Bayeux and its tapestry; its grave company of antique houses; its glorious cathedral dominating the whole—what a lovely old background against which poses the eternal modernness of the young noon sun! The history of Bayeux is commonly given in a paragraph. Our morning's walk had proved to us it was the kind of town that does more to re-create the historic past than all the pages of a Guizot or a Challamel.

The bells that were ringing out the hour of high-noon from the cathedral towers at Bayeux were making the heights of St. Lo, two hours later, as noisy as a village fair. The bells, for rivals, had the clatter of women's tongues. I think I never, before or since, have beheld so lively a company of washerwomen as were beating their clothes in Vire River. The river bends prettily just below the St. Lo heights, as if it had gone out of its way to courtesy to a hill. But even the waters, in their haste to be polite, could not course beneath the great bridge as swiftly as ran those women's tongues. There were a good hundred of them at work beneath the washing-sheds. Now, these sheds, anywhere in France, are really the open-air club room of the French peasant woman; the whole dish of the village gossip is hung out to dry, having previously been well soused and aired, along with the blouses and the coarse chemises. The town of St. Lo had evidently furnished these club members of the washing-stones with some fat dish of gossip—the heads were as close as currants on a stem, as they bent in groups over the bright waters. They had told it all to the stream; and the stream rolled the volume of the talk along as it carried along also the gay, sparkling reflections of the life and the toil that bent over it—of the myriad reflections of those moving, bare-armed figures, of the brilliant kerchiefs, of the wet blue and gray jerseys, and of the long prismatic line of the damp, motley-hued clothes that were fluttering in the wind.

The bells' clangor was an assurance that something was happening on top of the hill. Just what happened was as altogether pleasing a spectacle, after a long and arduous climb up a hillside, as it has often been my good fortune to encounter.

The portals of the church of Notre Dame were wide open. Within, as we looked over the shoulders of the townspeople who, like us, had come to see what the bells meant by their ringing, within the church there was a rich and sombre dusk; out of this dusk, indistinctly at first, lit by the tremulous flicker of a myriad of candles, came a line of white-veiled heads; then another of young boys, with faces as pale as the nosegays adorning their brand-new black coats; next the scarlet-robed choristers, singing, and behind them still others swinging incense that thickened the dusk. Suddenly, like a vision, the white veils passed out into the sunlight, and we saw that the faces beneath the veils were young and comely. The faces were still alternately lighted by the flare of the burning tapers and the glare of the noon sun. The long procession ended at last in a straggling group of old peasants with fine tremulous mouths, a-tremble with pride and with feeling; for here they were walking in full sight of their town, in their holiday coats, with their knees treacherously unsteady from the thrill of the organ's thunder and the sweetness of the choir-boys' singing.

Whether it was a pardon, or a fete, or a first communion, we never knew. But the town of St. Lo is ever gloriously lighted, for us, with a nimbus of young heads, such as encircled the earlier madonnas.

After such a goodly spectacle, the rest of the town was a tame morsel. We took a parting sniff of the incense still left in the eastern end of the church's nave; there was a bit of good glass in a window to reward us. Outside the church, on the west from the Petite Place, was a wide outlook over the lovely vale of the Vire, with St. Lo itself twisting and turning in graceful postures down the hillside.

On the same prospect two kings have looked, and before the kings a saint. St. Lo or St. Laudus himself, who gave his name to the town, must, in the sixth century, have gazed on virgin forests stretching away from the hill far as the eye could reach. Charlemagne, three hundred years later, in his turn, found the site a goodly one, one to tempt men to worship the Creator of such beauty, for here he founded the great Abbey of St. Croix, long since gone with the monks who peopled it. Louis XI, that mystic wearing the warrior's helmet, set his seal of approval on the hill, by sending the famous glass yonder in the cathedral, when the hill and the St. Lo people beat the Bretons who had come to capture both.

Like saint, and kings, and monks, and warriors, we in our turn crept down the hill. For we also were done with the town.



CHAPTER XXV.

A DINNER AT COUTANCES.

The way from St. Lo to Coutances is a pleasant way. There is no map of the country that will give you even a hint of its true character, any more than from a photograph you can hope to gain an insight into the moral qualities of a pretty woman.

Here, at last, was the ideal Normandy landscape. It was a country with a savage look—a savage that had been trained to follow the plough. Even in its color it had retained the true barbarians' instinct for a good primary. Here were no melting-yellow mustard-fields, nor flame-lit poppied meadows, nor blue-bells lifting their baby-blue eyes out of the grain. All the land was green. Fields, meadows, forests, plains—all were green, green, green. The features of the landscape had changed with this change in coloring. The slim, fragile grace of slim trees and fragile cliffs had been replaced by trees of heroic proportions, and by outlines nobly rounded and full—like the breasts of a mother. The whole country had an astonishing look of vigor—of the vigor which comes with rude strength; and it had that charm which goes with all untamed beauty—the power to sting one into a sense of agitated enjoyment.

Even the farm-houses had been suddenly transformed into fortresses. Each one of the groups of the farm enclosures had its outer walls, its miniature turrets, and here and there its rounded bastions. Each farm, apparently, in the olden days had been a citadel unto itself. The Breton had been a very troublesome neighbor for many a long century; every ploughman, until a few hundred years ago, was quite likely to turn soldier at a second's notice—every true Norman must look to his own sword to defend his hearth-stone. Such is the story those stone turrets that cap the farm walls tell you—each one of these turrets was an open lid through which the farmer could keep his eye on Brittany.

Meanwhile, along the roads as we rushed swiftly by, a quieter life was passing. The farm wagons were jogging peacefully along on a high-road as smooth as a fine lady's palm—and as white. The horses were harnessed one before the other, in interminable length of line. Sometimes six, sometimes eight, even so many as ten, marched with great gravity, and with that majestic dignity only possible to full-blooded Percherons, one after the other. They each wore a saddle-cloth of blue sheepskin. On their mottled haunches this bit of color made their polished coats to gleam like unto a lizards' skin.

Meanwhile, also, we were nearing Coutances. The farm-houses were fortresses no longer; the thatched roofs were one once more with the green of the high roads; for even in the old days there was a great walled city set up on a hill, to which refuge all the people about for miles could turn for protection.

A city that is set on a hill! That for me is commonly recommendation enough. Such a city, so set, promises at the very least the dual distinction of looking up as well as looking down; it is the nearer heaven, and just so much the farther removed from earth.

Coutances, for a city with its head in the air, was surprisingly friendly. It went out of its way to make us at home. At the very station, down below in the plain, it had sent the most loquacious of coach-drivers to put us in immediate touch with its present interests. All the city, as the coarse blue blouse, flourishing its whip, took pains to explain, was abroad in the fields; the forests, tiens, down yonder through the trees, we could see for ourselves how the young people were making the woods as crowded as a ball-room. The city, as a city, was stripping the land and the trees bare—it would be as bald as a new-born babe by the morrow. But then, of a certainty, we also had come for the fete—or, and here a puzzled look of doubt beclouded the provincial's eyes—might we, perchance, instead, have come for the trial? Mais non, pas ca, these ladies had never come for that, since they did not even know the court was sitting, now, this very instant, at Coutances. And—sapristi! but there was a trial going on—one to make the blood curdle; he himself had not slept, the rustic coachman added, as he shivered beneath his blouse, all the night before—the blood had run so cold in his veins.

The horse and the road were all the while going up the hill. The road was easily one that might have been the path of warriors; the walls, still lofty on the side nearest the town, bristled with a turret or a bastion to remind us Coutances had not been set on a hill for mere purposes of beauty. The ramparts of the old fortifications had been turned into a broad promenade. Even as we jolted past, beneath the great breadth of the trees' verdure we could see how gloriously the prospect widened—the country below reaching out to the horizon like the waters of a sea that end only in indefiniteness.

The city itself seemed to grow out of the walls and the trees. Here and there a few scattered houses grouped themselves as if meaning to start a street; but a maze of foliage made a straight line impossible. Finally a large group of buildings, with severe stone faces, took a more serious plunge away from the vines; they had shaken themselves free and were soon soberly ranging themselves into the parallel lines of narrow city streets.

It was a pleasant surprise to find that, for once, a Norman blouse had told the truth; for here were the people of Coutances coming up from the fields to prove it. In all these narrow streets a great multitude of people were passing us; some were laden with vines, others with young forest trees, and still others with rude garlands of flowers. The peasant women's faces, as the bent figures staggered beneath a young fir-tree, were purple, but their smiles were as gay as the wild flowers with which the stones were thickly strewn. Their words also were as rough:

"Diantre—mais c'e lourd!"

"E-ben, e toi, tu n' bougeons point, toi!"

And the nearest fir-tree carrier to our carriage wheels cracked a swift blow over the head of a vine-bearer, who being but an infant of two, could not make time with the swift foot of its mother.

The smell of the flowers was everywhere. Fir-trees perfumed the air. Every doorstep was a garden. The courtyards were alive with the squat figures of capped maidens, wreathing and twisting greens and garlands. And in the streets there was such a noise as was never before heard in a city on a hill-top.

For Coutances was to hold its great fete on the morrow.

It was a relief to turn in from the noise and hubbub to the bright courtyard of our inn. The brightness thereof, and of the entire establishment, indeed, appeared to find its central source in the brilliant eyes of our hostess. Never was an inn-keeper gifted with a vision at once so omniscient and so effulgent. Those eyes were everywhere; on us, on our bags, our bonnets, our boots; they divined our wants, and answered beforehand our unuttered longings. We had come far? the eyes asked, burning a hole through our gossamer evasions; from Paris, perhaps—a glance at our bonnets proclaimed the eyes knew all; we were here for the fete, to see the bishop on the morrow; that was well; we were going on to the Mont; and the eyes scented the shortness of our stay by a swift glance at our luggage.

