enlarge-imageThe Rock of GranvilleThe Rock of Granville
The Rock of Granville
There is an unobtrusive casino and the usual watering-place appurtenances, but all is subservient to the life of the port and the town.
The port itself is a wonder of what one might call marine architecture, were the term not applied to ships themselves. It has two great basins and a superbmôleconsiderably over a quarter of a mile in length.
For the most part, the activity of the port is due to the local fishing-boats, the coasters orcaboteurs, and the deep-sea fishing-craft which sail to far-away Newfoundland and St. Pierre de Miquelon.
There is some ship-building and considerable industry in fish-curing and the production of cod-liver oil.
Avranches was once an old cathedral town, but the Revolution made away with its cathedral, along with many another ecclesiastical monument of France; but since the ancient bishopric of Avranches was in existence from 511 to 1790, it may be inferred that its importance was considerable.
To-day it is a most interesting tourist point, though manifestly its position is not as proud as it once was.
A single shaft surrounded by a few poor, broken fragments is all that now remains of the edifice before which Henry II. of England did penance for the murder of Becket.
The ancient episcopal palace is now the court-house, a modern reconstruction built upon remains which date from the fifteenth century.
The public library contains fifteen thousand volumes and some valuable historical manuscripts of as early a period as the twelfth century.
The Jardin des Plantes is the ancient garden of a former Capucin priory (1618), now actually occupied by a community of Ursulines. The remains of a fortified gateway and an ancient tower and some moss-grown fragments of an ancient donjon are still left to suggest the aspect of other days from a military and strategic point.
The view from the height of the upper town, the plateau on which once stood the former cathedral, and indeed where all of the modern town is situated, is one of great and wonderful beauty, particularly out toward the bay of Mont St. Michel, through the estuary of the river See. Indeed it is the altogether remarkable situation of the modern city on the summit ofa great promontory plateau that constitutes its chief charm.
One may eat of the best of sea and shore, including the famous oysters of Cancale, at any of Avranches’s inns, so there is every excuse for not omitting it from one’s itinerary.
From the height of Avranches is the first clear view of the famous Mont St. Michel, so well known that one almost forbears attempting to write of its somewhat terrible historical memories. It is indeed wonderful, but is difficult to enjoy properly, owing to the number of people sent around with one guide, and the touts who throng the single street, and who do not leave you a moment’s peace.
Impossible as it is mentally to plunge back into the past, as ought to be done when at such a place, there is always a remembrance to take away, and the gaps can be filled up afterward.
One can imagine how grand the place must look at neap tides, when the sea rushes in faster than a horse can gallop, or in winter in a storm, for it has been justly called “St. Michel au Peril de la Mer.”
Tombelaine, the island from which the English made their gallant attack on St. Michel, offers a curious instance of the delusiveness of space. It looks to be within a stone’s throwof Avranches and the mount itself, but it really is quite an hour’s hard walking, if one has the temerity to brave the always possible danger of the quicksands which surround it.
enlarge-imageBAY of Mt. ST. MICHEL
The bay of Mont St. Michel of a moonlight night, when seen from the causeway leading to Pontorson, or, better yet, from a boat on the bosom of the bay itself, is indeed enough to have inspired the verses of Jean Richepin, entitled:
“LES ECUS DE LA LUNE“La lune au ras des flots étincelantsCasse en morceaux ses jolis ecus blancs.Bon sang! que de pécune!Si ton argent, falle, t’embarrassait,Pourquoi ne pas le mettre en mon gousset,Ohé, la Lune?”
“LES ECUS DE LA LUNE
“La lune au ras des flots étincelantsCasse en morceaux ses jolis ecus blancs.Bon sang! que de pécune!Si ton argent, falle, t’embarrassait,Pourquoi ne pas le mettre en mon gousset,Ohé, la Lune?”
It is a fine road that runs from Avranches via Pontaubault to Pontorson, whence one makes his way along the causeway to the mount itself.
It seems futile to attempt to describe one’s emotions at first sight of that stupendous and wonderful fortress-abbey of Mont St. Michel. To know this wonderful place is to love it; but no one can become intimately acquainted with it in a few hours, or even in a few days.
enlarge-imageMont St. Michel in 1657Mont St. Michel in 1657
Mont St. Michel in 1657
A rampart of walls and towers surrounds the little cluster of houses at the base of the mount; and before its ancient barbican the steam-cars, omnibuses, and automobiles set down their hordes of visitors of all nationalities, to say nothing of the countless hundredswho come on foot and on bicycles over the causeway from Pontorson. The year’s visitors are supposed to approximate fifty thousand.
