There is a certain oddity in a native of Bourges an inland town if there ever was one,without even a river (to call a river)to encourage nautical ambitions having found his end as admiral of a fleet;but this boatshaped roof,which is extremely graceful and is repeated in another apartment,would suggest that the imagination of Jacques Coeur was fond of riding the waves.Indeed,as he trafficked in Oriental products and owned many galleons,it is probable that he was personally as much at home in certain Mediterranean ports as in the capital of the pastoral Berry.If,when he looked at the ceilings of his mansion,he saw his boats upside down,this was only a suggestion of the shortest way of emptying them of their treasures.He is presented in person above one of the great stone chimneypieces,in company with his wife,Macee de Leodepart,I like to write such an extraordinary name.
Carved in white stone,the two sit playing at chess at an open window,through which they appear to give their attention much more to the passersby than to the game.They are also exhibited in other attitudes;though I do not recognize them in the composition on top of one of the fireplaces which represents the battlements of a castle,with the defenders (little figures between the crenellations)hurling down missiles with a great deal of fury and expression.It would have been hard to believe that the man who surrounded himself with these friendly and humorous devices had been guilty of such wrongdoing as to call down the heavy hand of justice.
It is a curious fact,however,that Bourges contains legal associations of a purer kind than the prosecution of Jacques Coeur,which,in spite of the rehabilitations of history,can hardly be said yet to have terminated,inasmuch as the lawcourts of the city are installed in his quondam residence.At a short distance from it stands the Hotel Cujas,one of the curiosities of Bourges and the habitation for many years of the great jurisconsult who revived in the sixteenth century the study of the Roman law,and professed it during the close of his life in the university of the capital of Berry.
The learned Cujas had,in spite of his sedentary pursuits,led a very wandering life;he died at Bourges in the year 1590.Sedentary pursuits is perhaps not exactly what I should call them,having read in the "Biographie Universelle"(sole source of my knowledge of the renowned Cujacius)that his usual manner of study was to spread himself on his belly on the floor.