecting historical links between the present and the past. At Amiens the Class was brought into the presence of a relic which greatly excited the boys' wonder. "This church," said their guide, taking the Class to a side chapel of the cathedral, "contains a very rare relic,--a part of the head of John the Baptist!" Passing into the beautiful chapel the Class was shown the shrine containing the precious treasure, which consists of the supposed frontal bone, and the upper jaw of the saint. The _valet de place_ who accompanied the Class from the hotel seemed to have no doubt of the genuineness of the relic, or of the propriety of adoring it, if indeed it were real,--and he bowed reverently before the shrine. "A very rare relic," he said. "Wonderful!" said Frank. "I did not know that such sacred remains were anywhere to be found as are shown us in the churches of France." "_Quite_ a rare relic," said Master Lewis, coolly. "I believe that, previous to the French Revolution, several whole heads of John the Baptist were to be seen in France." "You do not think that a church like this would be guilty of imposture, do you?" asked Ernest Wynn. "Not wilfully. Most of these French relics were brought from Constantinople at the time of the Crusades. They may be genuine,--the people believe them so; but, in the absence of direct historic evidence, it is probable that the Crusaders were deceived in them by others, who in their turn may have been deceived. "You will be shown wonderful relics or shrines supposed to contain them, in nearly all the great churches of France. The French people were taught their reverence for relics by St. Louis, who sought to enrich the churches of his country with such treasures." "Who was St. Louis?" asked Ernest. "I am glad to have you ask the question," said Master Lewis. "His name meets you everywhere in France. STORY OF ST. LOUIS.