These ancient walls enclose a population of 250 souls. Where they all live, and what they all do when tourists are few and far between, is a question. Viewed from a distance of a mile, the great rock with its crowning abbey does not look as if it had any other attribute save that of a vast mediæval religious establishment. As one draws nearer, he sees the few score of houses huddled about the abbey’s haunches; but even then he doubts as to whether a quarter of a thousand people can stow themselves comfortably away, and wonders where they find room for the visitors.
The Porte du Roi, the Claudine and the Châtelet towers, and the fortified bridge all prove the fact that the abbey was also a great fortress. These, however, together with the Michelette and the home of Duguesclin, are but minor attractions. The real and overpowering feature of it all is the great abbey itself, which rises tier upon tier, its statue-crowned pinnacle seeming literally to pierce the sky.
enlarge-imagePorte du Roi, Mont St. MichelPorte du Roi, Mont St. Michel
Porte du Roi, Mont St. Michel
In entering, one crosses the guard-hall, and goes up fifty steps to the court of the church, that tiny plateau from which one gets so widea view of sea and shore and sky that he wonders if it is not the most ample and interesting in all the known world. Pontorson, Avranches, Granville, Dol, and St. Malo, on the mainland, are all spread out in the vast panorama. Near by is Tombelaine, a little brother to the mount itself, while on the dim horizon are the Chausey Isles, the Minquiers, and, if the day be clear, perhaps Jersey.
Within the sanctuary one remarks all eras of mediæval architecture, from the Roman nave to the flamboyant Gothic choir.
A narrow staircase to the right leads to a little terrace cut from the rock itself, which supports the Crypt of the Gros-Piliers. On this same little terrace the great supporting buttresses of the upper works find their foundations, and one may climb a story, if he choose, on the charmingEscalier de Dentelle.
To enter the Merveille one descends again, and passes through the cloister, one of the most originally and gracefully disposed of any of its kind extant, surrounded by 120 svelt little columns forming the arcade. The refectory is a wonderfully brilliant apartment, and the Hall of the Chevaliers beneath, supported by three ranges of columns, will awake the memories of other days in the minds of all who know theromanticism of historical details in the least degree. It was here, in this wonderfully old abbey, that the order of St. Michel was first instituted.
To one side is the visitors’ room, a remarkably graceful, though much smaller chamber than any of the foregoing.
The next lower floor is occupied by the cellar and the armory, all in the most sober architectural display.
Crossing the walk and the crypts, one comes to the “Roue monte-charges,” a great machine turned by the hands of prisoners of other days, by which materials and supplies were brought to this vast height from the sea-level below.
In the thick granite of the walls of the old fortress-church were many dungeons and caves, where were hidden away criminal and political prisoners of all ranks. Here Barbés, Blanqui, and Raspail were imprisoned.
In returning across the Hall of the Chevaliers it is necessary to descend some steps graven in the rock itself; following respectfully behind the guardian, who jingles his great bunch of keys, as if to hurry along the unwilling ones, which is practically what it amounts to, for he is a much overworked individual, this guardian. If you wish, you may makeanother round, for he will not leave you behind, and he journeys through these silent, untenanted halls and chambers many times a day, with the precision and routine of a soldier on sentry duty, or a corporal inspecting the guard.
If one spends the night on the mount, he may see the most splendid sunrise he has ever witnessed. One need not rise, for his chamber, if it is on the water side, faces the east. It is incomparable to anything to be seen elsewhere. It is as if one were in mid-ocean. The Normandy coast, not so very far distant, is silhouetted against the sky as the refulgent sun breaks through the clouds and mists of early morning. Suddenly the sea reflects it with mirror-like brilliancy,—another day is born.
West of Avranches is Mortain, situated in the midst of the most picturesque country-side of the Cotentin. It sits high on the flank of what, in Normandy, may well be called a mountain, and below it runs the tiny river Cance.
The chief artistic monument of Mortain is the Church of St. Evroult, erected during the early part of the thirteenth century, with a Roman portal thought to belong to an ancient collegiate church of three centuries before.There is a series of fifty-eight elaborately sculptured stalls of the fifteenth century, and, altogether, it is quite as worthy of enthusiastic admiration as many a more famous one elsewhere.
