The morning after I last wrote, Uncle had me waked up at seven and wrote on a scrap of paper, "We leave for Bayeux at 8.30." I was just about sick, for I knew he wasn't able to, and then, besides, if we left so early, I surely shouldn't see Lee again. But I got up and dressed, of course, and I was beside myself to find some way of sending Lee a scrap of a good-by before we took a cab for the gare. Uncle was in high spirits over getting out again, and all went well until it came the minute to get him on to the train. Well, I do believe he was scared himself. Getting on to a French train is almost like going up a ladder that slopes the wrong way, I always think, and it took two commissionaires to hoist Uncle into the coupé. He was awfully worried over it, I could see, for he talked about what an outrageous idiot Mr. Chopstone was all the way to Bayeux. We had to get out there, of course, and I was beside myself to know how to manage. In the end Uncle came down so suddenly that he nearly crushed me and a meek, good-hearted little Frenchman who had kindly offered to help assist.
Bayeux
The gare at Bayeux is quite a walk from the part of the town where the sights are and there wasn't a cab or a thing on wheels. I didn't dare look at Uncle, for there is no train back till four in the afternoon. He seemed a bit staggered at first, and then he said well, it was level, and we'd go leisurely along and enjoy the fresh, pure, sweet air of the country. So we walked along, but I could see he wasn't enjoying it a bit, and it took us a half-hour to get to where we were going. We went to the cathedral first, and Uncle sat right down and said he wanted time enough to enjoy the ground-work of the vaulting and that I could just leave him and go around alone. It was my first chance to look at anything as slow as I liked, and I really did enjoy myself very much.
It's a really wonderful old cathedral, and I found a nice old sacristan behind the altar, and he took me underneath into the crypt, and the crypt is the original church where Harold took the oath. It was slowly buried by the dirt of centuries, and when they started to put a furnace in a few years ago, they found it and dug it out again. It isn't very large, and the walls are of stone several feet thick, with little bits of arched windows set up too high to see from.
When I came back we went to see the tapestry in the museum, and it isn't really tapestry at all: it's a long, long strip of linen about a foot wide, with scenes embroidered on it in Kensington, and over and over. It's really very well done, and it isn't a bit badly worn out—only a few little holes here and there. The scenes are very interesting, and some of them are awfully funny. The way they hauled the horses over the sides of the boats when they landed in England, for example. The Saxons have beards, and the Normans are shaven. I couldn't help thinking how funny it was that the Normans, who were regarded as barbarians by the French, were looked upon as tremendously effete by the English. Uncle took a deal of pleasure studying the whole thing, and we were there till it was time for lunch. We had a nice lunch at a clean little place, and then came the rub. There was nothing to do till train-time, and that terrible walk to the gare. I had brought a book along, so I could read aloud, but Uncle said only a woman would come to Bayeux and read a novel, and that I reminded him of Aunt Jane. You know how terrible it is when any one reminds him of Aunt Jane; so I closed the book at once, and said I'd do anything he liked. He said that that was more like Aunt Jane than ever, to just sit back and throw the whole burden on to him; and then he shook his watch and held it to his ear and said "Hum!" too, one right after the other. I was almost beside myself to know what to do or what to suggest, and just then something came puffing up behind us and stopped right at our side. It was a big automobile, with three men in it, and one jerked off his mask and jumped out over the wheel and grabbed Uncle by the hand. And it was Lee!