"Numero quatre, au troisieme!"

There was no appeal possible. The eyes had penetrated the disguise of our courtesy; we were but travellers of a night; the top story was built for such as we.

But such a top story, and such a chamber therein! A great, wide, low room; beams deep and black, with here and there a brass bit hanging; waxed floors, polished to mirrory perfection; a great bed clad in snowy draperies, with a snow-white duvet of gigantic proportions. The walls were gray with lovely bunches of faded rosebuds flung abroad on the soft surface; and to give a quaint and antique note to the whole, over the chimney was a bit of worn tapestry with formidable dungeon, a Norman keep in the background, and well up in front, a stalwart young master of the hounds, with dogs in leash, of the heavy Norman type of bulging muscle and high cheekbones.

Altogether, there were worse fates in the world than to be travellers of a night, with the destiny of such a room as part of the fate.

When we descended the steep, narrow spiral of steps to the dining-room, it was to find the eyes of our hostess brighter than ever. The noise in the streets had subsided. It was long after dusk, and Coutances was evidently a good provincial. But in the gay little dining-room there was an astonishing bustle and excitement.

The fete and the court had brought a crowd of diners to the inn- table; when we were all seated we made quite a company at the long, narrow board. The candles and lamps lit up any number of Vandyke pointed beards, of bald heads, of loosely-tied cravats, and a few matronly bosoms straining at the buttons of silk holiday gowns. For the Fete-Dieu had brought visitors besides ourselves from all the country round; and then "a first communion is like a marriage, all the relatives must come, as doubtless we knew," was a baldhead's friendly beginning of his soup and his talk, as we took our seats beside him.

With the appearance of the potage conversation, like a battle between foes eager for contest, had immediately engaged itself. The setting of the table and the air of companionship pervading the establishment were aiders and abettors to immediate intercourse. Nothing could be prettier than the Caen bowls with their bunches of purple phlox and spiked blossoms. Even a metropolitan table might have taken a lesson from the perfection of the lighting of the long board. In order that her guests should feel the more entirely at home, our brilliant-eyed hostess came in with the soup; she took her place behind it at the head of the table.

It was evident the merchants from Cherbourg who had come as witnesses to the trial, had had many a conversational bout before now with madame's ready wit. So had two of the town lawyers. Even the commercial gentlemen, for once, were experiencing a brief moment of armed suspense, before they flung themselves into the arena of talk. At first, or it would never have been in the provinces, this talk at the long table, everyone broke into speech at once. There was a flood of words; one's sense of hearing was stunned by the noise. Gradually, as the cider and the thin red wine were passed, our neighbors gave digestion a chance; the din became less thick with words; each listened when the other talked. But, as the volume of speech lessened, the interest thickened. It finally became concentrated, this interest, into true French fervor when the question of the trial was touched on.

"They say D'Alencon is very clever. He pleads for Filon, the culprit, to-night, does he not?"

"Yes, poor Filon—it will go hard with him. His crime is a black one."

"I should think it was—implicating le petit!"

"Dame! the judge doesn't seem to be of your mind."

"Ah—h!" cried a florid Vandyke-bearded man, the dynamite bomb of the table, exploding with a roar of rage. "Ah—h, cre nom de Dieu!—Messieurs les presidents are all like that; they are always on the side of the innocent—"

"Till they prove them guilty."

"Guilty! guilty!" the bomb exploded in earnest now. "How many times in the annals of crime is a man guilty—really guilty? They should search for the cause—and punish that. That is true justice. The instigator, the instigator—he is the true culprit. Inheritances—voila les vrais coupables. But when are such things investigated? It is ever the innocent who are punished. I know something of that—I do."

"Allons—allons!" cried the table, laughing at the beard's vehemence. "When were you ever under sentence?"

"When I was doing my duty," the beard hurled back with both arms in the air; "when I was doing my three years—I and my comrade; we were convicted—punished—for an act of insubordination we never committed. Without a trial, without a chance of defending ourselves, we were put on two crumbs of bread and a glass of water for two months. And we were innocent—as innocent as babes, I tell you."

The table was as still as death. The beard had proved himself worthy of this compliment; his voice was the voice of drama, and his gestures such as every Frenchman delights in beholding and executing. Every ear was his, now.

"I have no rancor. I am, by nature, what God made me, a peaceable man, but"—here the voice made a wild crescendo—"if I ever meet my colonel—gare a lui! I told him so. I waited two years, two long years, till I was released; then I walked up to him" (the beard rose here, putting his hand to his forehead), "I saluted" (the hand made the salute), "and I said to him, 'Mon colonel, you convicted me, on false evidence, of a crime I never committed. You punished me. It is two years since then. But I have never forgotten. Pray to God we may never meet in civil life, for then yours would end!"

"Allons, allons! A man after all must do his duty. A colonel—he can't go into details!" remonstrated the hostess, with her knife in the air.

"I would stick him, I tell you, as I would a pig—or a Prussian! I live but for that!"

"Monstre!" cried the table in chorus, with a laugh, as it took its wine. And each turned to his neighbor to prove the beard in the wrong.

"Of what crime is the defendant guilty—he who is to be tried to-night?" Charm asked of a silent man, with sweet serious eyes and a rough gray beard, seated next her. Of all the beards at the table, this one alone had been content with listening.

"Of fraud—mademoiselle—of fraud and forgery." The man had a voice as sweet as a church bell, and as deep. Every word he said rang out slowly, sonorously. The attention of the table was fixed in an instant. "It is the case of a Monsieur Filon, of Cherbourg. He is a cider merchant. He has cheated the state, making false entries, etc. But his worst crime is that he has used as his accomplice un tout petit jeune homme—a lad of barely fifteen—"

"It is that that will make it go hard for him with the jury—"

"Hard!" cried the ex-soldier, getting red at once with the passion of his protest—"hard—it ought to condemn him, to guillotine him. What are juries for if they don't kill such rascals as he?"

"Doucement, doucement, monsieur," interrupted the bell-note of the merchant. "One doesn't condemn people without hearing both sides. There may be extenuating circumstances!"

"Yes—there are. He is a merchant. All merchants are thieves. He does as all others do—only he was found out."

A protesting murmur now rose from the table, above which rang once more, in clear vibrations, the deep notes of the merchant.

"Ah—h, mais—tous voleurs—non, not all are thieves. Commerce conducted on such principles as that could not exist. Credit is not founded on fraud, but on trust."

"Tres bien, tres bien," assented the table. Some knives were thumped to emphasize the assent.

"As for stealing"—the rich voice continued, with calm judicial slowness—"I can understand a man's cheating the state once, perhaps—yielding to an impulse of cupidity. But to do as ce Monsieur Filon has done—he must be a consummate master of his art—for his processes are organized robbery."

"Ah—h, but robbery against the state isn't the same thing as robbing an individual," cried the explosive, driven into a corner.

"It is quite the same—morally, only worse. For a man who robs the state robs everyone—including himself."

"That's true—perfectly true—and very well put." All the heads about the table nodded admiringly; their hostess had expressed the views of them all. The company was looking now at the gray beard with glistening eyes; he had proved himself master of the argument, and all were desirous of proving their homage. Not one of the nice ethical points touched on had been missed; even the women had been eagerly listening, following, criticising. Here was a little company of people gathered together from rustic France, meeting, perhaps, for the first time at this board. And the conversation had, from the very beginning, been such as one commonly expects to hear only among the upper ranks of metropolitan circles. Who would have looked to see a company of Norman provincials talking morality, and handling ethics with the skill of rhetoricians?

Most of our fellow-diners, meanwhile, were taking their coffee in the street. Little tables were ranged close to the house-wall. There was just room for a bench beside the table, and then the sidewalk ended.

"Shall you be going to the trial to-night?" courteously asked the merchant who had proven himself a master in debate, of Charm. He had lifted his hat before he sat down, bowing to her as if he had been in a ball-room.

"It will be fine to-night—it is the opening of the defence," he added, as he placed carefully two lumps of sugar in his cup.

"It's always finer at night—what with the lights and the people," interpolated the landlady, from her perch on the door-sill. "If ces dames wish to go, I can show them the way to the galleries. Only," she added, with a warning tone, her growing excitement obvious at the sense of the coming pleasure, "it is like the theatre. The earlier we get there the better the seat. I go to get my hat." And the door swallowed her up.

"She is right—it is like a theatre," soliloquized the merchant—"and so is life. Poor Filon!"

We should have been very content to remain where we were. The night had fallen; the streets, as they lost themselves in dim turnings, in mysterious alleyways, and arches that seemed grotesquely high in the vague blur of things, were filled for us with the charm of a new and lovely beauty. At one end the street ended in a towering mass of stone; that doubtless was the cathedral. At the right, the narrow houses dipped suddenly; their roof-lines were lost in vagueness. Between the slit made by the street a deep, vast chasm opened; it was the night filling the great width of sky, and the mists that shrouded the hill, rising out of the sleeping earth. There was only one single line of light; a long deep glow was banding the horizon; it was a bit of flame the dusk held up, like a fading torch, to show where the sun had reigned.

In and out of this dusk the townspeople came and went. Away from the mellow lights, streaming past the open inn doors, the shapes were only a part of the blur; they were vague, phantasmal masses, clad in coarse draperies. As they passed into the circle of light, the faces showed features we had grown to know—the high cheekbones, the ruddy tones, the deep-set, serious eyes, and firm mouths, with lips close together. The air on this hill-top must be of excellent quality; the life up here could scarcely be so hard as in the field villages. For the women looked less worn, and less hideously old, and in the men's eyes there was not so hard and miserly a glittering.