To the northward, a half-hour’s brisk walk, is the ancient Abbaye Blanche, or a reconstruction of it, founded in 1105 for the Benedictines, and some years later affiliated with the order of Citeaux.
The Cance below Mortain is one of those rocky river-beds that awaken one’s admiration and surprise. It does not resemble in any way the Grand Cañon of the Colorado or the Gorges of the Tarn, but it is an unspoiled bit of nature, quite as God made it.
A Norman poet—Pontgibault—has eulogized it thus:
“Combien j’eusse aimé mieux m’en aller avec vousParcourir ces vallons dont un Suisse est jaloux,Jouir (comme on jouet lorsqu’on est en vacance)Des méandres charmants que dessine la Cance;Voir ce ‘Pas,’ où, dit-on, les Diables s’égara,La ‘Cascade’ aux flots bleus, petit niagara,La ‘Grotte aux Sarrasins,’ dont la fraicheur sinetteLe dispute à ses eaux Fontaine Perrinette!”
“Combien j’eusse aimé mieux m’en aller avec vousParcourir ces vallons dont un Suisse est jaloux,Jouir (comme on jouet lorsqu’on est en vacance)Des méandres charmants que dessine la Cance;Voir ce ‘Pas,’ où, dit-on, les Diables s’égara,La ‘Cascade’ aux flots bleus, petit niagara,La ‘Grotte aux Sarrasins,’ dont la fraicheur sinetteLe dispute à ses eaux Fontaine Perrinette!”
Vire is another town of the Cotentin which, like most of its brothers or sisters, sits highupon an escarpment of surrounding hills. It occupies a veritable amphitheatre, and it is most curiously, if not beautifully, planned. It was an ancient feudal settlement which grew in time to some importance as far as its military history is concerned.
It is the birthplace of Olivier Basselin, the “satirique” of the “Vaux de Vire” and the inventor (in the fifteenth century) of that form of dramatic representation which we of a later day have come to know as “vaudeville.” The evolution of the term is thus made simple enough, though what such representations themselves have actually become in these days is perhaps not so easy to define.
The great Clock Tower and its ogival gate of the thirteenth century is Vire’s chief architectural curiosity.
Its greatest and most artistic architectural attribute is the Church of Notre Dame, which dates from the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries. Its interior appointments are marvellously elaborate, including a fine sculptured pulpit in wood dating from 1643.
The town hall, a seventeenth and eighteenth century edifice, encloses a library of forty-four thousand books and 240 manuscripts, includinga rich collection of works relating to the country. There is also a very considerable collection of paintings.
enlarge-imageClock Tower, VireClock Tower, Vire
Clock Tower, Vire
ITis difficult to apportion to any part of the Norman country-side characteristics which are common to the whole province.
Indeed, save for the fact that wine is not grown in Normandy, the whole region is given over to the growing of much the same crops, which seem to thrive in so many parts elsewhere. There is also the crop of cider-apples, of pears, and of many other fruits, including a deliciouswhitestrawberry, and the raising of sheep, cattle, and even horses,—all seem to flourish here in this great province.
Perhaps it is that Norman thrift and hard labour account for much of the prosperity attendant upon its bountiful crops; for certainly the Norman farmer, be he peasant or proprietor, has the faculty of getting abundant crops from comparatively restricted plots of land.
The Norman country-side may be properly said to lie to the westward of the Seine, beginningwith the district of Neubourg and extending to the Breton border through the base of the Cotentin peninsula. This is the true Normandy,—Lower Normandy,—and it had for its capital in the old days the much bechurched city of Caen, as distinct from Rouen in Upper Normandy, the capital of the entire province. Rouen had early absorbed French manners and customs; and its inhabitants spoke the French tongue long before the speech and religion of the Northmen had died out of the mouths and breasts of their descendants in the lower province.
This is a fact advanced by historians, and may mean much or little. It is supported, however, by the statement that William Longsword, the first Rollon’s son, sent his son to Bayeux to learn Danish; for which reason it is argued that the lower province withstood the march of transition the longest.
Everything in Normandy has an attitude of palpable prosperity. There are occasional tumble-down outhouses, to be sure, and now and then a deserted hamlet, but this is no sign of a prevalent poverty or an increasing indolence, and Normandy, without doubt, is one of the most industrious and wealthy sections of all France.
The figures of population in France are ever full of surprises when regarded in comparison with those of another day. Many a French department has remained stationary as to its population for a hundred years, while occasionally one has decreased, as, for instance, the Department of the Eure, lying just west of the Seine, which has lost within the past decade something over five thousand of its children.
