Chapter VII: The Coast Westward of the Seine

Westward of the mouth of the Seine is a little strip of coast-line which in a restricted sense may be said to be the resort of the Parisian world of fashion during the summer months. Trouville-Deauville, Beuzeval-Houlgate, Dives-Cabourg, and Arromanches have their own especial attractions and their own _clientèles_; but they are all much alike, and it is only in the old towns, such as Honfleur, Pont l’Evêque, Ouistreham, Ruys, or Port-en-Bessin, that one sees anything at all characteristically Norman.

“To Honfleur seven and a half miles, which we made in an hour in a strong north wind, the river being rougher than I thought a river could be.” So Arthur Young wrote in the eighteenth century, as he journeyed from Havre de Grâce across the Seine bay to the still important port of Honfleur. “A small town, full of industry,” he continues, “with a harbour full of ships, and even some Guinea-men as large as at Havre.”

All this is true as far as a reminiscence of Honfleur’s former glory is concerned; but its commerce to-day is fishing and the tourist’s trade, and no deep-sea ships frequent its crumbling quays. Instead of casks and bales and other evidences of traffic beyond the seas, you will find white umbrellas and artists’ easels set about on the wharves, with their owners all trying to catch the fleeting picturesqueness of the old town, which has heretofore been successfully done by Eugène Boudin and his fellows in art of a half-century or more ago. The name of this great painter is much revered in France, and it stands for much that is best in the modern French school of painting. Boudin’s work forms the bridge which links the romantic style with the frankly impressionistic. Monet was one of Boudin’s pupils; but he did not continue simply a preacher of his master’s tenets, but ran riot with colour in a way which Boudin himself could never have conceived.

Boudin chiefly worked in those towns and villages which fringe the north coast of France, as indeed Monet has done since. But Havre and Honfleur and the Trouville of other days claimed his best and most prolific work.

Through the generosity of his brother, M. Louis Boudin,--still a dweller on the Norman shore,--the important art museum of Havre has lately been endowed with over two hundred of Boudin’s brilliant sketches; and at the smaller gallery of Honfleur (where Boudin, the son of a sailor, with the sea in his blood, was born) there are more than a dozen of his characteristic paintings.

One reason why the art of Boudin is specially to be enjoyed at Havre and Honfleur (though, indeed, the public galleries of those places contain nothing of his that is so important individually as the great “Port de Bordeaux” in the Luxembourg) is that there, within sight of its windows, are the elements, in depicting which with poetic realism Boudin won his title to fame. His are the fishing-boats riding the restless sea, his the infinite variety of the rolling waters and the changeful sky.

Boudin’s characteristic was not of colour alone, but of motif as well. He painted Breton “_Pardons_,” Belgian towns and scenes in the market-place, and drew also the cattle of the valley of Touques. He “placed” his cattle perfectly in those fat meadows,--they became, as he was, a part of the country. He drew the fashionable world of 1868, crowding the beach of Trouville. Without wishing it, he was the historian of the crinoline and the beau monde of his time. But one always comes back to those scenes which were the inspiration of his life. Boudin set down, in unexampled vigour and vivacity, his impression of the Channel, its vessels and its ports, its waters, winds, clouds, and sunshine; the weather of every hour of each day.

To-day one reaches Honfleur from Havre after much the same procedure as did the old-century traveller, whose description of the voyage might well apply even now, except that one makes the journey by steam-packet in a considerably less time. The latter part of the old account is, however, only too true. The mouth of the Seine is almost a replica of the boisterous Straits of Dover; but it is the only way to get to the decayed old port, Honfleur, from Havre without going thirty miles or more around and crossing the ferry at Quillebeuf.

Honfleur, the seat of a departed commercial glory, is to-day all the more attractive because of its dry-as-dust decrepitude; and the contrast with the busy metropolis of Havre, across the Seine, does not exaggerate this, it only emphasizes it.

Here the sea, as it mounts at break of day, finds the people already awake, and one sees a medley of fisherfolk and their craft, with which familiarity is needed for appreciation. The _picoteux_ are a style of fishing-boat seen only out of Honfleur. These fishing-boats are very nearly yachts, for the modern science of construction, as to this type of craft, has not improved upon the provincial simplicity.

It was the ancient town of Honfleur that once held the bulk of the trade with New France in America; but its real commercial glory is now gone, stolen by its more opulent and successful neighbour. The activity on its quays to-day among passengers, stevedores, and fishermen is but a comic-opera travesty on the more magnificent activities which once obtained.

The beauties of Honfleur are to be found in its curiously appealing ensembles. All that remains of its thirteenth-century ramparts is the Quai Beaulieu, whence the boat for Havre leaves. Porte de Caen the ancient harbour was first called, and later _La Lieutenance_. Eastward lie the _quartiers_, as they exist to-day; and, though they are but a mimicry of their former selves, they are still characteristic of the olden time.

The denominations of the ancient parishes were Notre Dame des Vases, practically non-existent to-day; St. Etienne des Prés, called to-day the town; St. Leonard des Champs, to-day really a suburb; and Ste. Catherine de Bois, rising up the sides of the Côte de Grâce.

