Chapter IV: The Seine From Pont De L’arche to La Roche-Guyon

Up the river from Pont de l’Arche the beauties of the Seine are truly irresistible to the true traveller of artistic proclivities. At every kilometre stone along its banks the view has that charm of majestic simplicity that might be expected of a great inland waterway.

Not that it has no variety at all. It is an ever-changing panorama of a silvery sheet, reflecting the sky and clouds and the green and white of the chalk and tree clad river banks, in truly mystical fashion.

Just above Pont de l’Arche, the Eure and the Andelle join the Seine. The former is given a chapter by itself in this book, but the Andelle is merely one of those winsome little streams which in many other lands would hardly have arrived at the dignity of being called a river. Not every traveller in France knows the little river Andelle which rises in the district of Bray and flows southwesterly fifty kilometres or more until it mingles with the Seine at Pitres, near Pont de l’Arche, and almost exactly opposite the mouth of the Eure.

Forges-les-Eaux, near which the Andelle rises, first became celebrated for its chalybeate springs in the time of Anne of Austria, mother of Louis XIV., who, with many other celebrities of royal and noble birth, went there to take the waters.

To-day its fame has not wholly departed; but those who go to such places usually find that they are the more beneficial, the more fashionable they are, and the more alluring its amusements. Forges-les-Eaux is not one of the most fashionable, hence the virtues of its waters are now somewhat negatived. This is a pity, for it is in the midst of a charming country, and the sylvan attractions round about are doubtless as good an antidote to the excessive imbibing of water as “_Petits Chevaux_” or “_Trente et Quarante_.”

There are, however, no very splendid architectural remains in the town itself. A few old houses, some far more interesting ones in the country near by, a conventional “_Etablissement_” and a modern Gothic church, after the old-time manner, complete the list of attractions of Forges-les-Eaux, in addition to the springs themselves.

Southwesterly until one reaches the forest of Lyons, nearly four hundred square miles in extent, there is naught in this beautiful river valley but a succession of typical French villages, with high stone walls enclosing farms, red-roofed cottages, and outbuildings; and an occasional _pigeonnier_, and wayside cross.

At Lyons-le-Forêt, the little forest town of perhaps half a thousand inhabitants, one comes immediately into touch with a civilization strangely out of keeping with its idyllic setting. There is a hotel there with all the improvements of our own time: enamelled baths, running water, an automobile omnibus to the station, seven kilometres distant, ice for cold drinks, Scotch whisky, and many other luxuries which discount one’s enjoyment of real country travel.

It is pleasant enough, however, on a hot summer’s day; and the town itself is delightfully unspoiled, with its crooked, winding streets, its picturesque though not beautiful market-house, its pretty little church, and the tiny river Lieure, a tributary of the Andelle, where one may take fish if he likes.

Being in the midst of this great forest, it is but natural that the church of Lyons-le-Forêt should have a shrine to St. Hubert, the patron of the hunt. It is there on the north wall of the single nave of the church, with all its well-recognized symbolism; though, truth to tell, it is rather a tawdry shrine of no great artistic merit, and horribly desecrated by a coat of dirty yellow paint.

Menesqueville is the station for Lyons-le-Forêt, and from here to the Seine the banks of the Andelle are settled with little cloth-manufacturing villages and towns which form a curious contrast to their more peaceful wooded backgrounds.

Near by are Rosy, with its Renaissance château; Charleval, with its towering chimney-stacks; Fleury-sur-Andelle, with its steep hill, so dreaded by automobilists; Radepont, with its eighteenth-century ruined château, abbey, and tower; Pont St. Pierre, which is simply a picturesque, paintable, and lovable little town; and, finally, as one draws even nearer the Seine, Pitres, known formerly as Pistes, where archæologists have told us was an ancient Gallo-Romain city which came to great prosperity under the first and second races of kings.

The emperors after Charlemagne had their houses here, as one learns from the fragments of buildings which remain and the scraps of history which have come down to us. Charles the Bald ordered the principal feudal lords to build, each in his fief, citadels strong enough to arrest the Normans. A formidable one is known to have been built here, though but scanty remains exist to-day.

