In and out of Three Normandy Inns

by Anna Bowman Dodd

"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 café—"

"Allons, toi!" shrieked his mother's voice, as her face darkened. "Do you think these ladies want to spend the night on the grève? Depêches-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 réveil—"

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.