Honfleur has, in its Cours de la République, a sort of miniature Cannebière which fronts upon the old harbour. On the Quai St. Etienne is the old Church of St. Etienne, the most ancient in the city, though to-day it has been converted into a sort of local pantheon, which was commendable as an act of civic pride, but does not appeal to the outsider.

From Honfleur, by the Trouville road, Puits is reached, one of the most extraordinary and most lovable of all the little towns in Normandy. Here is the Church of St. Leonard, an isolated church surrounded by a sea of flagstones. It is not strictly beautiful as old churches go, though it is undeniably picturesque. On the other hand, all its charms are negatived by the heavy, meaningless tower or cupola which caps its façade.

The curious timber Church of Ste. Catherine de Bois is perhaps the most appealing and picturesque feature which Honfleur possesses; and, when seen in conjunction with the still more curious wooden steeple, one wonders that one has never been smitten by its charm before.

The church is separated from the tower by a narrow street, on which faces a most ungainly and ugly Renaissance portico. The main building dates from the fifteenth century, and its rare and mellow timbered side-walls have worn well. These enclose the aisles, which have curious little square windows with small leaded lights; while above rises a row of clerestory windows, also squared, but with good flamboyant mullions which would be the pride of many a more substantial and grander edifice.

More daintily environed than any other of Honfleur’s churches is the little sailor’s chapel of Notre Dame de Grâce, on the Côte de Grâce, on the west side of the harbour. There is nothing very splendid about its surroundings or its appointments; but on a day of pilgrimage, when the sailors and their wives, their sweet-hearts and their daughters, flock hither, it presents a sight comparable only with the _pardons_ of Brittany. Indeed, after its sailors and artists, Honfleur would seem to be noted for religious processions.

The houses of Honfleur are, in general, less lofty and ornate than in many other regions of Normandy; but their narrow timbered fronts and irregular gables render them no less picturesque.

A half-dozen or more kilometres from Honfleur is a little stream, not marked on many maps, known as the Risle. On its banks, about the same distance from its juncture with the Seine, is Pont Audemer, another beautiful town, given over, however, to industrialism. Its tanneries and cider-presses give employment and sustenance to several thousand people.

The Parisian calls Pont Audemer the capital of the “_royaume de chicane_,” and goes on to say that this district comprises nearly all Normandy. This is manifestly an exaggeration and unfair; but it is claimed further that the municipal court-house at Pont Audemer is the most frequented of all its buildings, and that to be a notary, a lawyer, or a sheriff here is to become immediately rich.

The town is picturesquely disposed on the banks of the Risle, which furnishes an abundant supply of water to the tanneries which line its banks.

It has a really great church in St. Ouen, which makes it a place not to be omitted from one’s itinerary, if it can possibly be included. It dates from the eleventh, the fifteenth, and the sixteenth centuries, and still possesses fragments of early stained glass and some curious Renaissance wood-carvings.

Between Pont Audemer and the juncture of the Eure with the Seine one comes upon one of the most lively and interesting parts of agricultural Normandy. Here the fields are literally covered with apple-trees, planted more closely than elsewhere, to the number of a hundred to the acre, but the trees thrive exceedingly. The peasant cultivates his trees with great regard for their well-being, and is quite as deft and painstaking as his brother of the vineyards farther south. There are no vineyards which are celebrated north of a line drawn from the mouth of the Loire to where the Oise joins the Seine, just south of the confines of Normandy.

The Norman grower of cider-apples is assiduous in his devotion to his work. To gain an advantage of his competitor he will rent more ground, economize and borrow to buy other land, and wait patiently, working meanwhile early and late for the fifteen years to pass before he may gather a maximum crop.

When the fruit is abundant all the Norman country-side is a land of fulness and plenty, which in other times is wanting. Sometimes it happens that the cider crop is good when the wine crop is bad. Then all the more profit for Normandy; but the failure of the apple crop elsewhere--in England, for instance--does not affect the market in Normandy. The French do not export cider as they do wine.

None the less assiduously do the growers of cider apples in the north tend their harvest than the vine-dressers of the south; and the white or blond nectar of Normandy is as highly valued in its own land as are the ruby vintages of the south.

Savants have before now attempted to trace the origin of the apple-trees which so plentifully besprinkle Normandy, but they have generally fallen back upon the old excuse, “_L’origine s’en perd dans la nuit des temps._” Some, again, have claimed that the first trees were brought from Italy by a Gauloise legion, a part of which penetrated into the north and settled in the land between Evreux and Caen; while still others of the older writers have said that the first apple-trees came from the north of Spain, in the time of Charlemagne.

For three hundred years at least the process of cider-making has not changed in Normandy. It is a simple one, and doubtless does not vary exceedingly from the practice elsewhere, except that it is made here from the distinctive cider apple, of which there are three varieties, the bitter, the bitter-sweet, and the sweet. As made in Normandy, it is the pure juice of the apple, purer doubtless than most wines alleged to be made of the juice of the grape. There is no sugar or spice added, and no marble dust to simulate a carbonated drink. Since the apples are not eaten, there is an abundance of all the varieties, which are usually mixed in equal proportions.