Almost all, young or old, were bearing strange burdens. Some of the men were carrying huge floral crosses; the women were laden with every conceivable variety of object—with candlesticks, vases, urns, linen sheets, rugs, with chairs even.

"They are helping to dress the reposoirs, they must all be in readiness for the morning," answered our friend, still beside us, when we asked the cause of this astonishing spectacle.

Everywhere garlands and firs, leaves, flowers, and wreaths; people moving rapidly; the carriers of the crosses stopping to chat for an instant with groups working at some mysterious scaffolding—all shapes in darkness. Everywhere, also, there was the sweet, aromatic scent of the greens and the pines abroad in the still, clear air of the summer night.

This was the perfume and these the dim pictures that were our company along the narrow Coutances streets.



CHAPTER XXVI.

A SCENE IN A NORMAN COURT.

The court-room was brightly lighted; the yellow radiance on the white walls made the eyes blink. We had turned, following our guide, from the gloom of the dim streets into the roomy corridors of the Prefecture. Even the gardens about the building were swarming with townspeople and peasants waiting for the court to open. When we entered it was to find the hallways and stairs blocked with a struggling mass of people, all eager to get seats. A voice that was softened to a purring note, the voice that goes with the pursuit of the five franc piece, spoke to our landlady. "The seats to be reserved in the tribune were for these ladies?"

No time had been lost, you perceive. We were strangers; the courtesies of the town were to be extended to us. We were to have of their best, here in Coutances; and their best, just now, was this mise en scene in their court room.

The stage was well set. The Frenchman's instinctive sense of fitness was obvious in the arrangements. Long lines of blue drapery from the tall windows brought the groups below into high relief; the scarlet of the judges' robes was doubly impressive against this background. The lawyers, in their flowing black gowns and white ties, gained added dignity from the marine note behind them. The bluish pallor of the walls made the accused and the group about him pathetically sombre. Each one of this little group was in black. The accused himself, a sharp, shrewd, too keen-eyed man of thirty or so, might have been following a corpse—so black was his raiment. Even the youth beside him, a dull, sodden-eyed lad, with an air of being here not on his own account, but because he had been forced to come, was clad in deepest mourning. By the side of the culprit sat the one really tragic figure in all the court—the culprit's wife. She also was in black. In happier times she must have been a fair, fresh-colored blonde. Now all the color was gone from her cheek. She was as pale as death, and in her sweet downcast eyes there were the tell-tale vigils of long nights of weeping. Beside her sat an elderly man who bent over her, talking, whispering, commenting as the trial went on.

Every eye in the tribune was fixed on the slim young figure. A passing glance sufficed, as a rule, for the culprit and his accomplice; but it was on the wife that all the quick French sympathy, that volubly spoke itself out, was lavished. The blouses and peasants' caps, the tradesmen and their wives crowded close about the railing to pass their comment.

"She looks far more guilty than he," muttered a wizened old man next to us, very crooked on his three-legged stool.

"Yes," warmly added a stout capped peasant, with a basket once on her arm, now serving as a pedestal to raise the higher above the others her own curiosity. "Yes—she has her modesty—too—to speak for her—"

"Bah—all put on—to soften the jury." It was our fiery one of the table d'hote who had wedged his way toward us.

"And why not? A woman must make use of what weapons she has at hand—"

"Silence! Silence! messieurs!" The huissier brought down his staff of office with a ring. The clatter of sabots over the wooden floor of the tribune and the loud talking were disturbing the court.

This French court, as a court, sat in strange fashion, it seemed to us. The bench was on wonderfully friendly terms with the table about which the clerks sat, with the lawyers, with the foreman of the jury, with even the huissiers. Monsieur le President was in his robes, but he wore them as negligently as he did the dignity of his office. He and the lawyer for the defence, a noted Coutances orator, openly wrangled; the latter, indeed, took little or no pains to show him respect; now they joked together, next a retort flashed forth which began a quarrel, and the court and the trial looked on as both struggled for a mastery in the art of personal abuse. The lawyer made nothing of raising his finger, to shake it in open menace in the very teeth of the scarlet robes. And the robes clad a purple-faced figure that retorted angrily, like a fighting school-boy.

But to Coutances, this, it appears, was a proper way for a court to sit.

"Ah, D'Alencon—il est fort, lui. C'est lui qui agace toujours monsieur le president—"

"He'll win—he'll make a great speech—he is never really fine unless it's a question of life or death—" Such were the criticisms that were poured out from the quick-speaking lips about us.

Presently a simultaneous movement on the part of the jury brought the proceedings to confusion. A witness in the act of giving evidence stopped short in his sentence; he twisted his head; looking upward, he asked a question of the foreman, and the latter nodded, as if assenting. The judge then looked up. All the court looked up. All the heads were twisted. Something obviously was wrong. Then, presently the concierge appeared with a huge bunch of keys.

And all the court waited in perfect stillness while the windows were being closed!

"Il y avait un courant d'air—there was a draught,"—gravely announced the crooked man, as he rose to let the concierge pass. This latter had her views of a court so susceptible to whiffs of night air.

"Ces messieurs are delicate—pity they have to be out at night!"—whereat the tribune snickered.

All went on bravely for a good half-hour. More witnesses were called; each answered with wonderful aptness, ease, and clearness; none were confused or timid; these were not men to be the playthings of others who made tortuous cross-questionings their trade. They, also, were Frenchmen; they knew how to speak. The judge and the Coutances lawyer continued their jokes and their squabblings. And still only the poor wife hung her head.

Then all at once the judge began to mop his brow. The jury, to a man, mopped theirs. The witnesses and lawyers each brought forth their big silk handkerchiefs. All the court was wiping its brow.

"It's the heat," cried the judge. "Huissier, call the concierge; tell her to open the windows."

The concierge reappeared. Flushed this time, and with anger in her eye. She pushed her way through the crowd; she took not the least pains in the world to conceal her opinion of a court as variable as this one.

"Ah mais, this is too much! if the jury doesn't know its mind better than this!"—and in the fury of her wrath she well-nigh upset the crooked little old gentleman and his three-legged stool.

"That's right—that's right. I'm not a fine lady, tip me over. You open and shut me as if I were a bureau drawer; continuez—continuez—"

The concierge had reached the windows now. She was opening and slamming them in the face of the judge, the jury, and messieurs les huissiers, with unabashed violence. The court, except for that one figure in sombre draperies, being men, suffered this violence as only men bear with a woman in a temper. With the letting in of the fresh air, fresh energy in the prosecution manifested itself. The witnesses were being subjected to inquisitorial torture; their answers were still glib, but the faces were studies of the passions held in the leash of self-control. Not twenty minutes had ticked their beat of time when once more the jury, to a man, showed signs of shivering. Half a dozen gravely took out their pocket-handkerchiefs, and as gravely covered their heads. Others knotted the square of linen, thus making a closer head-gear. The judge turned uneasily in his own chair; he gave a furtive glance at the still open windows; as he did so he caught sight of his jury thus patiently suffering. The spectacle went to his heart; these gentlemen were again in a draught? Where was the concierge? Then the huissier whispered in the judge's ear; no one heard, but everyone divined the whisper. It was to remind monsieur le president that the concierge was in a temper; would it not be better for him, the huissier, to close the windows? Without a smile the judge bent his head, assenting. And once more all proceedings were at a standstill; the court was patiently waiting, once more, for the windows to be closed.

Now, in all this, no one, not even the wizened old man who was obviously the humorist of the tribune, had seen anything farcical. To be too hot—to be too cold! this is a serious matter in France. A jury surely has a right to protect itself against cold, against la migraine, and the devils of rheumatism and pleurisy. There is nothing ridiculous in twelve men sitting in judgment on a fellow-man, with their handkerchiefs covering their bare heads. Nor of a judge who gallantly remembers the temper of a concierge. Nor of a whole court sitting in silence, while the windows are opened and closed. There was nothing in all this to tickle the play of French humor. But then, we remembered, France is not the land of humorists, but of wits. Monsieur d'Alencon down yonder, as he rises from his chair to address the judge and jury, will prove to you and me, in the next two hours, how great an orator a Frenchman can be, without trenching an inch on the humorist's ground.

The court-room was so still now that you could have heard the fall of a pin.

At last the great moment had come-the moment and the man. There is nothing in life Frenchmen love better than a good speech—un discours; and to have the same pitched in the dramatic key, with a tragic result hanging on the effects of the pleading, this is the very climax of enjoyment. To a Norman, oratory is not second, but first, nature; all the men of this province have inherited the gift of a facile eloquence. But this Monsieur d'Alencon, the crooked man whispered, in hurried explanation, he was un fameux—even the Paris courts had to send for him when they wanted a great orator.

The famous lawyer understood the alphabet of his calling. He knew the value of effect. He threw himself at once into the orator's pose. His gown took sculptural lines; his arms were waved majestically, as arms that were conscious of having great sleeves to accentuate the lines of gesture.

Then he began to speak. The voice was soft; at first one was chiefly conscious of the music in its cadences. But as it warmed and grew with the ardor of the words, the room was filled with such vibrations as usually come only with the sounding of rich wind-instruments. With such a voice a man could do anything. D'Alencon played with it as a man plays with a power he has both trained and conquered. It was firmly modulated, with no accent of sympathy when he opened his plea for his client. It warmed slightly when he indignantly repelled the charges brought against the latter. It took the cadence of a lover when he pointed to the young wife's figure and asked if it were likely a husband could be guilty of such crimes, year after year, with such a woman as that beside him? It was tenderly explanatory as he went on enlarging on the young wife's perfections, on her character, so well known to them all here in Coutances, on the influence she had given the home-life yonder in Cherbourg. Even the children were not forgotten, as an aid to incidental testimony. Was it even conceivable a father of a young family would lead an innocent lad into error, fraud, and theft? "It is he who knows how to touch the heart!"