It is a curious, and contradicting history that is to be evolved from the topography of the river Andelle. Throughout the valley one receives emotions varying from those of sylvan and idyllic surroundings on the upper river, to those aroused by the busy little towns peopled with yarn-spinners and cloth-weavers of both sexes, who are supremely happy at their work, which lasts for a dozen hours each day.

The middle ages covered this contented valley of to-day with numberless fortresses, which are now scarcely recognizable even as ruins. The tower of Jean-Sans-Terre which remains at Radepont, together with the earlier work of Richard Cœur de Lion, is the exception. These sit on the side of a profound and luxuriant gorge environed with the remains of the Abbey of Fontaine-Guerard, and should be searched out if one has the time.

At Douville, between Radepont and Pont St. Pierre, are the ruined walls of the Château of Talbot. South of the Andelle was what is known as Norman Vexin, one of those little districts of the olden time which even unto to-day has kept its name.

At Ecouis, not far from the banks of the Andelle, is a magnificent church built at the highest point of Vexin, amid a country wholly given over to wheat-fields. The church was founded by Enguerrand de Marigny and consecrated in 1313. In the interior is a magnificent mausoleum of Jean de Marigny, a former Archbishop of Rouen, the brother of the founder. It is a wayside shrine of quite the first rank, though seldom visited or seen except by travellers through Normandy by road.

Near the juncture of the Andelle is St. Etienne du Vauvray, the chief and only attraction of which is its curiously _outré_ church, with a conventional central tower, slated, and capped with a singularly light and graceful iron cross, which in turn is surmounted by a representation of a cock, dear to the French as a symbol of the ancient Gauls.

The really great and most curious feature of this ancient church is the peculiar round tower which rises on the south side midway along the nave and is joined to its more modern neighbour by a ligature which is, in a way, inexplicable. One can understand the desire to preserve so ancient and curious a relic, and even evolve for himself its original use, though it looks for all the world like the round towers of Ireland, which many a savant has declared were pagan.

The easterly portion of this curious church--the more ancient part--extending from this flanking round tower is a wonderfully massive structure considering its size. Its portal is bare and gaunt and devoid of ornament; but it is typically Norman, with that strength of proportion which even in the best of Gothic often fell short of the earlier style. The western end is modern, shockingly so, with pepper-box exaggerated apse and no transepts.

There is elaborate glass throughout, though apparently of no great value. It is a charming ensemble of reds, greens, and browns that composes the view of this tiny church which one gets from before the astonishingly ample _mairie_, on the road to St. Pierre-du-Vauvray, the railway junction for Louviers and Les Andelys.

Muids, _en route_ from St. Pierre to Les Andelys, is ordinary enough looking, at first glance, to justify travellers by road--automobilists and cyclists--to rush by without stopping, in spite of its beautiful situation on the banks of the Seine. Travellers by train will hardly give it a glance, for the outlook therefrom is not inspiring. It has, however, a church which dates from the twelfth century, and in its churchyard is a sixteenth-century memorial cross which is indeed an admirable art treasure.

An artist will fall in love with the ancient mill, picturesquely planted on the river’s bank; and, if it were not that the proudly set Château Gaillard, to be seen in the distance, draws one to it in a magnetic and inexpressible fashion, many pages of his sketch-book would undoubtedly reproduce some of the charm of the environment of this otherwise unattractive village, which it may be said possesses no accommodation for the traveller save the roadside tavern.

The road to Les Andelys runs from St. Pierre, by the left bank of the Seine, for nearly a dozen kilometres.

Above are the great towering crags of chalk, cut in fantastic forms; and beside one, almost upon the same level, is the great boat and barge traffic of the Seine. One sees great barges, some coal-laden from Belgium and others with cargoes of wine, cotton, or lumber from Havre and Rouen, all bound for Paris.

The twin towns of Les Andelys are famed--if famed they are in the minds of the casual travellers--for the “Saucy Castle” of Richard Cœur de Lion,--the Château Gaillard, his “daughter of a year,” as he himself called it.