The actual making of cider in Normandy is a sort of a home occupation. One does not take his apples to an established press in some centre of population, if he has not one of his own, but arranges for a sort of travelling brewer to come to his own house. The various disjointed elements of a press, differing only in details from the usual form known throughout the world, are brought up on a cart, unloaded and dumped down in the courtyard at an early morning hour.

The process of erecting the press is not a long one, as the operation is astonishingly simple. A heavy square or circular platform is surmounted by the latticed cylindrical or square box into which the apples, previously mangled by a sort of gigantic coffee-mill, are emptied until it is filled to the brim. The long capstan-like arms, propelled by the master cider-maker and his press boy, complete the operation, and, two hours after sun-up, the end is in sight. By nine of a summer’s morning he is on his way to the next customer, leaving behind the débris of two or three hundred kilos of apples, which have been turned into 150 or more litres of the luscious brown juice, which only needs its eight days of fermentation to evolve itself into a sure cure for the gout and rheumatism.

There is very little variation in the process, though often it is carried out on a larger scale; and one progressive patron of an ambulating cider-mill has ingeniously attached a petrol motor by a simple system of shafting, which completes the preliminary process of mashing the apples in an astonishingly short while.

There is another method somewhat in vogue, and, though it is not so commonly practised, it is supposed to produce finer cider.

After a first crushing or bruising, the apples are left in a great tub open to the air for a day. Then the free juice is drawn off and the rest left to dribble out, after tepid water has been added to hasten the process. It is then left to ferment very slowly in a temperature of about 60 degrees Fahrenheit. Small cider--the common variety, one might call it the _vin ordinaire_ of Normandy--is a mixture of apple juice and river water; the muddier the better, it would seem.

The consumption of cider is apparently increasing throughout France. Statistics show that it is made in over half the departments, and in Picardy, Normandy, and Brittany all classes drink little else.

It is popularly supposed that the increase in the consumption of cider was originally due to the invasion of the phylloxera in the wine-growing districts of the south some years since. Whether this is so or not, it does not much matter; the real Normandy cider forms a welcome summer drink after the heavy beer of England and the glucose-like compound of the Low Countries.

The cider industry is one in which the profits fluctuate, because it is almost wholly an article produced for home consumption. When the fruit-growers and the cider merchants’ receipts are less, the money in circulation in the neighbourhood is correspondingly less; and in some sections this produces much hardship. The cider of commerce is of two varieties, that drunk by the peasants and labourers of the towns--a rather weak mixture of cider and water--and that usually served at the better class of inns and hotels.

Beyond Pont Audemer is Touques, a most ancient town of about 1,200 souls; possessing, in its Church of St. Thomas, the first stone of which was laid by Thomas à Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, a shrine which no English tourist should omit from his itinerary of Normandy. In the middle ages Touques enjoyed a great and growing importance until the Revolution stunted its growth.

Between Pont Audemer and the Seine, at Quillebeuf, is a patch of morass, like nothing so much as the _polders_ of Holland. Here it is known as the _Marais Vernier_; but it has a real, genuine Low Country dike encompassing it, known as the “Digue des Hollandaise.” An artist can here paint black and white spotted cows, windmills, houses on stilts, and most of the local colour of Holland without leaving the Seine valley.

At Beuzeville is a fine public square surrounded by quaint old houses, with a church in the ogival style of the thirteenth century, and a charming market-house which, undoubtedly, if transferred to canvas with the proper amount of skill, would make a picture worth buying.

Pont l’Evêque, just south of Trouville, enjoys the reputation of being one of the most picturesque towns in Normandy. This is due, principally, to the aspect of the life of its streets and squares in conjunction with its backgrounds of old houses, the great square tower of its church, and the usual surroundings of a quaint market-town. At any rate, it is typically Norman and is directly on the line between Trouville and Lisieux, or across country by road from Rouen to Caen; so there is not much excuse for real travellers to pass it by, although they frequently do so. Moreover, it is blessed with an excellent country inn, the Bras d’Or, where one is served a bountiful and excellent meal at a most modest price.

_Bons vivants_ will revere Pont l’Evêque for its cheeses. Situated in the midst of the District of Auge, its pastures are very fertile, and accordingly its milk products are justly celebrated. Rich pasturage and great orchard enclosures, with hedges of willow so thick as to form a barrier as impassable as barbed wire, indicate the source of prosperity round about, with here and there a modest château half-hidden by the trees.

In the neighbouring Château of Bonneville William the Conqueror frequently resided.

The ancient market and the old houses of wood lend an air of antiquity to the general aspect of this rather more than usually lively country town.

In the Touques forest, which is an exceedingly fashionable driveway in summer for the gay folk of Trouville, is the Château d’Agnesseau, which dates from the reign of Louis XIII. At the cross-roads of Croix-Sonnet one comes to a vast plateau set out with orchards and fruit-gardens, while the forest itself, as one enters it by road from Trouville, offers thirty or more kilometres of beautiful tree-lined roadways, which must be refreshing to those dulled and jaded with the stone pavements and hot sands of Trouville-Deauville.