"Quel beau moment!" cried the wizened man, in a transport.

"See—the jury weep!"

All the court was in tears, even monsieur le president sniffled, and yet there was no draught. As for the peasant women and the shop keepers, they could not have been more moved if the culprit had been a blood relation. How they enjoyed their tears! What a delight it was to thus thrill and shiver! The wife was sobbing now, with her head on her uncle's shoulder. And the culprit was acting his part, also, to perfection. He had been firmly stoical until now. But at this parade of his wife's virtues he broke down, his head was bowed at last. It was all the tribune could do to keep its applause from breaking forth. It was such a perfect performance! it was as good as the theatre—far better—for this was real—this play-with a man's whole future at stake!

Until midnight the lawyer held all in the town in a trance. He ended at last with a Ciceronian, declamatory outburst. A great buzz of applause welled up from the court. The tribune was in transports; such a magnificent harangue he had not given them in years. It was one of his greatest victories.

"And his victories, madame, they are the victories of all Coutances."

The crooked man almost stood upright in the excitement of his enthusiasm. Great drops of sweat were on his wrinkled old brow. The evening had been a great event in his life, as his twisted frame, all a-tremble with pleasurable elation, exultingly proved. The women's caps were closer together than ever; they were pressing in a solid mass close to the railing of the tribune to gain one last look at the figure of the wife.

"It is she who will not sleep—"

"Poor soul, are her children with her?"

"No—and no women either. There is only the uncle."

"He is a good man, he will comfort her!"

"Faut prier le bon Dieu!"

At the court-room door there was a last glimpse of the stricken figure. She disappeared into the blackness of the night, bent and feeble, leaning with pitiful attempt at dignity on the uncle's arm. With the dawn she would learn her husband's fate. The jury would be out all night.

"You see, madame, it is she who must really suffer in the end." We were also walking into the night, through the bushes of the garden, to the dark of the streets. Our landlady was guiding us, and talking volubly. She was still under the influence of the past hour's excitement. Her voice trembled audibly, and she was walking with brisk strides through the dim streets.

"If Filon is condemned, what would happen to them?"

"Oh, he would pass a few years in prison—not many. The jury is always easy on the rich. But his future is ruined. They—the family—would have to go away. But even then, rumor would follow them. It travels far nowadays—it has a thousand legs, as they say here. Wherever they go they will be known. But Monsieur d'Alencon, what did you think of him, hein? There's a great man—what an orator! One must go as far as Paris—to the theatre; one must hear a great play—and even there, when does an actor make you weep as he did? Henri, he was superb. I tell you, superb! d'une eloquence!" And to her husband, when we reached the inn door, our vivacious landlady was still narrating the chief points of the speech as we crawled wearily up to our beds.

It was early the next morning when we descended into the inn dining-room. The lawyer's eloquence had interfered with our rest. Coffee and a bite of fresh air were best taken together, we agreed. Before the coffee came the news of the culprit's fate. Most of the inn establishment had been sent to court to learn the jury's verdict. Madame confessed to a sleepless night. The thought of that poor wife had haunted her pillow. She had deemed it best—but just to us all, in a word, to despatch Auguste—the one inn waiter, to hear the verdict. Tiens, there he was now, turning the street corner.

"Il est acquitte!" rang through the streets.

"He is acquitted—he is acquitted! Le bon Dieu soit loue! Henri—Ernest—Monsieur Terier, he is acquitted—he is acquitted! I tell you!"

The cry rang through the house. Our landlady was shouting the news out of doors, through windows, to the passers-by, to the very dogs as they ran. But the townspeople needed no summoning. The windows were crowded full of eager heads, all asking the same question at once. A company of peasants coming up from the fields for breakfast stopped to hear the glad tidings. The shop-keepers all the length of the street gathered to join them. Everyone was talking at once. Every shade of opinion was aired in the morning sun. On one subject alone there was a universal agreement.

"What good news for the poor wife!"

"And what a night she must have passed!"

All this sympathy and interest, be it remembered, was for one they barely knew. To be the niece of a Coutances uncle—this was enough, it appears, for the good people of this cathedral city, to insure the flow of their tears and the gift of their prayers.



CHAPTER XXVII.

THE FETE-DIEU—A JUNE CHRISTMAS.

When we stepped forth into the streets, it was to find a flower strewn city. The paving stones were covered with the needles of pines, with fir boughs, with rose leaves, lily stocks, and with the petals of flock and clematis. One's feet sank into the odorous carpet as in the thick wool of an Oriental prayer rug. To tread upon this verdure was to crush out perfume. Yet the fragrance had a solemn flavor. There was a touch of consecration in the very aroma of the fir sap.

Never was there a town so given over to its festival. Everything else—all trade, commerce, occupation, work, or pleasure even, was at a dead standstill. In all the city there was but one thought, one object, one end in view. This was the great day of the Fete-Dieu. To this blessed feast of the Sacrament the townspeople had been looking forward for weeks.

It is their June Christmas. The great day brings families together.



From all the country round the farm wagons had been climbing the hill for hours. The peasants were in holiday dress. Gold crosses and amber beads encircled leathery old necks; the gossamer caps, real Normandy caps at last, crowned heads held erect today, with the pride of those who had come to town clad in their best. Even the younger women were in true peasant garb; there was a touch of a ribbon, brilliant red and blue stockings, and the sparkle of silver shoe-buckles and gold necklaces to prove they had donned their finery in honor of the fete. The men wore their blue and purple blouses over their holiday suits; but almost all had pinned a sprig of bright geranium or honeysuckle to brighten up the shiny cotton of the preservative blouse. Even the children carried bouquets; and thus many of the farm wagons were as gay as the streets.

No, gay is not the word. Neither the city nor the streets were really gay. The city, as a city, was too dead in earnest, too absorbed, too intent, to indulge in gayety. It was the greatest of all the days of the year in Coutances. In the climaxic moments of life, one is solemn, not gay. It was not only the greatest, but the busiest, day of the year for this cathedral town. Here was a whole city to deck; every street, every alleyway must be as beautiful as a church on a feast-day. The city, in truth, must be changed from a bustling, trading, commercial entrepot into an altar. And this altar must be beautiful—as beautiful, as ingeniously picturesque as only the French instinct for beauty could make it.

Think you, with such a task on hand, this city-ful of artists had time for frivolous idling? Since dawn these artists had been scrubbing their doors, washing windows, and sluicing the gutters. One is not a provincial for nothing; one is honest in the provinces; one does not drape finery over a filthy frame. The city was washed first, before it was adorned.

Opposite, across from our inn door-sill, where we lingered a moment before we began our journey through the streets, we could see for ourselves how thorough was this cleansing. A shopkeeper and his wife were each mounted on a step-ladder. One washed the inside and the other the outside of the low shop-windows. They were in the greatest possible haste, for they were late in their preparations. In two hours the procession was to pass. Their neighbors stopped to cry up to them:

"Tendez vous, aujourd'hui?" It is the universal question, heard everywhere.

"Mais oui," croaked out the man, his voice sounding like the croak of a rook, from the height from which he spoke. "Only we are late, you see."

It was his wife who was taking the question to heart. She saw in it just cause for affront.

"Ah, those Espergnons, they're always on time, they are; they had their hangings out a week ago, and now they are as filthy as wash-rags. No wonder they have time to walk the streets!" and the indignant dame gave her window-pane an extra polish.

"Here, Leon, catch hold, I'm ready now!"

The woman was holding out one end of a long, snowy sheet. Leon meekly took his end; both hooked the stuff to some rings ready to secure the hanging; the facade of the little house was soon hidden behind the white fall of the family linen; and presently Leon and his wife began very gravely to pin tiny sprigs of purple clematis across the white surface. This latter decoration was performed with the sure touch of artists. No mediaeval designer of tapestry could have chosen, with more secure selection, the precise points of distance at which to place the bouquets; nor could the tones and tints of the greens and purples, and the velvet of the occasional heartsease, sparsely used, have been more correctly combined. When the task was ended, the commonplace house was a palace wall, hung with the sheen of fine linen, on which bloomed geometric figures beautifully spaced.

All the city was thus draped. One walked through long walls of snow, in which flowers grew. Sometimes the floral decorations expanded from the more common sprig into wreaths and garlands. Here and there the Coutances fancy worked itself out in fleur-de-lis emblems or in armorial bearings. But everywhere an astonishing, instinctive sense of beauty, a knowledge of proportion, and a natural sense for color were obvious. There was not, in all the town, a single offence committed against taste. Is it any wonder, with such an heredity at their fingers' ends, that the provinces feed Paris, and that Paris sets the fashions in beauty for the rest of the world?

Come with us, and look upon this open-air chapel. It stands in the open street, in front of an old house of imposing aspect. The two commonplace-looking women who are putting—the finishing—touches to this beautiful creation tell us it is the reposoir of Madame la Baronne. They have been working on it since the day before. In the night the miracle was finished—nearly—they were so weary they had gone to bed at dawn. They do not tell you it is a miracle. They think it fine, oh, yes—"c'est beau—Madame la Baronne always has the most beautiful of all the reposoirs," but then they have decked these altars since they were born; their grandmothers built them before ever they saw the light. For always in Coutances "on la fete beaucoup;" this feast of the Sacrament has been a great day in Coutances for centuries past. But although they are so used to it, these natural architects love the day. "It's so fine to see—si beau a voir all the reposoirs, and the children and the fine ladies walking—through the streets, and then, all kneeling—when Monseigneur l'Archeveque prays. Ah yes, it is a fine sight." They nod, and smile, and then they turn to light a taper, and to consult about the placing of a certain vase from out of which an Easter lily towers.