The population of France, as a whole, increases of course, but it is mostly the urban centres that show an increase. The country-side remains at its dead level, and that, perhaps, is why it is prosperous.
The men and women of Normandy are of rather larger stature than most of the population of France; they live and dress in a more comfortable, if not a more luxurious, manner, and they generally exhibit an air of thrift and prosperity which in the neighbouring province of Brittany is notably lacking.
As astute an observer as Professor Freeman—and he was an Oxford conservative of the most conservative type—had nothing but praise for Norman fare as compared with that of Paris. He said picturesquely and forcibly: “Any one with an old-fashioned Anglo-Saxon stomach—a man who would have liked to havedined off roast meat with Charles the Great, or breakfasted off beefsteaks with Queen Elizabeth—will find the Norman diet coming far nearer to his ideal than the politer repasts of Paris.”
In the matter of eating, Rouen, except in the little market-farmers’tables d’hôte, has become corrupted and Parisian; but at Evreux, Louviers, Conches, and at Avranches and Bayeux, one eats only the native fare, and is not glutted with beefsteak, mutton-chops, and ham and eggs, and, worst of all, ham omelets, which every hotel in a large city in France seems to think is a specially palatable dish to English-speaking folk.
In the very heart of a wide-open bit of country lies Evreux, a pretty little commercial town. As a manufacturing centre it produces the hosiery, woollen stuffs, and the other products of the province. As auxiliaries to the great factories are innumerable public-houses and wine-shops of such diminutive proportions that one wonders that they can carry enough stock in trade to satisfy a reasonably thirsty baker’s dozen of workmen. They drink large quantities of cider, the innocuous wine of the country, and relatively smaller quantities of the moredangerous “applejack,” which the French callcalvados.
It is difficult to place Evreux in the category of those places tourists in general love to visit.
Take away its bizarre Renaissance cathedral, and most travellers would know it not. But it is the typical chief city of a prosperous department, nevertheless, and is the centre from which radiates much local influence. The préfecture is here, and here is the headquarters of the Inspector of the Mines, both of whom one interviews if he lives in the Department of the Eure, and desires to possess an automobile or steam-engine to pump water for his garden.
There is nothing very formidable about these interviews with French officials. They are all most civil and obliging, but very formal. If you have any communication to make, you must first put it in writing on “stamped paper,” which you buy for sixty centimes at a tobacco shop, and forward it by post.
In due time a reply comes back to you, delivered by the hand of thesous-commissaireof the commune in which you live, making an appointment for an interview, or giving the desired information. It seems a roundabout way of doing it, but it serves to keep the under officials of the préfecture of a canton or a communeup to their work, thereby always having in the routine of office any number of well-trained subordinates, who recognize the will and power of a higher administration.
It is the military discipline over again, and it works very well indeed, in spite of the fact that it is not time or labour saving, two conditions of life which have not yet made much headway in France.
The cathedral at Evreux is an interestingmélangeof good, bad, and indifferent Gothic and Renaissance architecture, and forms, as before said, its chief sight. It by no means takes rank among the secondary cathedrals of France as an artistic expression, but there is an inordinate amount of most excellent Renaissance woodwork to be seen in the chapel railings of its interior, which give it a much higher rank than it would otherwise take.
There is a frightful portrait of Charles the Wicked in the choir of the cathedral, which would be interesting if it were in an art museum or a picture-gallery; but it is so hideous that it is quite out of place in a religious edifice.
More interesting for the antiquarian is the Church of St. Taurin, all that remains of the old abbey of the same name built in 1026 by Richard II.
The bishop’s palace, to the rearward of the cathedral, has quite a feudal aspect, and, while not architecturally beautiful, has magnificently disposed surroundings.
There are the usual civic monuments that one sees in an important French town, the most beautiful, modern though it is, being a fine fountain ornamented with statues symbolical of the Eure and its tributaries, the Iton and the Rouloir. In the local art museum are shown an admirably arranged exhibit of medals, and some specimens of ancient pottery made here. The pictures are quite of the ordinary variety.
The civic belfry at Evreux is the chief curiosity of the town after the cathedral. It is one of those quaint minaret-like towers one sees in the lower country; nothing but a lone pile pierced with a portal on its ground floor, and ascended by a spiral stairway until one reaches an octagonal outside gallery, above which there is a pinnacle in which hangs the great bell.