At the St. Philibert is a statue framed with verdure, erected by the wood-choppers of the forest to Notre Dame des Bois.

One makes his way from Honfleur to Trouville by a _corniche_ road, which is a marvel among all similar roads in the north of Europe.

In a way, it reminds one of the famous _corniche_ from Nice to Cape Martin on the Riviera, but so far as it goes it is a superb, though perilously planned, roadway running along the very face of the cliff, which blankets the coast-line for so great a part of the Norman shore. Its fifteen kilometres make an exceedingly picturesque drive, with charming snap-shots of sea and shore at nearly every turn.

The Hôtel St. Simon and its ancient farm and _cour_, which has been so often painted by artists (immortalized, one may say, by Monet), is passed on the right, and for a half-dozen kilometres or more one is within sight and sound of the sea and its sands.

The only town of any magnitude whatever passed is Cricquebœuf, which has a celebrated vine-grown church dating from the twelfth century, and an old manor-house which is unusually pretentious.

From this point, on by Villerville, one reaches Trouville via the _Jetée Promenade_ and the _Terrasse_ which faces the square, below the dominating hills which run inland to the woods of Touques.

Trouville is principally the resort for society, for millionaire yachtsmen and horsemen; but, for all that, it is, in a way, a typical Norman fishing village.

Lovers of Dumas will recall that it was the scene of the early life of Gabriel Lambert, in the romance of that name. Gabriel, the counterfeiter who finished his life in the galleys at Toulon, spent his early days at Trouville, whence he made his way to Paris by way of Pont l’Evêque,--just the route that record-breaking automobilists take to-day. The story of Gabriel Lambert and Marie Granger is an interesting one, albeit a sad one, and there is a wealth of local colour woven into it.

Trouville is also the scene of another of Dumas’s little-known tales, “Pauline.” Dumas’s own description of the little fishing village, as it then was, has a semblance of a likeness even to-day, when rococo villas, great hotels, electric-cars, and golf links have added an air of modernity to it which is anything but peaceful.

“You know the little town,” said he, “with its population of fisherfolk. It is one of the most picturesque in Normandy. I stayed there a few days exploring the neighbourhood, and in the evening I used to sit in the chimney-corner with my worthy hostess.... There I heard strange tales of adventures which had been enacted in Calvados and the Manche.”

Dumas also describes, though more or less superficially, many another quaint historic Norman town: Caen, Lisieux, Falaise, blessed with the memory of “the Conqueror’s birth,” Pont Audemer, Havre, and Alençon.

Trouville has two interesting, though not architecturally great, churches in Notre Dame des Victoires and Notre Dame de Bon Secours, which latter has an _ex voto_ chapel as its great attraction.

The town hall is a modern structure, but it has two fine landscapes by Charles Mozin and Isabey hung in its board-room.

The public square is of course the rendez-vous of Trouville’s fashionable element, and, if they are not “_five o’clocking_” at the neighbouring tea-shops _à l’Anglais_, they may be found strolling on the boulevard which flanks the sands “_quatre à six_,” as the local expression goes.

It is impossible to catalogue society’s attractions here; nothing is missing; and those who are looking for the distractions of a modern watering-place will find them all.

Deauville is Trouville’s more exclusive and aristocratic neighbour, and has its polo field, golf links, tennis-courts, and automobile race-course. It is an impossible place for the man of moderate means, and is as Parisian as the boulevards themselves.

The “_Terrasse_” may be called its chief sight, though hardly any but mammon worshippers seek it out. Along its length and breadth, for it is a vast seashore boulevard sixty or more feet in width, are the villas of many whose names are famous in the society columns of the journals of France, England, and America; and, though Deauville’s season is short, it is very lively.

Villers-sur-Mer and Beuzeval-Houlgate each possess, in a minor way, the villa attractions of Trouville-Deauville.

From Villers to Houlgate extends a line of sombre cliffs called the “_Vaches Noires_,” from which fishermen may fish in June and July with almost invariable good luck. Its seaweed-strewn rocks are covered with mussels and other less edible shell-fish.

Dives-Cabourg is another of those hyphenated resorts of the Calvados shores which possess delightful aspects of sea and sky.

Dives-sur-Mer is the old town, the very old town, from which set sail William the Conqueror, in his descent upon England, with his two hundred thousand varlets and fifty thousand gens d’armes. Accordingly Dives and the country round about should prove of an interest to all lovers of historic shrines. The Church of Notre Dame is of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; but built up from the ruins of an edifice which existed in the eleventh century, and was destroyed in 1436 by Edward III. of England.

The old market-house of Dives, like many another in these parts, is an admirable construction in wood, and covers a part of the vast Place du Marché, where was formerly situated the ancient abbatial of St. Marie du Hibou of the twelfth century. The police now occupy an old Benedictine convent.