At the foot of these miniature altars trees had been planted. Gardens had also been laid out; the parterres were as gravely watered as if they were to remain in the middle of a bustling high street in perpetuity. Steps lead up to the altar. These were covered with rugs and carpets; for the feet of the bishop must tread only on velvet and flowers. Candelabra, vases, banners, crosses, crucifixes, flowers, and tall thin tapers—all the altars were crowded with such adornments. Human vanity and the love of surpassing one's neighbors, these also figured conspicuously among the things the fitfully shining sun looks down upon. But what a charm there is in such a contest! Surely the desire to beautify the spot on which the Blessed Sacrament rests this is only another way of professing one's adoration.

As we passed through the streets a multitude of pictures crowded upon the eyes. In an archway groups of young first communicants were forming; they were on their way to the cathedral. Their white veils against the gloom of the recessed archways were like sunlit clouds caught in an abyss. Priests in gorgeous vestments were walking quickly through the streets. All the peasants were going also toward the cathedral. A group stopped, as did we, to turn into a side-street. For there was a picture we should not see later on. Between some lovely old turrets, down from convent walls a group of nuns fluttered tremulously; they were putting the last touches to the reposoir of their own Sacre Coeur. Some were carrying huge gilt crosses, staggering as they walked; others were on tiptoe filling the tall vases; others were on their knees, patting into perfect smoothness the turf laid about the altar steps. There was an old cure among them and a young carpenter whom the cure was directing. Everyone of the nuns had her black skirts tucked up; their stout shoes must be free to fly over the ground with the swiftness of hounds. How pretty the faces were, under the great caps, in that moment of unwonted excitement! The cheeks, even of the older nuns, were pink; it was a pink that made their habitual pallor have a dazzling beauty. The eyes were lighted into a fresh flame of life, and the lips were temptingly crimson; they were only women, after all, these nuns, and once a year at least this feast of the Sacrament brings all their feminine activities into play.

Still we moved on, for within the cathedral the procession had not yet formed. There was still time to make a tour of the town.

To plunge into the side-streets away from the wide cathedral parvis, was to be confronted with a strange calm. These narrow thoroughfares had the stillness which broods over all ancient cities' by-ways. Here was no festival bustle; all was grave and sad. The only dwellers left in the antique fifteenth century houses were those who must remain at home till a still smaller house holds them. We passed several aged Coutancais couples. By twos they were seated at the low windows; they had been dressed and then left; they were sitting here, in the pathetic patience of old age; they were hoping something of the fete might come their way. Two women, in one of the low interiors, were more philosophic than their neighbors; if their stiffened knees would not carry them to the fete, at least their gnarled old hands could hold a pack of cards. They were seated close to the open casement, facing each other across a small round table; along the window-sill there were rows of flower-pots; a pewter tankard was set between them; and out of the shadowy interior came the topaz gleam of the Normandy brasses, the huge bed, with its snowy draperies, the great chests, and the flowery chintz-frill defining the width of the yawning fireplace. The two old faces, with the strong features, deep wrinkles, sunken mouths, and bald heads tied up in dazzling white coifs, were in full relief against the dim background. They were as motionless as statues; neither looked up as our footfall struck along the cobbles; it was an exciting moment in the game.



Below these old houses stretched the public gardens. Here also there was a great stillness. For us alone the rose gardens bloomed, the tropical trees were shivering, and the palms were making a night of shade for wide acres of turf. Rarely does a city boast of such a garden. It was no surprise to learn, later, that these lovely paths and noble terraces had been the slow achievement of a lover of landscape gardening, one who, dying, had given this, his master-piece, to his native town.

There is no better place from which to view the beautiful city. From the horizontal lines of the broad terraces flows the great sweep of the hillside; it takes a swift precipitous plunge, and rests below in wide stretches of meadow. The garden itself seemed, by virtue of this encompassing circle of green, to be only a more exquisitely cultivated portion of the lovely outlying hills and wooded depths. The cows, grazing below in the valleys, were whisking their tails, and from the farm-yards came the crow of the chanticleer.

One turned to look upward—to follow heavenward the soaring glory of the cathedral towers. From the plane of the streets their geometric perfection had made their lines seem cold. Through this aerial perspective the eye followed, enraptured, the perfect Gothic of the spires and the lower central tower. The great nave roof and the choir lifted themselves above the turrets and the tiled house-tops of the city, as gray mountains of stone rise above the huts of pygmies. Coutances does well to be proud of its cathedral.

The sound of a footstep, crunching the gravel of the garden-walk, caused us to turn. It was to find, face to face, the hero of the night before; the celebrated Coutances lawyer was also taking his constitutional. But not alone, some friends were with him, come up to town doubtless for the fete or the trial. He was showing them his city. He stretched a hand forth, with the same magisterial gesture of the night before, to point out the glory of the prospect lying below the terrace. He faced the cathedral towers, explaining the points of their perfection. And then, for he was a Frenchman, he perceived the presence of two ladies. In an instant his hat was raised, and as quickly his eyes told us he had seen us before, in the courtroom. The bow was the lower because of this recognition, and the salute was accompanied by a grave smile.

Manners in the provinces are still good, you perceive—if only you are far enough away from Paris.

Someone else also bestowed on us the courtesy of a passing greeting. It was a cure who was saying his Ave, as he paced slowly, in the sun, up and down the yew path. He was old; one leg was already tired of life—it must be dragged painfully along, when one walked in the sun. The cure himself was not in the least tired of life. His smile was as warm as the sun as he lifted his calotte.

"Surely, mesdames, you will not miss the fete? It must be forming now."

He had taken an old man's, and a priest's, privilege. We were all three looking down into the valley, which lay below, a pool of freshness. He had spoken, first of the beauty of the prospect, and then of the great day. To be young and still strong, to be able to follow the procession from street to street, and yet to be lingering here among the roses!—this passed the simple cure's comprehension. The reproach in his mild old eyes was quickly changed to approval, however; for upon the announcement that the procession was already in motion we started, bidding him a hurried adieu.

The huge cathedral portals yawned at the top of the hill; they were like a gaping chasm. The great place of the cathedral square was half filled; a part of the procession had passed already beyond the gloom of the vast aisles into the frank openness of day. Winding in and out of the white-hung streets a long line of figures was marching; part of the line had reached the first reposoir and gradually the swaying of the heads was slackening, as, by twos and twos, the figures stopped.

Still, from between the cathedral doors an unending multitude of people kept pouring forth upon the cathedral square. Now it was an interminable line of young girls, first communicants, in their white veils and gowns; against the grays and browns of the cathedral facade this mass of snow was of startling purity—a great white rose of light. Closely following the dazzling line marched a grave company of nuns; with their black robes sweeping the flower-strewn streets, the pallor of their faces, and the white wings of their huge coifs, they might have been so many marble statues moving with slow, automatic step, repeating in life the statues in stone above their heads, incarnations of meek renunciation. With the free and joyous step of a vigorous youth not yet tamed to complete self-obliteration, next there stepped forth into the sun a group of seminarists. In the lace and scarlet of their bright robes they were like unto so many young kings. High in the summer air they swung their golden censers; from huge baskets, heaped with flowers, they scattered flowers as they swayed, in the grace of their youth, from side to side, with priestly rhythmic motion.

In the days of Greece, under the Attic tent of sky, it was Jove that was thus worshipped; here in Coutances, under the paler, less ardent blue of France, it was the Christian God these youths were honoring. So men have continued to scatter flowers; to swing incense; to bend the knee; surely in all ages the long homage of men, like the procession here before us, has been but this—the longing to worship the Invisible, and to make the act one with beauty.

Is it Greek, is it Christian, this festival? If it be Catholic, it is also pagan. It is as composite a union of religious ceremonials as man is himself an aggregate of lost types, for there is a subtle law of repetition which governs both men and ceremonials.

How pagan was the color! how Greek the sense of beauty that lies in contrasts! how Jewish the splendor of the priestly vestments as the gold and silver tissues gleamed in the sun! How mediaeval this survival of an old miracle play! See this group of children, half-frightened, half-proud, wandering from side to side as children unused to walking soberly ever march. They were following the leadership of a huge Suisse. This latter was magnificently apparelled. He carried a great mace, and this he swung high in the air. The children, little John the Baptist, Christ, Mary the Mother, and Magdalen, were magnetized by his mighty skill. They were looking at the golden stick; they were thinking only of how high he, this splendid giant who terrified them so, would throw it the next time, and if he would always surely catch it. The small Virgin, in her long brown robes, tripped as she walked. The cherubic John the Baptist, with only his sheepskin and his cross, shivered as he stumbled after her.

"At least they might have covered his arms, le pauvre petit," one stout peasant among the bystanders was Christian enough to mutter, "Poor little John!" Even in summer the sun is none too hot on this hill-top; and a sheepskin is a garment one must be used to, it appears. Christ, himself, was no better off. He was wearing his crown of thorns, but he had only his night-dress, bound with a girdle, to keep his naked little body warm. An angel, in gossamer wings and a huge rose-wreath, being of the other sex, had her innate woman's love of finery to make her oblivious to the light sting of the wind, as it passed through her draperies. As this group in the procession moved slowly along, the city took on a curiously antique aspect. In every lattice window a head was framed. The lines of the townspeople pressed closer and closer; they made a serried mass of blouses and caps, of shiny coats and bared heads. The very houses seemed to recognize that a part of their own youth was passing them by; these were the figures they had looked out upon, time after time, in the old fourteenth and fifteenth century days, when the great miracle plays drew the country around, for miles and miles, to this Coutances square.