The great Continental strength of the Kings of England--the Angevin kings, not English kings, mark well--who were the Ducs de Normandie, gave to the France of Philippe-Auguste no little concern. They held nearly, if not quite all, the coast of ancient Gaul, from the northernmost limits of Normandy to the Pyrenees; and were virtually masters of Bretagne, Anjou, Maine, and Aquitaine, which encircled the France of Philippe-Auguste like a vast belt and struck to the heart the new empire.

The great Philippe-Auguste, who hoped to do so much toward welding new France, had professed a great fondness for Richard Cœur de Lion, and had even undertaken the Third Crusade in company with him. This did not prevent him, however, from assailing the English possessions in France, ultimately occupying Normandy, Maine, and Poitou.

Among the heritages which had come down to Richard Cœur de Lion from the Angevin Henry II. was the desire, as far as possible, to protect his fair province of Normandy from the political outbreaks and warlike invasions which might happen at any time.

Richard was not as great a political power as Philippe-Auguste; but he was more than his equal in military skill. He cared not so much to possess the sceptre of his brother king as his sword. Accordingly he erected the redoubtable fortress at Les Andelys, which to-day, ruin though it is, charms the thousands that have appreciated its majesty and its all dominant situation high above the cobble-paved main street of Petit Andelys; so distant from the surface of the river which washes its very haunches that the river boats and barges look like crawling, creeping things endowed with crude animal forces rather than steam or manpower.

When the historian writes of Château Gaillard and the siege which it withstood against Philippe-Auguste he writes of one of the most decisive and memorable events in the annals of French history; and for this reason it is not recounted here. All histories give it in full.

As a monument of military architecture Château Gaillard, putting aside the interest in the events of its history, holds, without contradiction, the premier place among all structures of the same class which to-day exist throughout Europe.

Whoever wishes to know what a mediæval château--in this case a fortified castle of great size, and as near as possible, perhaps, to invulnerability--was really like, should study the Château Gaillard of Richard Cœur de Lion in detail.

It was Richard Cœur de Lion, an English king, who built this stronghold to guard his dominions on the Seine, but the whole fabric, as is the case with English history of the period, was built upon a foundation manifestly not English.

Artists have often limned the outlines of this great fortress both in detail and in conjunction with its charming environment; but justice has hardly been done. Perhaps it was not possible, for certainly Château Gaillard must be seen to be appreciated.

Cotman, Turner, and, in more recent times, Alfred East, R. A., have all painted it and its proud position; and scores of lesser artists have tried their hand. Certainly no mediæval monument existing in modern times has a more commanding or magnificently picturesque situation.

The Seine at Petit Andelys amplifies itself at the bend across which the lion-hearted Richard spread his chains in defence of his château. Above, scarce five hundred yards, the river is narrower than at any other part along its length between Paris and the sea.

The tiny islands just below the bridge dot the stream quite in the manner of the wooded islets elsewhere, but the background, the château-crowned height, the winding river road to Vernon, flanked by forest-clad hills, the woods above Vacherie, and the chalky stratified formation off toward Muids,--all combine to make an ensemble which can only be seen in Normandy, along the valley of the Seine.

The twin towns of Les Andelys are quite the most delightful and charming towns in all the Seine valley. None are so beautifully situated, so characteristically unworldly, and yet so gay with local life and colour on a national holiday.

Petit Andelys, on the river bank, is a sort of watering-place suburb for the larger town, which lies “_un bon kilometre_” away, the native tells you, up a long, straight, tree-shaded boulevard, which would add glory to a much greater city.

Each of the towns possess a magnificent and delightful mediæval church. That of Grand Andelys is the more elaborate and is truly a grand affair, with very good late Gothic, some good fifteenth-century glass, curious aisle vaultings and arches in its interior; and, finally, a north façade in the ugliest of Renaissance workmanship which ever disgraced an otherwise beautiful Gothic fabric.

The Hotel du Grand Cerf, a sixteenth-century tavern, which has come down to the present day still possessed of some of its ancient furnishings of old oak, stone, and plaster, is another great attraction in Grand Andelys.