Dives’s really great curiosity, for those who marvel at personal relics of other days, is the “Hostellerie de Guillaume le Conquérant,” in part dating back to the sixteenth century at least, which has been preserved and restored with considerable care and skill by its proprietor, M. Le Remois.

It is a veritable museum of ancient relics, too numerous to be more than hinted at here. It is decidedly the great attraction for the visitor, and whether he is impressed the more with the relics of the days of the Conqueror, or by those of the accomplished Madame de Sévigné, he will be assured of comfortable quarters, a warm welcome by the landlord, and a bountiful repast. A stay at this old-time hotel is decidedly one of the pleasures which all travellers in Normandy will afterward cherish.

Cabourg it is impossible to describe; and in spite of its proximity to Dives and its association therewith, one will not come away from it with any feeling of regret. It is new, painfully new, with its shop-, café-, and hotel-bordered Avenue de la Mer, its casino, and its beach covered with bathing-machines, red umbrellas, and white tents.

The lay-out of this “_station balnéaire_” is unique. It opens itself out like a fan from the centre, where is the casino, with long, radiating streets and avenues bound together with semi-circular avenues in most symmetrical and dull fashion. There are fine sands, to be sure, and the attractions are all irreproachable of their kind; but the true lover of Normandy will much prefer to make his stay at Dives than at its seaside neighbour of Cabourg.

Caen, the old capital of Lower Normandy, is one of those conventional tourist points which ten-day travellers from across the Channel usually “do” in an afternoon, and hasten on to Bayeux for the night. With the beautiful “Abbaye aux Dames,” with its crypt of the thirty-four closely set pillars, at one end of the town, and the “Abbaye aux Hommes,” with the one-time tomb of William the Conqueror at the other end, to say nothing of the various churches lying between, it is hard to see why a tourist should hurry away. However, there is much available information on this paradoxical city of the present day Department of Calvados to be gathered from many sources; and, save to observe that its modernity and its ancient decrepitude are so strongly contrasted that it is bewildering, not much space can here be given to it.

The chief sights are its eight magnificently planned mediæval churches, of which the “Abbaye aux Dames,” founded by Mathilda, the wife of the Conqueror, and the “Abbaye aux Hommes,” founded by the Conqueror himself, are the most celebrated architecturally and historically.

The Manor-house Gens d’Armes, so called from two curious statues which flank its tower, is situated somewhat away from the beaten track of tourist promenades, and is quite worth the hunting out, if only to snap-shot its remarkable disposition of parts. It is an admirable example of sixteenth-century French domestic architecture.

With the same regard for architectural beauties, one must remark the admirable Renaissance apse of the Church of St. Pierre, mainly a Gothic fabric, but with the interpolation of one of the most elaborate and successful Renaissance adaptations in all French ecclesiastical architecture. This portion of the edifice dates from the early sixteenth century, while the main body goes back to three hundred years before. It was the masterpiece of Hector Sohier, one of the leaders in the art of the Renaissance in France.

A bibliographical note which is often ignored is the fact that Caen was the birthplace of two men whose names are very great in French literature.

The first is he who has been called the father of French poetry, though perhaps a truer name would be the father of French critics; for Malherbe’s title to the name of poet seems to rest mainly on those beautiful verses he wrote to console his friend Du Perier on the loss of his daughter, in which are the oft quoted lines:

“Et rose, elle a vécu ce que vivent les roses,
L’espace d’un matin.”

François de Malherbe was born in 1555 and died in 1628, and to French litterateurs he is known as the reformer (modernizer?) of the French tongue and of French poetry. The Malherbes seem to have belonged to Caen, for the father of the critic held the position of counsellor for the king in its magistracy.

The other celebrated litterateur born at Caen was even a more interesting man, Huet, Bishop of Avranches, the preceptor of the Dauphin, son of Louis XIV.,--he who has been called the last of those encyclopædic and massive scholars of whom France has produced so many. To-day one admires Huet most, perhaps, for the breadth of mind with which he united philosophy and orthodoxy. Malherbe and Huet are only two out of many of whom one must needs think, if one thinks of the past at all, in Caen, but they are probably among the cleverest of her sons.

Here, then, is something more than six hours’ work already laid out for the tourist. He will find innumerable facts and details set forth in the red-covered books with which tourists of all nationalities arm themselves; and Caen, for many reasons, will prove a vast and edifying treasure-house.

At Caen lovers of architecture should hunt out the Hôtel d’Escoville, an elegant edifice accounted one of the best of Renaissance domestic establishments. It was built between 1532-38 by an architect whose name, but not his fame, was buried with him.

Two other similar structures exist at Caen of value in the study of architectural art, but frequently overlooked by tourists in general. They are the Hôtel Mondrainville and the great pavilion of the Château of Fontaine-Henri.

On the keystone of an arch of the church of Ifs, near Caen, may be seen a curious device, presumably that employed by the master builder of olden times as a sort of a trade-mark. In form it is readily recognized as a stone-worker’s hammer or _marteau_, and, like the curious cryptogrammic and “Bill Stumpsian” marks on the cathedral at Cologne, doubtless means nothing more or less than the stamp of approval of the builder or his workmen, or the insignia of the work actually put into place by some particular individual.