Across the square, in the long gray distance of the streets, the archbishop's canopy was motionless. A sweet groaning murmur rippled from lip to lip.

Then a swift and mighty rustling filled the air, for the bones of thousands of knees were striking the stones of the street;—even heretic knees were bent when the Host was lifted. It was the moment of silent prayer. It was also, perhaps, the most beautiful, it was assuredly the most consummately picturesque moment of the day. The bent heads; the long vistas of kneeling figures; the lovely contrasts of the flowing draperies; the trailing splendor of the priests' robes dying into the black note made by the nuns' sombre skirts; the gossamer brilliance of the hundreds of white veils, through which the young rapture of religious awe on lips and brow made even commonplace features beautiful; the choristers' scarlet petticoats; the culminating note of splendor, the Archbishop, throned like some antique scriptural king under the feathers and velvets of his crimson canopy; then the long lines of the townspeople with the groups of peasants beside them, whose well-sunned skins made even their complexion seem pale by the side of cheeks that brought the burn of noon-suns in the valleys to mind; and behind this wall of kneeling figures, those other walls, the long white-hung house facades, with their pendent sprigs and wreaths and garlands above which hung the frieze of human heads beneath the carved cornices; surely this was indeed the culminating moment, both in point of beauty and in impressiveness, of the great day's festival.

Thus was reposoir after reposoir visited. Again and again the multitude was on its knees. Again and again the Host was lifted. And still we followed. Sometimes all the line was in full light, a long perspective of color and of prismatic radiance. And then the line would be lost; some part of it was still in a side-street; and the rest were singing along the edges of the city's ramparts, under the great branches of the trees. Here, in the gray of the narrow streets, the choristers' gowns were startling in their richness. Yonder, in full sunlight, the brightness on the maidens' robes made the shadows in their white skirts as blue as light caught in a grotto's depth.

Still they sang. In the dim streets or under the trees, where the gay banners were still fluttering, and the white veils, like airy sails, were bulging in the wind, the hymn went on. It was thin and pathetically weak in the mouths of the babes that walked. It was clear, as fresh and pure as a brooklet's ripple, from the mouths of the young communicants. It was of firm contralto strength from the throats of the grave nuns. The notes gained and gained in richness; the hymn was almost a chant with the priests; and in the mouths of the people it was as a ringing chorus. Together with the swelling music swung the incense into high air; and to the Host the rose-leaves were flung.

Still we followed. Still the long line moved on from altar to altar.

Then, when the noon was long past, wearily we climbed upward to our inn.

In the high streets there was much going to and fro. The shop-keepers already were taking down their linen. Pouffe! Pouffe! there was much blowing through mouths and a great standing on tiptoes to reach the tall tapers on the reposoirs.

Coutances was pious. Coutances was proud of its fete. But Coutances was also a thrifty city. Once the cortege had passed, it was high time to snuff out the tapers. Who could stand by and see good candles blowing uselessly in the wind, and one's money going along with the dripping?



CHAPTER XXVIII.

BY LAND TO MONT ST. MICHEL.

Two hours later the usual collection of forces was assembled in our inn courtyard; for a question of importance was to be decided. Madame was there—chief of the council; her husband was also present, because he might be useful in case any dispute as to madame's word came up; Auguste, the one inn waiter, was an important figure of the group; for he, of them all, was the really travelled one; he had seen the world—he was to be counted on as to distances and routes; and above, from the upper windows, the two ladies of the bed-chamber looked down, to act as chorus to the brisk dialogue going on between madame and the owner of a certain victoria for which we were in treaty.

"Ces dames," madame said, with a shrug which was meant for the coachman, and a smile which was her gift to us—"these ladies wish to go to Mont St. Michel, to drive there. Have you your little victoria and Poulette?"

Now, by the shrug madame had conveyed to the man and the assembled household generally, her own great scorn of us, and of our plans. What a whim this, of driving, forsooth, to the Mont! Dieu sait—French people were not given to any such follies; they were serious-minded, always, in matters of travel. To travel at all, was no light thing; one made one's will and took an honest and tearful farewell of one's family, when one went on a journey. But these English, these Americans, there's no foretelling to what point their folly will make them tempt fate! However, madame was one who knew on which side her bread was buttered, if ever a woman did, and the continuance of these mad follies helped to butter her own French roll. And so her shrug and wink conveyed to the tall Norman just how much these particular lunatics before them would be willing to pay for this their whim.

"Have you Poulette?"

"Yes—yes—Poulette is at home. I have made her repose herself all day—hearing these ladies had spoken of driving to the Mont—"

Chorus from the upper window-sills. "The poor beast! it is joliment longue—la distance"

"As these ladies observe," continued the owner of the doomed animal, not raising his head, but quickly acting on the hint, "it is long, the distance—one does not go for nothing." And though the man kept his mouth from betraying him, his keen eyes glittered with avarice.

"And then—ces dames must descend at Genets, to cross the greve, tu sais" interpolated the waiter, excitedly changing his napkin, his wand of office, from one armpit to the other. The thought of travel stirred his blood. It was fine—to start off thus, without having to make the necessary arrangements for a winter's service or a summer's season. And to drive, that would be new—yes that would be a change indeed from the stuffy third-class compartments. For Auguste, you see, approved of us and of the foolishness of our plans. His sympathy being gratis, was allied to the protective instinct—he would see the cheating was at least as honestly done as was compatible with French methods.

"Another carriage—and why?" we meekly queried, warned by this friendly hint. A chorus now arose from the entire audience.

"Mais, madame!—it is as much as five or six kilos over the sands to the Mont from Genets!" was cried out in a tone of universal reproach.

"Through rivers, madame, through rivers as high as that!" and Auguste, striking in after the chorus, measured himself off at the breast.

"Yes—the water comes to there, on the horse," added the driver, sweeping an imaginary horse's head, with a fine gesture, in the air.

"Dame, that must be fine to see," cried down Leontine and Marie, gasping with little sighs of envy.

"And so it is!" cried back Auguste, nodding upward with dramatic gesture. "One can get as wet as a duck splashing through those rivers. Dieu! que c'est beau!" And he clasped his hands as his eye, rolling heavenward, caught the blue and the velvet of the four feminine orbs on its upward way. Seeing which ecstasy, the courtyard visibly relented; Auguste's rapture and his envy had worked the common human miracle of turning contempt for a folly into belief in it.

This quick firing of French people to a pleasurable elation in others' adventure is, I think we must all agree, one of the great charms of this excitable race: anything will serve as a pretext for setting this sympathetic vibration in motion. What they all crave as a nation is a daily, hourly diet of the unusual, the unforeseen.

It is this passion for incident which makes a Frenchman's life not unlike his soups, since in the case of both, how often does he make something out of nothing!

An hour later we were picking our way through the city's streets. Sweeter than the crushed flowers was the free air of the valley.

There is no way of looking back so agreeable, on the whole, I think, as to look back upon a city.

From the near distance of the first turn in the road, Coutances and its cathedral were at their very best. The hill on which both stood was only one of the many hills we now saw growing out of the green valley; among the dozen hill tops, this one we were leaving was only more crowded than the others, and more gloriously crowned. In giant height uprose, above the city's roofs and the lesser towers, the spires and the lovely lantern tower. This vast mass of stone, pricked into lacy apertures and with its mighty lines of grace-for how many a long century has it been in the eye of the valley? Tancrede de Hauteville saw it before William was born—before he, the Conqueror, rode in his turn through the green lanes to consecrate the church to One greater than he. From Tancrede to Boileau, what a succession of bishops, each in their turn, have had their eye on the great cathedral. There was a sort of viking bishop, one Geoffrey de Montbray, of the Conqueror's day, who, having a greater taste for men's blood than their purification, found Coutances a dull city; there was more war of the kind his stout arm rejoiced in across the Channel; and so he travelled a bit to do a little pleasant killing. From Geoffrey to Boileau and the latter's lacy ruffles—how many a rude Norman epic was acted out, here in the valley, beneath the soaring spires, before the Homeric combat was turned into the verse of a chanso de geste, a Roman de Rou, or a Latrin!

As Poulette rolled the wheels along, instead of visored bishop, or mail rustling on strong breasts, there was the open face of the landscape, and the tremble of the grasses beneath the touch of the wind. Coming down the hill was a very peaceable company; doubtless, between wars in those hot fighting centuries, just such travellers went up and down the hill-road as unconcernedly as did these peasants. There was quite a variety among the present groups: some were strictly family parties; these talked little, giving their mind to stiff walking—the smell of the soup in the farmyard kitchen was in their nostrils. The women's ages were more legibly read in their caps than in their faces—the older the women the prettier the caps. Among these groups, queens of the party, were some first communicants. Their white kid slippers were brown now, from the long walk in the city streets and the dust of the highway. They held their veils with a maiden's awkwardness; with bent heads they leaned gravely on their fathers' arms. In this, their first supreme experience of self-consciousness, they had the self-absorption of young brides. The trail of their muslin gowns and the light cloud of their veils made dazzling spots of brightness in the delicate frame of the June landscape. Each of these white-clad figures was followed by a long train of friends and relatives. "C'est joli a voir—it's a pretty sight, hein, my ladies? these young girls are beautiful like that!" Our coachman took his eye off Poulette to turn in his seat, looking backward at the groups as they followed in our wake. "Ah—it was hard to leave my own—I had two like that, myself, in the procession to-day." And the full Norman eye filled with a sudden moisture. This was a more attractive glitter than the avarice of a moment before.