The alarum-bells of a former day had some useful purpose to serve; but to-day, unless the belfry of Evreux should be used as a curfew, its utility has long since passed.
Just beyond Evreux, following the banks ofthe Iton, is Conches, a typical Norman country-side town, with a historic past. It has a beautiful church, a charming situation on the top of a hill, and a typical and astonishingly good country inn, but little else.
Conches had its origin in the foundation of an abbey here by the seigneur of the region, named Roger, in 1035. In 1355 King John gave the county of Conches to his son-in-law, Charles, Count of Evreux and King of Navarre, from whom it was taken some time afterward by force. The troops of the Duke of Lancaster and Philippe of Navarre delivered to the flames the old château and abbey; and to-day all that remains of the former is the great round donjon in the gardens of the town hall.
This old donjon turret is the most interesting memorial in Conches to-day, and is quite as representative of the manner of building these great circular defences as any extant. It is surrounded by a deep fosse, now herbage-grown and half-filled, and its walls are crumbled and covered with lichen and moss.
The Church of Ste. Foy is a charmingly spired fifteenth-century edifice, not so ancient nor so rich in treasure as are many churches in an important town such as Conches; but,in spite of all this, it is as lovable as any and more picturesquely disposed than most.
enlarge-imageIn the Church of Ste. Foy, ConchesIn the Church of Ste. Foy, Conches
In the Church of Ste. Foy, Conches
The ruins of Vieux-Conches, two kilometres distant, point out in a more or less halting manner the story of a past that is well-nigh lost in oblivion. There is here and there a pile of débris, some remains of old walls, indicating an old-time faubourg now overgrown and wiped out by its more ambitious parent.
A word as to the excellent hotel, the Croix Blanche. It sits unobtrusively enough to one side, just beyond the Church of Ste. Foy, on the opposite side of the street, its courtyard literally filled to overflowing with those great two-wheeled, high-hooded carts so characteristic of Normandy. The stable, too, is full to its limit, as well as the country people’s smoking-room, where, on an oilcloth-covered table, is served a bountiful bill of fare, with unlimited cider, for the modest sum of a franc a head.
The dining-room proper, which you enter through the kitchen, where the patron himself presides as chef, is not an ample apartment, but it seats perhaps two score of people, and here, of all placesen routeacross Normandy, you will get as typical a country meal, with asparagus and strawberries and such generally liked eatables, as will make you marvel howit is all done at the price; for some of these stalwart Normans, to say nothing of the omni-present travelling salesman, have astounding appetites. All this costs but a modest fifty sous. They make it up perhaps on the coffee, for they charge you fifty centimes for it, though they do give you a small glass ofcalvadoswith it, which after all leaves no ground for complaint.
West of Conches is a grand forest tract, the road through which runs up-hill and down dale for fourteen kilometres. It is not a level road by any means, but it is a beautiful one. As one leaves this fine forest region and strikes the highroad again on the way to Laigle, he passes numerous little agricultural towns, set about here and there in a delightful rolling country, whose great charm is invariably their picturesque disposition.
Rugles is one of these, and it has a grand old church, or, rather, two of them, which dominate the road for a half-dozen kilometres at either entrance to the town. Curiously enough, Rugles, a little country-side place of less than two thousand inhabitants, in the midst of a frankly agricultural region, shares with Laigle, twelve kilometres distant, and a metropolitan town compared to Rugles, the honour of beingthe chief centre for the manufacture of pins in all France.
enlarge-imageRuglesRugles
Rugles
Laigle is a quaintly picturesque town. Its Church of St. Martin is a magnificent monument of the fifteenth century, frankly Renaissance with respect to most of its details, but with a most engaging great bare tower which dates from at least the twelfth century.
The old brick château which faces St. Martin is now given over to mundane commercial affairs; but it is a fine example of the work of the younger Mansard, and a contemplation of its exterior details will place his work on a much higher plane than does his ratheroutréinvention, the Mansard roof.
The tiny river Risle—tiny in its breadth, though not in its length—cuts Laigle in twain on its way to the sea.
Between Laigle and Mortagne is Tourouvre, with a fine church in St. Gilles, with its wooden vault covered with paintings, its fifteenth-century choir-stalls, and many other accessories which any church should be proud to possess.
This church of Tourouvre contains many reminders of the connection of Normandy with New France in North America. One of the great coloured windows represents Julien Mercier and eighty families of the neighbourhood, who left here for the new world in 1650. Another window shows Honoré Mercier, the first minister of Canada, praying within this same church.