Running due south from Caen there is a pretty bit of river--the Orne. On leaving the town, the road keeps close to the river, running through a charming valley interspersed with rocks and wooded banks, and in the midst of a country--

“Richly set
With châteaux, villages, and village spires.”

To continue up the valley of the Orne, and its smaller tributary, which is hardly more than a babbling brook, is to leave the well-worn roads behind and to strike out for oneself.

The valley of the Noireau is one of these. The towns are not as populous or as famous, perhaps, as those that fringe the coast; but they have at least so much to offer that one would regret not having known them.

Condé is a bustling little factory town, which is idyllic as to its situation, though the place itself is unattractive enough. Tinchebray, where Henry I. of England defeated and captured his elder brother, Duke of Normandy, in 1106, has a curious church, overburdened with clock-faces; for it has two, an ancient one which looks not out of place, and a modern one which looks as though it might belong to a cotton factory. Sourdeval is a charming old-world little town, though by no means a dull one, and when it celebrates the fête of its patron saint in the summer, it is as gay as the gayest resort on the coast.

The Brouains, which rises beyond Sourdeval, is a busy little working river which turns countless mill-wheels, and also waters many square kilometres of meadow-land. Above is Chérence, which is not found on many maps, and here the valley widens into a more ample vista. Brecey is a small town with a large public square; and, ten miles away, the coast of the bay of Mont St. Michel at Avranches is reached through the Cotentin, after a journey of some forty miles by road.

Not every one will perhaps make the journey, but the way is given here because of the fact that it embraces a region of the country-side of Normandy which is unfamiliar and certainly very beautiful and quite unspoiled.

Bayeux, Balleroy, Ryes, Port-en-Bessin, and the coast-line from Arromanches to the “Roches de Grand Camp” might well occupy a lazy week. Most tourists rush into Bayeux by train or automobile, have luncheon, a look at the famous tapestry and the cathedral, and take the road again to St. Lô, another cathedral town, and so to Coutances for the night. The thing is possible by either road or rail, but it is most unsatisfactory.

Of Bayeux but little need be said here. The guide-books do it ample justice; and the hand-books and various accounts which have been written concerning the now time-worn and rather dingy _tapisserie_ have made it almost a familiar spot to “armchair travellers” as well as tourists.

Near Bayeux is the charming Château of Balleroy, built by the elder Mansard, the originator of the “Mansard” roofs, in 1626. On Wednesday one may visit its great apartments, good pictures, tapestries, and rare old furniture. Although it does not rank with the great Loire château, it approaches it.

The façade is handsomely disposed, if one admires Mansard’s manner, and the ensemble view just before one reaches the little village of Balleroy is quite on the grandiose order.

The château dominates the village and stands high above even the top of the parish church. There is a chapel attached to the château, or rather situated within the park.

Near by is the forest of Cérisy, planted closely with young birches like so many French forests. Nowhere does one see any old trees, and therein lies one of the reasons why the French forests are so well preserved.

Northward from Bayeux to Ryes one passes at Sommervieu the old-time château formerly belonging to the Bishops of Bayeux, which to-day is reconstructed and used as a seminary.

Normandy abounds in “fortified farms.” On the road to St. Lô from Bayeux there are several which one passes by road, and one of the best examples of its class is the farm of the Pavillon at Ryes. It has three great protected gateways, which to all intents and purposes are quite on the lines of a fortification.

Ryes is daintily situated on the little river Gronde, and possesses also a remarkable church of the twelfth to fourteenth centuries.

Asnelles, on the coast, four kilometres from Ryes, is a tiny watering-place whose population doubles itself during the summer months.

Offshore, a distance of a mile or more, is a series of great rocks known as the rocks of the Calvados, from which the name of the department was originally taken. It is presumed that the name Calvados was originally the name of one of the ships of the invincible Armada, _Salvador_, which was wrecked here at the time of the coming of the Spaniards to invade the north.

Arromanches-les-Bains is very pretentious, but of no interest whatever to the general traveller; though the artist, in spite of the distractions of the little resort, will get some good bits of life and colour among the mackerel fishermen of the town.

Port-en-Bessin, lying to the westward of Arromanches, just before the Cotentin peninsula is reached, is a fishing port at the mouth of the Drome which has not yet become overrun by tourists of the watering-place kind. Many who know its fame come here from neighbouring towns to enjoy the luncheons and dinners of the town’s fine _tables d’hôtes_, but this is all.

It is yet quite an unspoiled bit, not accessible by railway and not on the direct road to anywhere, though but eleven kilometres from Bayeux. For this reason it may retain for some time to come some measure of its present unworldliness and the charm of its local manners and customs.

South of the actual coast towns of mid-Normandy, and before one reaches the plateau region of the upper valleys of the Touques and the Orne, from Rouen to Mont St. Michel via Lisieux, Falaise, and Avranches, are innumerable roads which are unknown to most tourists.