"You see, mesdames," he went on, as if wishing to excuse the moistened eyelids, "you see—it's a great day in the family when our children take their first communion. It is the day the child dies and the man, the woman is born. When our children kneel at our feet, before the priest, before their comrades, and beg us to forgive them all the sin they have done since they were born—it is too much—the heart grows so big it is near to bursting. Ah—it is then we all weep!"

Charm settled herself in her seat with a satisfied smile. "We are in luck—an emotional coachman who weeps and talks! The five hours will fly," she murmured. Then aloud, to Jacques—as we learned the now sniffling father was called—she presently asked, with the oil of encouragement in her tone:

"You say your two were in the procession?"

"Two! there were five in all. Even the babies walked. Did you see Jesu and the Magdalen? They were mine—C'etait a moi, ca! For the priests will have them—as many as they can get."

"They are right. If the children didn't walk, how could the procession be so fine?" "Fine—beau—ca?" And there was a deep scorn in Jacques's voice. "You should have seen the fete twenty years ago! Now, its glory is as nothing. It's the priests themselves who are to blame. They've spoiled it all. Years ago, the whole town walked. Dieu—what a spectacle! The mayor, the mairie, all the firemen, municipal officers—yes, even the soldiers walked. And as for the singing—dame, all the young men were choristers then—we were trained for months. When we walked and sang in the open streets the singing filled all the town. It was like a great thunder."

"And the change—why has it come?" persisted Charm.

"Oh," Jacques replied, caressing Poulette's haunches with his whip-lash. "It's the priests; they were too grasping. They are avaricious, that's what they are. They want everything for themselves. And a fete—ca coule, vous savez. Besides, the spirit of the times has changed. People aren't so devout now. Libres penseurs—that's the fashion now. Hola, Poulette!"

Poulette responded. She dashed into the valley, below us now, as if this rolling along of a heavy victoria, a lot of luggage, and three travellers, was an agreeable episode in her career of toil. But on the mind of her owner, the spectre of the free-thinkers was still hovering like an evil spirit. During the next hour he gave us a long and exhaustive exposition of the changes wrought by ces messieurs qui nient le bon Dieu. Among their crimes was to be numbered that of having disintegrated the morale of the peasantry. They—the peasants—no longer believed in miracles, and as for sorcery, for the good old superstitions, bah: they were looked upon as old wives' tales. Even here, in the heart of this rural country, you would have to walk far before you could find vne vraie sorciere, one who, by looking into a glass of water, for instance, could read the future as in a book, or one who, if your cow dried up, could name the evil spirit, the demon, who, among the peasants was exercising the curse. All this science was lost. A peasant would now be ashamed to bring his cow to a fortune-teller; all the village would laugh. Even the shepherds had lost the power of communing with the planets at night; and all the valley read the Petit Journal instead of consulting the vieilles meres. One must go as far as Brittany to see a real peasant with the superstitions of a peasant. As for Normandy, it went in step with the rest of the world, que diable! And again the whip lash descended. Poulette must suffer for Jacques's disgust.

If the Norman peasant was a modern, his country, at least, had retained the charm of its ancient beauty. The road was as Norman a highway as one could wish to see. It had the most capricious of natures, turning and perversely twisting among the farms and uplands. The land was ribboned with growing grain, and the June grass was being cut. The farms stood close upon the roadway, as if longing for its companionship; and then, having done so much toward the establishment of neighborly gossip, promptly turned their backs upon it—true Normans, all of them, with this their appearance of frankness and their real reserves of secrecy.

For a last time we caught a distant glimpse of the great cathedral. As we looked back across the bright-roofed villages, we saw the stately pile, gray, glorious, superb, dominating the scene, the hills, river, and fields, as in the old days the great city walls and the cathedral towers had dominated all the human life that played helplessly about them.

We were out once more among the green and yellow broadlands; between our carriage-wheels and the horizon there was now spread a wide amphitheatre of wooded hills. The windings of the poplar-lined road serpentined in sinuous grace in and out of forests, meadows, hills, and islands. The afternoon lights were deepening; the shadows on the grain- fields cast by the oaks and beeches were a part of our company. The blue bloom of the distant hills was strengthening into purple. As the light was intensifying in color, the human life in the fields was relaxing its tension; the bent backs were straightening, the ploughmen were whipping their steeds toward the open road; for although it was Sunday, and a fete day, the farmer must work. The women were gathering up some of the grasses, tying them into bundles, and tossing them on their heads as they moved slowly across the blackening earth.

One field near us was peopled with a group of girls resting on their scythes. One or two among them were mopping their faces with their coarse blue aprons; the faces of all were aflame with the red of rude health. As we came upon them, some had flung away their scythes, the tallest among the group grasping a near companion, playfully, in the pose of a wrestler. In an instant the company was turned into a group of wrestlers. There was a great shout of laughter, as maiden after maiden was tumbled over on her back or face amid the grasses. Sabots, short skirts, kerchiefs, scarlet arms rose and fell to earth in the mad whirl of their gayety.

"Stop, Jacques, I must see the end," cried Charm. "Will they fight or dance, I wonder!"

"Oh, it is a pure Georgic—they'll dance." They were dancing already. The line, with dishevelled hair, aprons and kerchiefs askew, had formed into the square of a quadrille. A rude measure was tripped; a snatch of song, shouted amid the laughter, gave rhythm to the measure, and then the whole band, singing in chorus, linked arms and swept with a furious dash beneath the thatched roof of a low farm-house.

"As you see, my ladies, sometimes the fields are gay—even now," was Jacques's comment. "But they should be getting their grasses in—for it'll rain before night. It's time to sing when the scythe sleeps—as we say here."

To our eyes there were no signs of rain. The clouds rolling in the blue sea above us were only gloriously lighted. But the birds and the peasants knew their sky; there was a great fluttering of wings among the branches; and the peasants, as we rattled in and out of the hamlets, were pulling the reposoirs to pieces in the haste that predicts bad weather. They had been "celebrating" all along the road; and besides the piety, the Norman thrift was abroad upon the highway. Women were tearing sheets off the house facades; the lads and girls were bearing crosses, china vases, and highly-colored Virgins from the wooden altars into the low houses.

Presently the great drops fell; they beat upon the smooth roadway like so many hard bits of coin. In less than two ticks of the clock, the world was a wet world; there were masses of soft gray clouds that were like so much cotton, dripping with moisture. The earth was as drenched as if, half an hour ago, it had not been a jewel gleaming in the sun; and the very farm-houses had quickly assumed an air of having been caught out in the rain without an umbrella. The farm gardens alone seemed to rejoice in the suddenness of the shower. Flowers have a way of shining, when it rains, that proves flower-petals have a woman's love of solitaires.

There were other dashes of color that made the gray landscape astonishingly brilliant. Some of the peasants on their way to the village fetes were also caught in the passing shower. They had opened their wide blue and purple umbrellas; these latter made huge disks of color reflected in the glass of the wet macadam. The women had turned their black alpaca and cashmere skirts inside out, tucking the edges about their stout hips; beneath the wide vivid circles of the dripping umbrellas these brilliantly colored under-petticoats showed a liberal revelation of scarlet hose and thick ankles sunk in the freshly polished black sabots. The men's cobalt-blue blouses and their peaked felt hats spotted the landscape with contrasting notes and outlines.

After the last peaked hat had disappeared into the farm enclosures, we and the wet landscape had the rain to ourselves. The trees now were spectral shapes; they could not be relied on as companions. Even the gardens and grain lands were mysteriously veiled, so close rolled the mists to our carriage-wheels. Beyond, at the farthest end of the road, these mists had formed themselves into a solid, compact mass.

The clouds out yonder, far ahead, seemed to be enwrapping some part of earth that had lanced itself into the sky.

After a little the eyes unconsciously watched those distant woolly masses. There was a something beyond, faint, vague, impalpable as yet, which the rolling mists begirt as sometimes they cincture an Alpine needle. Even as the thought came, a sudden lifting—of the gray mass showed the point of a high uplifted pinnacle. The point thereof pricked the sky. Then the wind, like a strong hand, swept the clouds into a mantle, and we saw the strange spectacle no more.

For several miles our way led us through a dim, phantasmal landscape. All the outlines were blurred. Even the rain was a veil; it fell between us and the nearest hedgerows as if it had been a curtain. The jingling of Poulette's bell-collar and the gurgle of the water rushing in the gulleys—these were the only sounds that fell upon the ear.

Still the clouds about that distant mass curled and rolled; they were now breaking, now re-forming—as if some strange and wondrous thing were hanging there—between heaven and earth.

It was still far out, the mass; even the lower mists were not resting on any plain of earth. They also were moved by something that moved beneath them, as a thick cloak takes the shape and motion of the body it covers. Still we advanced, and still the great mountain of cloud grew and grew. And then there came a little lisping, hissing sound. It was the kiss of the sea as it met some unseen shore. And on our cheeks the sea-wind blew, soft and salty to the lips.

The mass was taking shape and outline. The mists rolled along some wide, broad base that rested beneath the sea, and skyward they clasped the apexal point of a pyramid.

This pyramid in the sky was Mont St. Michel.

With its feet in the sea, and its head vanishing into infinity—here, at last, was this rock of rocks, caught, phantom-like, up into the very heavens above.

It loomed out of the spectral landscape—itself the superlative spectre; it took its flight upward as might some genius of beauty enrobed in a shroud of mystery.