The present café shows most of these: a great Renaissance fireplace with its accessories, an overhanging mantel, and a couple of corner cupboards which are delightful. The entrance from the courtyard is also elaborately carved. Walter Scott and Victor Hugo have both sung the praises of the house and graced its board, and it should be seen by travellers.

St. Sauveur’s at Petit Andelys is in quite a different class from its sister church at Grand Andelys. It is smaller, and a thoroughly consistent twelfth-century fabric, wholly delightful in its plan and execution. In short, it is one of the most perfectly designed and preserved edifices of its kind in all France.

The fêtes of the patron saints of Les Andelys, Ste. Clotilde at Grand Andelys (June) and St. Sauveur at Petit Andelys (August), are events which draw great crowds from round about, and are the cause of much gaiety of a truly local nature.

Grand Andelys has, moreover, a miraculous fountain dedicated to Ste. Clotilde. It is the centre for a pilgrimage on the second of June of each year, the date on which the saint, who was the wife of Clovis, caused the water to be turned to wine. The same thing has not happened since; but the fountain is still a venerated shrine.

The national fête on the fourteenth of July brings out crowds of people from the inland towns and villages, to bathe and go boating in the river, and eat and drink in the gardens of Petit Andelys’s two charming riverside hotels.

The Anglo-Saxon tourist will not want for company here at Petit Andelys, though it is not a very popular tourist resort. But if he drifts into the garden courtyard of the Hôtel Bellevue, in mid-July or August, or indeed at most any time between May and November, he will find a joyous crowd of artists gathered about a long table set beneath the trees. At night the electric lights--the one worldly note of it all--twinkle out from among the trees, and the talk on art, literature, _and automobiles_ which goes from mouth to mouth, would fill any one with interest, and hold his attention no matter how blasé he may think himself.

In the ancient district of Vexin lying back of Les Andelys, in the valley of the Gambon, and beyond, are many little farming villages and towns which are a delight to the artist and the traveller who is also a seeker after local colour: Ecouis, with its great collegiate church; Etrepagny, with a fourteenth-century church and a fine hotel in the style of Louis XIII.; Gamaches, with some underground remains and other traces of an old fortress-château; Thilliers-en-Vexin, with the Château de Boisdenemetz, built under Louis XIII., the building and grounds having been laid out by Mansard; and Fontenay, with the Château of Beauregard, where was born the Abbé de Chaulieu, celebrated as much by his Anacreontic poems as by his churchly qualifications.

As one draws near to Gisors one passes the ruined donjon of Neufles-St.-Martin (1182), built by Henry II. of England, and the ancient Château de Vaux, built also on the plans of Mansard, but now forming the manor-house of a great farm.

Gisors is not often visited by casual travellers in Normandy. They usually make for Evreux, when they leave the Seine valley, in order to visit its cathedral, they will tell you; certainly not for anything else, for Evreux does not possess many tourist attractions.

As a matter of fact, they would do better to leave Evreux out of their itinerary and visit Gisors, which has a great mediæval Gothic and Renaissance church, quite as grand and bizarre as Evreux Cathedral. The Church of St. Gervais at Gisors dates from the year 1240, and is called by the native, with unwarranted pride, “_la cathédrale_.”

To a great extent its foundation was due to Blanche of Castile; and it is one of those highly interesting works occasionally to be found in France, which has no architectural style in particular and is accordingly, in the eyes of the critical experts, an ungainly thing. But St. Gervais de Gisors is a remarkable work. It possesses two elaborate late Gothic portals, though for the most part its details are frankly Renaissance. Again, the still earlier period of its foundation crops out bare and unadorned. In the sacristy is a rare bibliographical treasure, a register on parchment of the brothers and sisters of the _Confrérie de l’Assomption Notre Dame_. Heading the list are the names of Charles V., his queen, and his suite, the Duc de Bourgogne, the Duc de Berri, the Duc d’Orleans, the Duchess d’Orleans, the Comte d’Etampes, etc. This fine piece of work is admirably ornamented with miniature and armorial blazonings and continues the roll of names up to 1776. Altogether it is a manuscript of great interest and worth.

