In and out of Three Normandy Inns

by Anna Bowman Dodd

There was a shower of rose-leaves flung out upon us; a great sweep of the now familiar beret; a sonorous "Hui!" from our driver, with an accompaniment of vigorous whip-snapping, and we were off.

The grayness of the closely-packed houses was soon exchanged for the farms lying beneath the elms. With the widening of the distance between our carriage-wheels and Villerville, there was soon a great expanse of mouse-colored sky and the breath of a silver sea. The fields and foliage were softly brilliant; when the light wind stirred the grain, the poppies and bluets were as vivid as flowers seen in dreams.

It is easy to understand, I think, why French painters are so enamoured of their gray skies—such a background makes even the commonplace wear an air of importance. All the tones of the landscape were astonishingly serious; the features of the coast and the inland country were as significant as if they were meditating an outbreak into speech. It was the kind of day that bred reflection; one could put anything one liked into the picture with a certainty of its fitting the frame. We were putting a certain amount of regret into it; for though Villerville has seen us depart with civilized indifference or the stolidity of the barbarian—for they are one, we found our own attainments in the science of unfeelingness deficient: to look down upon the village from the next hill top was like facing a lost joy.

Once on the highroad, however, the life along the shore gave us little time for the futility of regret. Regret, at best, is a barren thing: like the mule, it is incapable of perpetuating its own mistakes; it appears to apologize, indeed, for its stupidity by making its exit as speedily as possible. With the next turn of the road we were in fitting condition to greet the wildest form of adventure.

Pedlars' carts and the lumbering Normandy farm wagons were, at first, our chief companions along the roadway. Here and there a head would peep forth from a villa window, or a hand be stretched out into the air to see if any rain was falling from the moist sky. The farms were quieter than usual; there was an air of patient waiting in the courtyards, among the blouses and standing cattle, as though both man and beast were there in attendance on the day and the weather, till the latter could come to the point of a final decision in regard to the rain.

Finally, as we were nearing Trouville, the big drops fell. The grain-fields were soon bent double beneath the spasmodic shower. The poppies were drenched, so were the cobble paved courtyards; only the geese and the regiment of the ducks came abroad to revel in the downpour. The villas were hermetically sealed now—their summer finery was not made for a wetting. The landscape had no such reserves; it gave itself up to the light summer shower as if it knew that its raiment, like Rachel's, when dampened the better to take her plastic outlines, only gained in tone and loveliness the closer it fitted the recumbent figure of mother earth.

Our coachman could never have been mistaken for any other than a good Norman. He was endowed with the gift of oratory peculiar to the country; and his profanity was enriched with all the flavor of the provincial's elation in the committing of sin. From the earliest moment of our starting, the stream of his talk had been unending. His vocabulary was such as to have excited the envy and despair of a French realist, impassioned in the pursuit of "the word."

"Hui!—b-r-r-r!"—This was the most common of his salutations to his horse. It was the Norman coachman's familiar apostrophe, impossible of imitation; it was also one no Norman horse who respects himself moves an inch without first hearing. Chat Noir was a horse of purest Norman ancestry; his Percheron blood was as untainted as his intelligence was unclouded by having no mixtures of tongues with which to deal. His owner's "Hui!" lifted him with arrowy lightness to the top of a hill. The deeper "Bougre" steadied his nerve for a good mile of unbroken trotting. Any toil is pleasant in the gray of a cool morning, with a friend holding the reins who is a gifted monologist; even imprecations, rightly administered, are only lively punctuations to really talented speech.

"Come, my beauty, take in thy breath—courage! The hill is before thee! Curse thy withered legs, and is it thus thou stumbleth? On—up with thee and that mountain of flesh thou carriest about with thee." And the mountain of flesh would be lifted—it was carried as lightly by the finely-feathered legs and the broad haunches as if the firm avoirdupois were so much gossamer tissue. On and on the neat, strong hoofs rang their metallic click, clack along the smooth macadam. They had carried us past the farm-houses, the cliffs, the meadows, and the Norman roofed manoirs buried in their apple-orchards. These same hoofs were now carefully, dexterously picking their way down the steep hill that leads directly into the city of the Trouville villas.

Presently, the hoofs came to a sudden halt, from sheer amazement. What was this order, this command the quick Percheron hearing had overheard? Not to go any farther into this summer city—not to go down to its sand-beach—not to wander through the labyrinth of its gay little streets?—Verily, it is the fate of a good horse, how often! to carry fools, and the destiny of intelligence to serve those deficient in mind and sense.