Irritated and mortified, the poor priest
preferred his complaints to the king; but it was one thing to love the
treason, and another to love the traitor; and his appeal obtained no
redress.
From Louviers our next stage was Gaillon, on our road to which we passed
some vineyards, the most northern, I believe, in Normandy. The vines
cultivated in them are all of the small black cluster grape; and the
wine they produce, I am told, is of very inferior quality,--No place
can appear at present more poverty-stricken than Gaillon; but the case
was far otherwise before the glories of royal and ecclesiastical France
were shorn by the revolution. Ducarel, who visited this town about the
year 1760, dwells with great pleasure upon the magnificence of its
palace and its Carthusian convent and church. Of the palace the remains
are still considerable; and, after having been suffered to lie in a
state of ruin and neglect from an early period in the revolution, they
are now fitting up as a prison. The long inscription formerly over the
gate might with great propriety be replaced by the hacknied phrase, "Sic
transit gloria mundi;" for the vicissitudes of the fortune of noble
buildings are strikingly illustrated by the changes experienced by this
sumptuous edifice, long proverbial throughput France for its splendor.
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