Gisors itself is rather a smug town with a characteristically good hotel (l’Ecu de France) and the usual collection of country shops.

The Ept and two smaller branches run through the town; and here and there the picturesque wash-houses on their banks group themselves most picturesquely, with the roof tops of the houses round about and the church steeple or the donjon of the old château rising high above.

The history of Gisors has been most vivid, and there are many remains of its past activities and glories in warfare and strategy. Before the tenth century, Gisors was but the site of a small château held as a fief from the Church of Rouen. Ultimately it was acquired by Guillaume-le-Roux, who made Gisors the key of the eastern frontier between Normandy and the royal domain of the Kings of France.

The remains of the fortress-chateau, built by Guillaume-le-Roux in 1097, show plainly that it was one of the wonders of the military architecture of its time. Additions and reinforcements were made in turn by Henri I. and II.; and, from the conquest of Normandy by Philippe-Auguste until to-day, its ruins, though fragmentary and widely separated, form one of the greatest collections of details of a mediæval fortress to be seen in the north of France. It does not form a unit as does the château at Les Andelys, nor is it a mere tower or donjon, as at Arques, Falaise, or Conches, but it presents a convincing indication of its former strength and magnitude.

Within its confines are the remains of a chapel dedicated to St. Thomas of Canterbury; but the chief feature is the great Tour des Prisonniers, some sixty odd feet in height.

This great cylindrical tower was erected by Philippe-Auguste, and for a long time served as a prison of state. Many will remember an old steel engraving of a painting called “The Prisoner of Gisors,” which depicts the interior of this great tower.

In 1527 François I. gave the domain of Gisors to Renée de France, on the occasion of her marriage to the Duke of Ferrara.

In 1718 it was given to Fouquet, in exchange for Belle-Ile-en-Mer, and later, in turn, to the Comte d’Eu, and the Duc de Penthièvre.

On the little bridge which crosses the Ept, between the station and the church, is a statue of the Virgin, which perpetuates the thanks of Philippe-Auguste at having been saved from drowning in the stream below, when he had fallen with his mounted escort through the rotting timbers of an old-time bridge. The inscription thereon tells the story in detail.

At Dangu is still a splendid château, and at St.-Clair-sur-Ept are the remains of a fortified castle, where, in 911, was signed the treaty by which Charles the Simple ceded Neustria to the pirate Rollon, whom Normans to-day so proudly revere.

At this time the Norman territory was bounded by the Manche, the extreme limits of the Cotentin, and, probably, by the rivers Mayenne, Sarthe, Eure, Andelle, and Bresle; leaving Vexin, in the southeast, a debatable land which was to be the scene of future struggles between Philippe-Auguste and Richard Cœur de Lion and Jean-Sans-Terre.

Rollon at this time embraced Christianity, and the Archbishop Françon, who baptized him, obtained from his new convert large donations in favour of many monasteries and churches; among others the cathedrals of Rouen, Bayeux, and Evreux, and the abbeys of St. Ouen, Jumièges, and Mont St. Michel.

From this time on the fierce pirates, the former companions of Rollon’s dangers and glories, were so tractable under his will and the new laws which were promulgated, that they soon became rich and opulent. Thieving and brigandage disappeared, and in their place law and order reigned in these parts for the first time.

The “Echiquier” was only permanently established at Rouen in 1499, however, and took the name of the Parliament of Normandy.

Chaumont-en-Vexin, on the national road to Pontoise, is a delightfully picturesque hillside town, once a residence of the French kings who built a castle here to aid them in their struggles for the possession of Normandy. There is also a fifteenth-century church.

Down the river valley, below St. Clair, are Berthenouville, with the remains of a mediæval château; Dampsmesnil, to be classed in the same category; and Bray, the nearest railway station to Ecos, which has a fine Renaissance château of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

Some of these small towns have a remarkably busy appearance on account of the manufacture of zinc, which appears to be the principal industry of a neighbourhood otherwise given over solely to farming and grazing.