Such has it been to generations of men. Beautiful, remote, mysterious! With its altars and its shrines, its miracle of stone carved by man on those other stones hewn by the wind and the tempest, Mont St. Michel has ever been far more a part of heaven than a thing of earth.

Then, for us, the clouds suddenly lifted, as, for modern generations of men, the mists of superstition have also rolled themselves away.



MONT ST. MICHEL:

AN INN ON A ROCK.



CHAPTER XXIX.

BY SEA TO THE POULARD INN.

We were being tossed in the air like so many balls. A Normandy char a banc was proving itself no respecter of nice distinctions in conditions in life. It phlipped, dashed, and rolled us about with no more concern than if it were taking us to market to be sold by the pound. For we were on the greve. The promised rivers were before us.

So was the Mont, spectral no longer, but nearing with every plunge forward of our sturdy young Percheron. Locomotion through any new or untried medium is certain to bring with the experiment a dash of elation. Now, driving through water appears to be no longer the fashion in our fastidious century; someone might get a wetting, possibly, has been the conclusion of the prudent. And thus a very innocent and exciting bit of fun has been gradually relegated among the lost arts of pleasure.

We were taking water as we had never taken it before, and liking the method. We were as wet as ducks, but what cared we? We were being deluged with spray; the spume of the sea was spurting in our faces with the force of a strong wet breeze, and still we liked it. Besides, driving thus into the white foam of the waters, over the sand ridges, across the downs, into the wide plains of wet mud, this was the old classical way of going up to the Mont. Surely, what had been found good enough as a pathway for kings and saints and pilgrims should be good enough for two lovers of old-time methods. The dike yonder was built for those who believe in the devil of haste, and for those who also serve him faithfully.

Someone else besides ourselves was enjoying our drive through the waves. Our gay young Normandy driver seemed to find an exquisite relish in the spectacle of our wet faces and unstable figures. He could not keep his eyes off us; they fairly glistened with the dew of his enjoyment. Two ladies pitched and rolled about, exactly as if they were peasants, and laughing as if they were children—this was a spectacle and a keen appreciation of a joke that brought joy to a rustic blouse.

"Ah—ah! mesdames!" he cried, exultingly, between the gasps of his own laughter, as he tossed his own fine head in the air, sitting on his rude bench, covered with sheepskin, as if it had been an armchair. "Ah, ah! mesdames, you didn't expect this, hein? You hoped for a landau, and feathers and cushions, perhaps? But soft feathers and springs are not for the greve."

"Is it dangerous? are there deep holes?"

"Oh, the holes, they are as nothing. It is the quicksands we fear. But it is only a little danger, and danger makes the charm of travel, is it not so, my ladies? Adventure, that is what one travels for! Hui! Fend l'Air!"

It had occurred to us before that we had been uncommonly lucky in our coachmen, as well as in the names of the horses, that had brightened our journey. In spite of Juliet, whose disdain of the virtue or the charm that lies in a name is no more worthy of respect than is any lover's opinion when in the full-orbed foolishness of his lunacy, I believe names to be a very effective adjunct to life's scenic setting. Most of the horses we had had along these Normandy high-roads, had answered to names that had helped to italicize the features of the country. Could Poulette, the sturdy little mare, with whom only an hour ago we had parted forever, have been given a better sobriquet by which to have identified for us the fat landscape? And now here was Fend l'Air proving good his talent for cleaving through space, whatever of land or sea lay in his path.

"And he merits his name, my lady," his driver announced with grave pride, as he looked at the huge haunches with a loving eye. "He can go, oh, but as the wind! It is he who makes of the crossing but as if it were nothing!"

The crossing! That was the key-note of the way the coast spoke of the Mont. The rock out yonder was a country apart, a bit of land or stone the shore claimed not, had no part in, felt to be as remote as if it were a foreign province. At Genets the village spoke of the Mont as one talks of a distant land. Even the journey over the sands was looked upon with a certain seriousness. A starting forth was the signal for the village to assemble about the char-a-banc's wheels. Quite a large company for a small village to muster was grouped about our own vehicle, to look on gravely as we mounted to the rude seat within. The villagers gave us their "bonjours" with as much fervor as if we were starting forth on a sea voyage.

"You will have a good crossing!" cackled one of the old men, nodding toward the peak in the sky.

"The sands may be wet, but they are firm already!" added a huge peasant—the fattest man in all the canton, whisperingly confided the landlady, as one proud of possessing a village curiosity.

"Hui, Fend l'Air! attention, toi!" Fend l'Air tossed his fine mane, and struck out with a will over the cobbles. But his driver was only posing for the assembled village. He was in no real haste; there was a fresh voice singing yonder in his mother's tavern; the sentimentalist in him was on edge to hear the end of the song.

"Do you hear that, mesdames? There's no such singing as that out of Paris. One must go to a cafe—"

"Allons, toi!" shrieked his mother's voice, as her face darkened. "Do you think these ladies want to spend the night on the greve? Depeches-toi, vaurien!" And she gave the wheels a shove with her strong hand, whereat all the village laughed. But the good-for-nothing son made no haste as the song went on—

"Le bon vin me fait dormir, L'amour me reveil—"

He continued to cock his head on one side and to let his eyes dream a bit.

Within, a group of peasants was gathered about the inn table. There were some young girls seated among the blouses; one of them, for the hour that we had sat waiting for Fend l'Air to be captured and harnessed, had been singing songs of questionable taste in a voice of such contralto sweetness as to have touched the heart of a bishop. "Some young girls from the factories at Avranches, mesdames, who come here Sundays to get a bit of fresh air; Dieu soit si elles en ont besoin, pauvres enfants!" was the landlady's charitable explanation. It appeared to us that the young ladies from Avranches were more in need of a moral than a climatic change. But then, we also charitably reflected, it makes all the difference in the world, in these nice questions of taste and morality, whether one has had as an inheritance a past of Francis I. and a Rabelais, or of Calvin and a Puritan conscience.

The geese on the green downs, just below the village, had clearly never even heard of Calvin; they were luxuriating in a series of plunges into the deep pools in a way to prove complete ignorance of nice sabbatarian laws.

With our first toss upon the downs, a world of new and fresh experiences began. Genets was quite right; the Mont over yonder was another country; even at the very beginning of the journey we learned so much. This breeze blowing in from the sea, that had swept the ramparts of the famous rock, was a double extract of the sea essence; it had all the salt of the sea and the aroma of firs and wild flowers; its lips had not kissed a garden in high air without the perfume lingering, if only to betray them. Even this strip of meadow marsh had a character peculiar to itself; half of it belonged to earth and half to the sea. You might have thought it an inland pasture, with its herds of cattle, its flocks of sheep, and its colonies of geese—patrolled by ragged urchins. But behold, somewhere out yonder the pasture was lost in high sea-waves; ships with bulging sails replaced the curve of the cattle's sides, and instead of bending necks of sheep, there were seagulls swooping down upon the foamy waves.

As the incarnation of this dual life of sea and land, the rock stands. It also is both of the sea and the land. Its feet are of the waters—rocks and stones the sea-waves have used as playthings these millions of years. But earth regains possession as the rocks pile themselves into a mountain. Even from this distance, one can see the moving arms of great trees, the masses of yellow flower-tips that dye the sides of the stony hill, and the strips of green grass here and there. So much has nature done for this wonderful pyramid in the sea. Then man came and fashioned it to his liking. He piled the stones at its base into titanic walls; he carved about its sides the rounded breasts of bastions; he piled higher and higher up the dizzy heights a medley of palaces, convents, abbeys, cloisters, to lay at the very top the fitting crown of all, a jewelled Norman-Gothic cathedral.

Earth and man have thrown their gauntlet down to the sea—this rock is theirs, they cry to the waves and the might of oceans. And the sea laughs—as strong men laugh when boys are angry or insistent. She has let them build and toil, and pray and fight; it is all one to her what is done on the rock—whether men carve its stones into lace, or rot and die in its dungeons; it is all the same to her whether each spring the daffodils creep up within the crevices and the irises nod to them from the gardens.

It is all one to her. For twice a day she recaptures the Mont. She encircles it with the strong arm of her tides; with the might of her waters she makes it once more a thing of the sea.

The tide was rising now.

The fringe of the downs had dabbled in the shoals till they had become one. We had left behind the last of the shepherd lads, come out to the edge of the land to search for a wandering kid. We were all at once plunging into high water. Our road was sunk out of sight; we were driving through waves as high as our cart-wheels. Fend l'Air was shivering; he was as a-tremble as a woman. The height of the rivers was not to his liking.

"Sacre faineant!" yelled his owner, treating the tremor to a mighty crack of the whip.

"Is he afraid?"

"Yes—when the water is as high as that, he is always afraid. Ah, there he is—diantre, but he took his time!" he growled, but the growl was set in the key of relief. He was pointing toward a figure that was leaping toward us through the water. "It is the guide!" he added, in explanation.

The guide was at Fend l'Air's shoulder. Very little of him was above water, but that little was as brown as an Egyptian. He was puffing and blowing like unto a porpoise. In one hand he held a huge pitchfork—the trident of this watery Mercury.

"Shall I conduct you?" he asked, dipping the trident as if in salute, into the water, as he still puffed and gasped.

"If you please," as gravely responded our driver. For though up to our cart-wheels and breasts in deep water, the formalities were not to be dispensed with, you understand. The guide placed himself at once in front of Fend l'Air, whose shivers as quickly disappeared.

"You see, mesdames—the guide gives him courage—and he now knows no fear," cried out with pride our whip on the outer bench. "And what news, Victor—is there any?" It was of the Mont he was asking. And the guide replied, taking an extra plunge into deep water: