show you that the chief _ateliers_ of the district are the wash-houses of the tanners and the wool-workers. Along the base of the mouldering wall which skirts the diverted arm of the Eure lie the backs of old houses with their adjoining tanyards. Many of them, too, are garnished with little wooden galleries, lavatories of the town’s soiled linen. ‘These galleries are filled with washerwomen, who crane over and dip their many-coloured rags into the yellow stream. The old patched and interrupted wall, the ditch with its weedy edges, the spots of colour, the white-capped laundresses in their little wooden cages--one lingers to look at it all.’[73]
Wine was another commodity for which Chartres was once famous. The author of the _Book of Miracles_ tells us of a troubadour who left his companion to pursue his pilgrimage alone whilst he himself paid a prolonged visit to a _cabaret_.
‘Car la parole et le renon Des bons vins avoit entendu Qui a Chartres erent vendu Clers seins nes et delicieux.’
The monks, it seems, had not planted their vines in vain. But, alas! the modern vintage of La Beauce cannot claim any of the epithets assigned to it above. The _grands clos de très bon vin_ of which Souchet speaks (1640), which cardinals had found excellent in 1506, and which were sold with pride and profit at the _Étape-au-vin_ or the various taverns, is but a thin and dreary liquor to-day. Either the soil has been exhausted and the grape lost its virtue, or the taste of the former connoisseurs was faulty. No doubt their standard of taste in wine was lower than ours. A cup of sack, I doubt, would not prove so pleasant to the modern palate as it is to the modern ear. But even so the vintage of La Beauce must have suffered a sore deterioration. The flourishing condition of the old tavern-keepers and vintners is indicated by their generous donation of the magnificent window which records the chief events of the life of S. Lubin (second in the north aisle of the nave).
It remains to close this chapter with a bald list of the subjects of the windows, taken in order, starting from the western front and moving round the Cathedral from the Clocher Neuf along the north or left-hand side.
1. Rose Window. Last Judgment. Described above.