Since this book does not pretend to survey the old province minutely, not all of these byways can be outlined here. Suffice to say that the chief towns of what one may be allowed to call South Normandy and those of the Cotentin peninsula and their characteristics are treated of in the chapters which follow.

For the rest, any who will linger on the way in a trip across Normandy, from the Seine to the Bay of Mont St. Michel, in a line drawn practically midway between the coast and the southern border of the old province, will meet with a succession of old-world spots which are comparatively little known.

Lisieux, St. Pierre, Falaise, Argentan, Domfront, and Mortain point the way in a comparatively straight line between the two points before given and form the chief places of interest; but the country which lies between is inexpressibly charming, and has only to be threaded in any direction to prove the unexpected wonders of days long gone by. The survival of many manners and customs which have not yet died out or become worldly by contact with railways, telegraphs, telephones, and great metropolitan newspapers will also be revealed.

If there ever was a city of wood it is Lisieux. All its buildings, however, are not wood; for there is a not very beautiful, but astonishingly complete, Gothic cathedral, and numerous other civil and domestic structures which are of stone; but wooden houses are everywhere, and in every state of hoary and tumble-down picturesqueness. Occasionally, even to-day, a salon exhibitor will show a painting of a street of those old lean-to houses of Rouen, which tourists and buyers of picture post-cards know so well. If he would paint some of those to be found at Lisieux, his fame would be made, for a more decayed, disreputable-looking, but altogether lovely, lot of mediæval houses it is not one’s good fortune to find elsewhere.

As a local Frenchman has sung:

“Dans nos vieilles maisons de bois,
Le beurre est d’or, le cidre est d’ambre;
Juin rit aux éclats; mais Novembre
Me semble aussi gai, quand je bois
Dans nos vieilles maisons de bois.”

To Lisieux one passes through Normandy’s most flowering farm-lands, but the thought of Falaise and its associations as the birthplace of the Conqueror will not allow one to linger by the way once he has got within fifty kilometres of it.

To-day Falaise has eight thousand inhabitants who live around its ancient historic château, one of the most important military constructions of mediæval times. The town sits upon a sort of isolated promontory in a most superbly imposing situation. Its history is so momentous and interwoven with that of the early days of the Normandy dukes and English kings that it were futile to attempt to review it here.

The château is built of gray quartz, and its entire surrounding moat, with its twelve towers and two great gates each flanked by towers, is preserved to this day. The twelfth and thirteenth century remains are admirably preserved; and the donjon, which in this case was perhaps the residential portion as well, is situated high upon a great cliff overlooking the valley at its base. This great, grim square mass has been restored in recent years (1869), and worthily, for its aspect has not changed from what it was when the great Norman William first saw the light within its walls.

The Talbot Tower, a great cylindrical donjon, was an addition during the English occupation in 1415-18. One may stroll through the whole château under the leadership of a most capable guide, and the usual half-day given to Falaise will pass only too quickly.

The troubadours of the south have their celebrated heroines of whom they sing praises, but those of Normandy sing of Arlette of Falaise, the mother of the Conqueror.

Historians of olden times have given her the name of Arlette, Arliette, Herline, Hélaire, Aluiève, Arlet, and Arlot; but to the Latin chroniclers she was mostly known as Herlève. Thiérry has traced the name from its Scandinavian root as follows: _Her_--noble; _lève_--love. “A fine name,” says a Frenchman, “for a fine woman.”

Benoit de Saint More said: “She was wise, modest, and generous, to which virtues she added a rare devotion.”

All good Normans, and some others as well, know the legend of the peasant maid, the gentle Herlève, when she was surprised by Robert-le-Diable on his return from the chase at the fountain of the Château of Falaise.

Vauquelin de la Fresnaye recounts it thus:

“Des piès et des jambes parurent
Qui si très beaux et si blancs furent
Que ce fut bien au duc avis
Que neige est pale et flor de lys
Emerveille, li torna s’amor.”

The story moves rapidly enough, and ultimately a son, William the Conqueror, was born to Herlève and Robert the Magnificent.

After the death of Robert, Herlève married the Comte de Conteville, who took the name of Herlevin. Two sons were born to the pair, Odon, Bishop of Bayeux, and the Comte de Mortain, who fought gallantly at Hastings in the train of his stepbrother. There was a daughter, too, Muriel, who became Duchess of Albemarle.

Herlève and Herlevin were interred at the old Abbey of Grestain, whose ruins are yet to be seen near Honfleur.

It is a well-recognized fact in history that Edward VII. is a direct descendant, the twenty-ninth in the line, of William the Conqueror, the illustrious son of Herlève of Falaise; but it is not so widely known, apparently, that a number of the reigning sovereigns of Europe are equally of the blood of the duke-king, William of Normandy.

The Bourbons of France, Spain, Italy, and Brazil descended from Guillaume by the _reine-l’impératrice_ Mathilde, daughter of Henri I., likewise the Bourbons-Orleans.