From those who went from Tourouvre and its environs to Canada in the seventeenth century, a notable portion of the French-Canadians have descended.
This emigration took place in the most opulent epoch of the reign of Louis XIV., when Colbert was minister. As the French authority Verrerie has said:
“Ces familles percheronnes, arrivées en nombre quand la colonie sortait à peine de l’enfance, ont fortement influé sur les mœurs,habitudes, aptitudes, sur le langage et l’accent de cette nation.”
It was during the administration of Colbert, the minister of Louis XIV., that the France of overseas first came to its full bloom. Jacques Cartier had already journeyed to the new world; and the foundation of Quebec by Champlain and his people in 1608 gave the first real strength to colonial ambitions.
Canada became a prosperous colony indeed, flanking both banks of the St. Lawrence and the northern shores of the Great Lakes, thanks to the discoveries of the intrepid voyager, the Cavalier de la Salle (1682), whose tomb in Rouen’s cathedral has become one of those shrines much favoured by visiting Americans.
The great tract afterward taken into the United States first received the name of Louisiana, after the kingly patron of the discoverer, while Newfoundland and all of New France furnished an impetus to French exploration and development across the seas, which in later years was not sustained.
Back of all this, a century before, appears the name of John Cabot, the discoverer of Newfoundland and Canada.
The question has often been discussed in Italy as to whether or no John Cabot was aVenetian, or, rather, a Venetian citizen. They evidently believe he was, for certain records claim the existence of one Ioani Caboto as a resident of that city.
The French, and the Normans more particularly, give this no credit. They claim that Jean Cabot, which certainly sounds as French as John Cabot does English, or Ioani Caboto does Italian, was of Normandy. “He may have been Venetian by adoption,” says your patriotic Frenchman, “and it was in the service of Henry VII. of England that John Cabot, then settled in Bristol, left upon that voyage of discovery in 1492, accompanied by his three sons, which resulted in the skirting of the American continent from Labrador to Florida; but Jean Cabot, nevertheless,wasa Frenchman.”
The claim is not very fully substantiated, to be sure, but as the English claim him as an Englishman, and the Italians as an Italian, and inasmuch as he could not be both, perhaps hewasa Frenchman. The French have evolved the wordcabotagein marine nomenclature, which means navigation along the coast, showing at least the regard they have for the memory ofJean Cabot.
Before one reaches Mortagne there is the Abbey of La Trappe to be visited, an experiencewhich will live long in the memory of the traveller.
You may get nourishment and shelter for a surprisingly small sum, and you will be served and waited upon by brown-robed monks, with all the mystery which surrounds the accounts of such hospitality which have come down to us from other days. But ladies must not be of the party. At least they may not enter the inviolate precincts of the monastery itself. They may go only as far as the lodge at the gate, where one may buy picture post-cards and little boxes of chocolate from a garrulous oldfrère, who looks and acts as if he hugely enjoyed female society. He appears to be the only one of the community who mixes with the outside world, and is gracious, kindly, and good-natured, and will even arrange to have a simple meal cooked within the hallowed walls and sent out to the hungry ladies of the party. The men may enter and eat in the refectory.
The fare is simple—exceedingly simple—a bit of preserved fish, an omelet perhaps, some boiled rice, and black bread with wine or cider. The price is also simple. You may give what you choose, or, if you can induce the happy, toothless old monk, who is the go-between of the world within and without, to set a price,he will probably tell you two francs for all, regardless of the size of the company.
This is truly an idyllic way of conducting an inn for the clients, but it is hardly good business. The old monk fares much better when he leaves the price to the visitor.
The monastery buildings are fine, but not strikingly beautiful from the outside, though set amid beautifully cultivated fields. The domain is over three hundredhectares, and is well stocked with cows, sheep, and swine. There is also a large apiary, the conduct of which seems to be particularly suited to a monastic life.
The brown-robed brother who mixes with the world seems to think so, too, and takes a pardonable pride in showing his beehives and beautiful cows to any one who will give him the opportunity.
The present establishment occupies the site of an abbey founded in 1140, the ancient oratory of which now serves as a bake-house. Later the abbey became associated with the order of Citeaux, and finally the Trappists installed themselves here in 1815, and commenced the construction of the present buildings.
