[17] But to-day Vayenne had fallen behind in the march of modern civilization. For the most part its streets were old and ill-lighted. Men still inhabited houses which had stood for centuries, the castle still frowned over the city as it had done in the Middle Ages, and the ruling hand had still an iron grip in it. Perhaps nowhere in Europe had the ways of the foreigner made less progress. Travellers had not yet marked Vayenne as a place to visit. It was not easy of access, and no one had written eulogies concerning it. That it had fallen behind the times in this manner may have been a potent factor in keeping it inviolate and independent. What wonder then if its rulers, and its people, too, were satisfied with things as they were? Well might a traveller feel strangely alone and out of the world in this city, whose monuments of chiselled stone and sturdy oak had defied the ravages of the conqueror and of time. Yet no such strangeness took possession of Roger Herrick. Vayenne had been to him a dream city. He had known of it from earliest childhood, why and how he hardly understood; as a boy he had vowed one day to see and know it in reality; and to-night the sudden rushes of bell and chime music, the very cadences of the carillon, which came from the belfry of the great church whose spire rose high toward heaven, seemed familiar. They were not new, he had only forgotten them for a while. He[18] seemed to have known these dark streets with their overhanging houses in some other life, and in this present existence the death of the Duke to-night seemed to hold some meaning for him. [18] This sense of familiarity with his surroundings was particularly strong as he stopped at a corner with the intention of turning and retracing his steps to the inn. Some distance down, the street was spanned by a deep archway, in the upper part of which was a great clock. By the light of a lamp swinging at the corner, Herrick saw that it was called the Rue de la Grosse Horloge. Its upper end, at least, was better lighted than most of the streets he had passed through, and he walked toward the archway, which was old and weather-worn, and must have been a familiar object in Vayenne long before any clock was placed there. There were small shops, part of the structure on either side of the road, and in the deep arch itself, above and on the sides, were bold reliefs, some past history of the city carved into permanence in stone. Herrick paused to look up at them, his action marking him for a foreigner, for who amongst those who passed daily through that familiar archway would give them a
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