On the Seine above Les Andelys, until one reaches Vernon, are a succession of tiny villages and hamlets, each with its weather-worn church, smoking-room, and tobacco shop, with an occasional large estate on its outskirts. Vezillon, with its bare, tumble-down, and deserted church; Bouafles, on the flank of the hillside running up to the Forêt des Andelys; Courcelles, with its church-spire and pigeon-loft inextricably mixed; and Port Mort, with its great _menhir_ of untold age and uncertain origin, all surrounded by straight-furrowed wheat-fields, form one of the most delightful parts of the Seine valley.

Opposite Les Andelys is Tosny, a riverside market-garden town on a hill, with a remarkably picturesque little aisleless church bearing a date over its front portal of 1817; but which in its framework, as one can see from an occasional uncovered arch and pillar, is distinctly Norman of many centuries ago.

Just beyond Tosny, on the same bank, is the military prison-town of Gaillon, with its long steep hill, one of the most terrible in France to travellers by road; while still further to the westward is Louviers, with its beautiful flamboyant church, and rival hotels of more than ordinary provincial excellence. One is the “show place” of the town, with its old timbered front and its polished kitchen utensils. The other, the hotel of the travelling salesman, in the Grande Rue, is less picturesque, but no less comfortable.

There is little enough of interest at Gaillon to-day, though the origin of the town dates from the foundation of the Gallo-Romain fortress here. Gaillon was given to the Archbishop of Rouen by Philippe-Auguste after the conquest of Normandy. In 1500 Cardinal d’Amboise, the minister of Louis XII., laid the foundations of a great country-house here upon the foundation of the earlier fortress-château. It was one of the most splendid examples of the Renaissance in France, with a beautiful extent of sculptured decorations and furnishings, before it fell at the Revolution. Little remains to-day except a small part now built into the military prison. Its admirable entrance façade was preserved, and has now been reërected in the courtyard of the Ecole des Beaux Arts at Paris.

One great event Gaillon has in the course of each year, and that is the now famous “Courses de Gaillon” for the hill-climbing championship of the automobile world. The great annual event excites more interest than any other similar affair. It is solely for racing machines, unlike the Château Thierry event or the international motor-cycle race at Dourdan. Even more so than the great Gordon-Bennett race itself, do the races at Gaillon hold the attention of the leaders in automobile sport; for it is there that the real test of power and reliability takes place among makers and drivers alike.

The hill of Gaillon is tremendously steep, almost like the side of a house. It is not of great length compared to some of the mountain roads of Dauphiné and Savoie. It is not even a poor, rough, winding road, as is Ventoux, where a competitive affair was held during the present summer; but it is by far the stiffest climb of three kilometres, or a trifle more, on any of the great national roads of France. Usually such abrupt ascents or descents in France have been avoided, or at least lengthened and made less steep.

The Gaillon hill has come to be accepted as the severest test an automobile can be put to on the main roads of France; but the rest of the twenty kilometres from Vernon to Pont de l’Arche is a superbly levelled highway.

The roadways of France may not have that dainty picturesqueness of those of the southern counties of England, but their vistas are much more sublime and grand, and there is really nothing at all monotonous in long stretches of tree-lined, straightaway highways, such as abound in all the departments which go to make up modern France.

The Frenchman when he visits England, as a party of automobilists did during the present year, puts it more strongly even and, of course, more picturesquely, when he writes:

“_Des routes bien indiquées, mais qui, par leur peu de largeur en certains points et leurs virages brusques et à angle droit nous faisaient encore parfois regretter nos belles routes françaises droites et larges._

“_L’aspect du pays n’en est cependant pas moins fort attrayant, rappelant avec ses verts cottages, ses delicieuses prairies, et les nombreux troupeaux de moutons qui sillonnent les routes, certains coins de notre Normandie._”

It is always “our beautiful France” with a Frenchman, and rightly, too.