All the principal structures within the walls are strictly modern. The chapel dates from1890, the Capitulary Hall from 1891, and the cloister from 1892.
enlarge-imageThe Apiary of La TrappeThe Apiary of La Trappe
The Apiary of La Trappe
Within the walls of the little garden is a fine statue of the Virgin in white marble, given in 1847 by Madame Adelaide, the sister of Louis-Philippe.
The library contains twenty thousand volumes, including a very beautiful missal in a folio format on parchment, written in German script, and ornamented with miniatures and grotesquely decorated initials.
Mortagne is an eminently dignified district capital of four thousand inhabitants, admirably situated for defence, as was proved in the olden time when it was long held by the Counts of Perche against all invaders; but is withal a sleepy, dull town, with really very little of interest in it to-day for the traveller by road or rail, unless he happens to get here for the great Percheron horse-fair in December of each year, when transactions covering the buying and selling of two thousand head or more take place within a single day.
The church dates from 1495-1535, and is in no way remarkable except for its pretentious portal of the sixteenth century. There are numerous old houses of wood of the conventional rural Norman style, but, on the whole,beyond a general air of smugness and prosperity in the town, there is little visible to endear it even to the inhabitant himself.
Of feudal origin, Mortagne was the ancient capital of La Perche.
The traveller by road from Mortagne to Alençon and Domfront, or to Mayenne, will think he has struck a genuine mountain trail.
Not that the roadway is not good, for it is most excellently laid and graded. But, except for some mountainous parts of Brittany, this “Suisse Normande” is the hilliest region in France.
One should make a by-tour from Mortagne to Bellême and Mamers, if only to see what an unspoiled little old world a Norman hill-town looks like to-day. Bellême is all this and much more. It owns to nearly three thousand inhabitants, and sits upon a height two hundred metres above the valley of the Huisne.
There are many fine great houses in the town of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when everything was at the height of its prosperity.
Of ancient feudal origin, Bellême was one of the most strongly fortified places in Normandy in the eleventh century. The Counts of Bellême, more famous for their crimes thantheir virtues, were the possessors of nearly all of La Perche in the olden days. In 1082 they took the title of Counts of Alençon as well, but Bellême remained the capital of their domains.
Robert of Bellême was one of the most celebrated château builders of his day, being possessed of so great an ability that he was known as a most famous military engineer under Philippe I. He built the Château of Bellême, Nogent le Rotron, and Gisors.
Henri Martin, the historian, was born at Bellême.
The Church of St. Sauveur dates from the fifteenth century, and is a splendidly appointed and decorated church of its time. There is a great modern window therein to the memory of the mother of Aristide Boucicault, the founder of the great store at Paris known all over the world as the “Bon Marché.” There are also paintings here by Poussin, Isabey, and Oudry.
In the Square of St. Sauveur is an old fortified gate, a fragment left from the ancient château.
Alençon is first called to the minds of most women travellers as the original home of the lace known by its name. It is a great, overgrown, gone-to-sleep, old-world town, with agorgeously ornate church, some remains of a feudal château, and the memory of its siege by Geoffroy Martel, Count of Anjou, in 1040. Under the Cardinal Richelieu the place became the seat of a district, the administration of which embraced over 1,200 distinct parishes.
The lace industry of Alençon in the olden time was justly celebrated. Working after the Venetian manner, a woman named Gilbert, a native of Alençon, first made this lace here. She obtained the exclusive privilege of making it up to 1685. The industry prospered up to 1812, since which date it has fallen sadly, though it is hoped, and even claimed, that a phœnix-like revival may be expected at any time since the school of lace-making has been established.
Alençon has its horse-fair on the January twenty-fifth and the February fourth of each year, and also a remounting post for the army,—all of which gives a certain air of prosperity, which at other times of the year is lacking.
The Church of Notre Dame of the fifteenth century is the chief architectural feature, and its magnificently sculptured portal is of the best of late Gothic workmanship.
The court-house and the prison occupy the site of the ancient château; in its façade arepreserved two of the great crenelated towers of the portal, dating from the fourteenth century.
enlarge-imageChâteau d’AlençonChâteau d’Alençon
Château d’Alençon
The art museum contains numerous paintings of little except local interest; but the public library has a superb series of decorations set about its walls in the twenty-six magnificently blazoned armorial bearings in oak, coming from the ancient library of the Val Dieu. The bas-reliefs are attributed to Germain Pilon and Jean Goujon. The library contains twenty thousand volumes, including various incunabula and 177 manuscripts.