The Emperor Joseph of Austria, of the house of Hapsburg, and Victor Emmanuel of Savoy follow, the latter in the thirtieth degree.

Finally, the Kaiser Wilhelm II. is a descendant, also the twenty-ninth in line, of the Norman Herlève.

All these illustrious sovereigns are proud indeed of their Norman blood, and when President Loubet visited the court of the Quirinal recently, he presented to the little Princesses of Italy a family of dolls dressed after the Norman fashion, a delicate sentiment apparently much appreciated by their elders, besides being held a political move of the first importance.

When the Kaiser, a few years since, made his celebrated journey to the Holy Land, it was with the avowed intention of visiting the great religious monuments of Sicily, erected by the kings of the family of the Guiscards of the Norman Cotentin.

The learned work of Bellencontre of Falaise on the genealogy of the ruling European houses traces all of the following directly in descent from the peasant maid of Falaise:

“Angleterre, Anhalt-Dessau, Autriche, Bade, Bavière, Belgique, Bresil (Dom Pedro), Brunswik, Cobourg-Gotha, Danemark, Deux Siciles, Espagne, France (Bourbon et Orleans), Grece, Hanovre, Hesse, Leuchtenberg, Lucques, Mecklembourg-Schewerin, Modene, Naples, Parme, Pays Bas, Portugal, Prusse (Allemagne), Russie, Sardaigne, Savoie-Carignan (Italie), Saxe-Royle, Saxe-Altenbourg, Saxe-Weimar, Suède, Toscane, Wurtemberg.”

The Church of St. Gervais, an eleventh-century edifice which was begun by Henri I., Duke of Normandy, is a fine work of its era, though there have been many later additions, notably those after the style of Hector Sohier, one of the chief of Renaissance architects in these parts.

The Church of the Trinity dates from the thirteenth century, and is a very elaborate and graceful work, though showing many Renaissance interpolations which rankle the critics. At Falaise is held the great fair of Guibray, which has been held annually in August of each year since the ninth century. This great institution, so justly celebrated for its magnitude and importance, is one of the sights of Normandy, and is quite in a class by itself. Formerly it was a great mart for all sorts of wares, which ultimately were distributed through all the north of France; but to-day it takes prominence with the fair of Bernay as a great horse-market.

From Falaise, southwesterly to Domfront, the country-side is delightfully and picturesquely rolling, and deeply cut with river valleys, finally rising to the highest elevation in Normandy, where one crosses the forest tract of Andaine, just before Domfront is reached.

Normandy has a mineral spring of importance at Bagnoles de l’Orne, situated in a deep gorge near Domfront. It is not a fashionable spa, as great Continental watering-places go, but the baths accommodate a quarter of a thousand bathers, and there are the usual conventional amusements.

The following legend connects the waters with mediæval times, and shows that they must have some desirable properties for those who affect that sort of a cure.

An old seigneur of Bagnoles, of the name of Hugues, who regretted the rapidity with which he had lived the life of his youth, became transformed by bathing in these salt waters. He tried them on his horse as well, and it, too, regained its early agility. All of which seems as good an endorsement of the efficacy of a mineral spring as one could wish, and the popularity of Bagnoles de l’Orne has steadily increased.

François I. affected them, as well as his sister Marguerite of Navarre and Henri IV. Louis XIV. tried the waters on his soldiers, and, so satisfactory was the result that, up to 1840, the spring was used as a sort of auxiliary treatment at the military hospital at Paris. The old-time sixteenth-century bath-houses are still to be seen half-buried in the soil.

After all, the Bagnoles de l’Orne will not offer much inducement for the lover of architecture, or even of the highways and byways, to linger for long in their immediate neighbourhood. He will be impatient for the grand panorama of Domfront, but fifteen kilometres away, through the old forest of Passais, where the hermit St. Front established himself in the sixth century.

Those familiar with the church history of France will recall that this holy man finally came to the distinction of having the great cathedral of Périgueux dedicated to his honour. This magnificent structure marks the dividing line in the development of the Gothic architecture of France from the warmer-blooded styles which were born of Mediterranean surroundings.

St. Front built a chapel here in the forest, and gradually he and his disciples formed a village, the name of which, Domfront, was readily enough evolved from Dominus Frons.

At Domfront William of Bellême, seigneur of Alençon, built a fortress in 1011, and the place became one of the strongest defences of Normandy in the middle ages.

The Château of Domfront, situated a couple of hundred feet above the Varenne, served the Empress Mathilde as a retreat, and became the birthplace of the Queen of Castile. There are yet remaining two walls of its memorable donjon, reminiscent of the struggles of the Duke of Montgomery, but the ancient fortress-château itself was dismantled in 1598.

The panorama from the height of Domfront’s donjon tower is one of the most remarkable in France.

Of the twenty-four ancient towers with which the old town was surrounded, but fourteen remain, and they for the most part are built into various structures of the town. One alone has been restored and fitted with a new upper story,--the Tower of Gondras.

To the southward one sees Mount Margantin above the forest of Mortain. It is the most considerable eminence in Normandy, and rises to a height of 370 metres.