The real hill of Gaillon begins in the town itself, which is not very attractive, with its huge military establishment and its not very well-kept main street. Half-way up this main street, which is about as bad a bit of paving while it lasts as one is likely to meet in France, past the curiously ugly Renaissance church, and the one or two picturesque timbered houses which the town possesses, winds the first stages of this famous hill.

Singularly enough, there is no way of going around Gaillon, which is often the case in a French town which has narrow, tortuous streets; and, incidentally, the observation is here set forth that, without doubt, the next question with regard to civic improvements, which ought to occupy the attention of the authorities in all lands, is the consideration of some system of encircling roads or boulevards, which shall enable automobilists to go around a town. Automobilists are unquestionably the coming road-users, for whom legislation should be made.

Continuing through the town, this great national highway flattens itself out for a space, on a little plateau from which the hill takes a fresh start. For something over a kilometre it rises straight and bold; then dips, as if to give one an opportunity to take breath. Finally it rises for a short, straight length in an ascent which must be dangerously near a twenty-five per cent. grade, something really astonishing when achieved by an automobile; for few railway lines in the world are laid out to accomplish more than one in ten.

On the occasion of this great event last year the start from the Hôtel Bellevue at Les Andelys was something in the nature of a pious pilgrimage to the shrine of this comparatively new force--the gas achieved from the carburation of _essence à pétrole_. It was an early hour,--all tried and true automobilists know, like fishermen, the value of the hours just after daybreak,--the hotel garage was all astir, and empty _bidons_, old rags, and greasy oil-tins littered the very dining-tables of the inn’s pretty garden.

It is but a short ten kilometres to Gaillon, and one thence to the hill; but garage accommodation is limited, and the first start is at seven in the morning. Hence it is necessary to “Speed! speed! with the wings of the morning,” as Henley puts it.

Out by the back entrance, along the quay, thence to the highroad and across the bridge to Port Morin, which the Prussians destroyed in ’71; and, climbing the slope toward Tosny, with nothing remarkable about it but its grand view of the Seine and its church with the Norman doorway and pillars,--which even the natives don’t know are Norman, because the restored façade bears the date of 1817,--one soon leaves the sight of Petit Andelys behind, though the quaint but beautiful shell of the Château Gaillard can be seen long afterward.

Soon there is a drop down a long gentle slope, another flight of that same great hill on whose crown is St. Barbe, only reached by the direct road known as the big hill, and one comes at once to the little group of ordinary, mean little road-houses, dignified with the pretentious name of hotels, known to all travellers by the highroad.

A piercing hoot and an ominous rumble--an automobile, of course--is heard; and the roadway is magically cleared, awaiting what is naturally supposed to be one of the participants of the races. But it proves to be only the local station omnibus, whose conductor has adopted this up-to-date and efficacious but misleading means of making himself heard.

As for the great hill climb itself, a report of it here would not--could not--differ greatly from those one has read of similar affairs elsewhere, save to recall that it is all up-hill work, and when a hundred and twenty odd kilometres per hour are recorded it means a speed of between seventy-five and eighty miles an hour, which on the level might be almost any believable rate of speed.

The day of the hill climb is Gaillon’s great day of the year, and when the crowd departs it again subsides into its usual somnolence. “_Gaillon! elle est morte_,” is a saying which one hears in the neighbouring towns, and it is not hard to believe. From here to Vernon, by either bank, one passes nothing of note.

United with the pretty little town of Vernon, with its tree-bordered quays and cafés and a certain restaurant famous for its _matelote_, is Vernonnet, interesting only for the relic of an old-time, twelfth-century château with two great coiffed towers.

Vernon is not amply endowed. Its situation is nearly all it has to recommend it; but its church is fine, and there is a cylindrical, ivy-hung tower that will prompt a question. It is the “_tour des archives_,” the only remains of a fortified château built here by that Duke of Normandy who was Henry I. of England.