Argentan lies fifty kilometres or so north of Alençon, and on the way there is the tiny cathedral town of Séez, which has one of the most perfect of Gothic cathedrals of its size in all France. The little city has a most unworldly aspect, silent but not sad. A Frenchman has called it avéritable ville episcopale et monastique.
There is, moreover, a hotel—the Cheval Blanc—at Séez which is something more than a mere rest-house. It is a typical, unspoiled old-time hostelry, where you are well served with the products of the farmyard and the fields. It is decidedly an inn to be noted; and, if one stays overnight, he will be put to bed in an old oak-raftered room, with a highly waxed, red-tiled floor, which will make him dream of the days of long ago.
Argentan, though it boasts but two thousand more inhabitants than Séez and has no cathedral, is a veritable metropolis compared to the latter.
The Church of St. Germain is a fine building, sadly blocked and crowded by the surrounding houses which huddle around its walls and leave only the north façade and the apse open to the day. The decorated Gothic tower (1638) is a fine achievement, and the interior arrangements are altogether charming.
The Château of Argentan is the most satisfying building in Argentan. It has two great square towers of the fourteenth century, which to-day form a part of an adjoining edifice used as a prison.
The library, while not so extensive as that in many other of the little capitals of Normandy, has six thousand volumes relating to Norman history and affairs, which should make it of value to any one of antiquarian tastes.
enlarge-imageArgentanArgentan
Argentan
Northward from Evreux one follows the valley of the non-navigable, but utilitarian, little river Iton through the farm-lands of Evrecin and Neubourg, until finally one realizes that he is quite in the midst of the open Norman country. The apple-trees are everywhere; and the crop of cider-apples is here,as elsewhere in Normandy, of first importance. Prairies that once were only grass-land have been made into orchards and workable farms, and the big and little farmers, by a constantand well-paid effort, have made it a veritable land of plenty.
The little industrial town of Neubourg lies between Evreux and Bernay, in the great Neubourg district, an ancientpetit payswhere was once a vast château, the property of the Marquis de Sourdeac of Rieux, which dominated all the neighbourhood.
enlarge-imageMarket-place, NeubourgMarket-place, Neubourg
Market-place, Neubourg
Like its more noble compeers in the Loire valley, it occasionally sheltered great companies of people who affected art and letters. As Molière and Rabelais frequently attended uponthe court, when in residence at some gorgeous château in Touraine, so Sieur Pierre Corneille—who himself lived not far away, at Grand Couronne, near Rouen—was commanded to present a new piece at this little court of “Neufbourg” in 1661.
Here was presented for the first time the “Toison d’Or” by the royal company from Paris, in celebration of the marriage of the king and the conclusion of peace with Spain.
“The prologue was applauded generously,” say the accounts of the time. This prologue, to a great extent, proved a prophecy of things to come, as the following lines will show:
“A vaincre si longtemps mes forces s’affaiblissent,L’état est florissant, mais les peuples gemissent;Leurs membres décharnés courbent sous mes hauts faitsEt la gloire du trône accable mes sujets.”
“A vaincre si longtemps mes forces s’affaiblissent,L’état est florissant, mais les peuples gemissent;Leurs membres décharnés courbent sous mes hauts faitsEt la gloire du trône accable mes sujets.”
The château is in ruins to-day, but a contemplation thereof serves to recall this unfamiliar page of the life of the times.
Brionne is another charmingly situated little town of this fertile country-side which is little known, except to stranger-travellers by road. It shows industry, too, in its yarn and thread works, has had considerable of a historical past, and possesses the rather scanty ruins of a twelfth-century château.
Above Brionne is Le Bec-Hellouin, all but forgotten, even by those who ever knew that the two Archbishops of Canterbury, Lanfranc and Anselm, were inmates of its old abbey before they came to their greater dignities.
The Abbey of Bec was founded in the eleventh century, and, as a great institution of learning, drew scholars from England, France, and Italy.
It was on account of the doctrines and dogma inculcated in his mind here that Lanfranc, when he came to be made Archbishop of Canterbury, summarily deposed the Saxon bishops throughout England and filled their places with Frenchmen and Italians.
Of the remains of the old abbey to-day, the church, which is best preserved, guards, as if by some miracle, some fine statues and remarkably beautiful enamels. The rest of the conventual buildings, or such as remain, have been turned into a military station for cavalry mounts. This desecration still goes on throughout France, which seems a pity, of course; but, since the Concordat turned over Church property to the state, the state was naturally bound to make some use of it if possible, regardless of how unpicturesque and unromantic the results might be.