In and out of Three Normandy Inns

by Anna Bowman Dodd

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 fête 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 curé 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 curé 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 fête? 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 curé'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.