The Château de Bizy, one of the most imposing Renaissance châteaux of Normandy, was built by the Maréchal de Belisle; and ultimately passed to the Comte d’Eu and the Duc de Penthièvre. It was mutilated during the Revolution, as were most of the other monuments of France; but General Suir restored it, when it was presented to the Duchess d’Orleans. Through the forest of Bizy, on the way to Evreux, one comes upon one of those bits of forest-road which lend so much variety to travel by road in France. Literally as smooth as if sandpapered, almost free from dust, and lined on either side by trees, which shelter one from the sun, they form a pleasant interlude in the day’s journey.

Crossing the Seine, one comes to Giverny, a not very attractive little village of itself, but greatly affected by the school of impressionist painters who have foregathered under the banner of Claud Monet, who lives there. This influx of artist life has made the prosperity of the natives who dwell in this little waterside town. It is really upon the Ept, a tributary of the Seine, distant half a mile. A hotel of more than ordinary pretensions has sprung up; and its dining-room and café are amply decorated with sketches by many whose names are already great in the world of art.

From Vernon, the metropolis of the Seine between Paris and Rouen, it is but four kilometres to Giverny, and even here one may see the effect of the influx of Englishmen and Americans who annually spend the four summer months here.

La Roche-Guyon forms a sort of boundary sentinel between the ancient domain of the Dukes of Normandy and that of the Kings of France. Here the Seine leaves Normandy, and the ruined donjon tower of the old château, and the Renaissance edifice at its base, the home of the La Rochefoucauld family, is the first of Normandy’s châteaux on the way to the sea. It sits proudly upon the chalky promontory in quite an idyllic castled-crag fashion.

The donjon of the ancient château was built in 998 by a seigneur named Guy or Gyon. This curious structure is approximately triangular on the outside, and cylindrical in its interior. There are also vast subterranean passages, cut into the rock upon which the donjon is built.

In 1419 the English, under the Earl of Warwick, besieged the ancient Château of Roche-Guyon and obtained its capitulation, after having undermined a portion of its walls.

“_Guy le Bouteiller lui conseilla s’avancer jusqu’à sous les ramparts..... de faire miner sécrétement ces grottes pour faire écrouler toutes les constructions qui les surplombaient, et écraser les habitants sous un monceau de ruines._” (Chron. du Religieux de St. Denis.)

One may visit the new château in the absence of the La Rochefoucauld family, and truly it is worth seeing, though it has none of the really gorgeous appointments of its Loire compeers.

At the entrance one reads on an iron plaque, which dates from 1597, and is surmounted by the armorial bearings of the Dukes of Roche-Guyon, certain articles concerning “_Les droits d’acquit et plage deubs aux seigneurs de Roche-Guyon_,” and beside a doorway a little further on, as if it were a voice of welcome, an inscription which reads “_C’est mon plaisir_.”

Near La Roche-Guyon is Haute Lisle, with a curious rock-cut church or chapel, like that of St. Adrien near Rouen, but rather more elaborate.

This completes a list of the chief sights and scenes of the Seine valley as it crosses Normandy on its way from its source in the Côte d’Or to its juncture with salt water at Havre.

Dumas, in “The Vicomte de Bragelonne,” describes the Seine as “the beautiful river which encloses France a thousand times in its loving embraces, before deciding upon joining its waters with the ocean.”

This is a true enough description, particularly with respect to its convolutions between Vernon and Caudebec, where the stream sweeps in long untrammelled curves of a radius which makes the barge traffickers wish for an occasional portage of a mile or two which would cut off a score by river.

Let us pray nothing will ever happen which will enable the river trafficker to cut the corners. It has been estimated that an exceedingly moderate amount of canalization would reduce the distance, from Paris to the sea through Normandy, one-half; but by the process the charm of the Seine would be despoiled. Instead, the long, sinuous tows of many-hued barges would be supplanted by high-speed express-boats, perhaps run by an overhead trolley from an electrical current transmitted from the shore.

Where, then, would be the recollection of the vast river-borne traffic of days gone by, when kings and princes made their way to the coast cities by galleys and sailing boat, or travelled in carriages along its pleasant banks? Instead of châteaux to crown its hilltops, we would have towering chimney-stacks of the “power stations,” and everything would be regulated by clockwork and machinery.