STARTING FOR THE WASHING-SHED
The women do a great deal of the work. Far out on a country road one overtakes an old, wrinkled, shrivelled woman, whose right place is surely not far from her hearthstone, trudging along with a great scythe over her shoulder. The market carts one meets on the roads are driven by women more often than men; women tend the cows as they feed quietly by the wayside; women do the work in the fields; they do the milking, frequently also in the fields; where the great glittering copper jugs may be seen, standing on the grass, shining in the sun; the women make the butter; and when one thinks that to all this are added the multifarious duties of maternity and housekeeping, there is little wonder that Norman women have small time to think of their personal appearance, and are usually far from beautiful, though their brown shining faces generally have that comeliness which the content of a well-filled useful life gives. On the roads all over Normandy one meets with donkey carts, for donkeys are more largely used than with us, and they form a contrast to the fine team of great horses over which the carter cracks his whip, and whose height is greatly increased to the eye by the monstrous sheepskins, dyed dark blue, with which their collars are nearly always adorned. In some parts the collars themselves are resplendent, painted red and yellow, and bells jingle at every step, making a team of horses as striking an object as a show. Yoked oxen of massive build are still occasionally seen, notably in the country about Gisors.
The situation of the castle at Domfront is curiously like that of the castle at Falaise; both stand on a spur of cliff, separated from a similar spur by a deep ravine in which runs a tiny stream. But at Domfront the scene is more striking, for the rocks are higher, the ravine is narrower, and the great masses of strata, inclined at an angle of 45°, would fit into one another if pushed together like two pieces of a child’s puzzle. It seems almost incredible that water can have exercised such immense corrosive force, the appearance is rather as if a giant hand had chiselled out the rocks, for their masses would require no less than a Titanic agency, yet we know that from time immemorial that little stream the Varennes has run in this cleft.
The peculiarities of the situation are best seen from the fir-crowned, heather-covered heights opposite; and it is the situation that makes Domfront, for the castle is a mere ruin, picturesque enough, and giving an excuse for the public garden that runs around its base, but not in itself interesting. The site is grander far than that of the famous Chateau-Gaillard, grander even than that of Falaise, for the sheer height is stupendous; no wonder Domfront was a strong castle and house of defence to him who held it.
The view from the plateau is limited only by vision. A single hill to the south-west stands out above the plain. In the immediate foreground, just below, are a few toy houses, and a tiny, neat church, cruciform, and bearing Norman date in every line of its architecture. It was only ten or eleven years junior to the chateau in its first building, and has long outlived it. The man who built both chateau and church, Guillaume de Belesme, sleeps within the latter. He had not held the chateau so much as forty years, when a stronger William than he, the mighty Conqueror, swooped down upon him and drove him out. Of another Belesme, a scion of the same house, we shall hear elsewhere.
William’s successors retained the castle in their own hands, and Henry II. here received the nuncio sent by the Pope to reconcile him and Becket. In the religious wars of the sixteenth century the castle was seized and held by the Protestants, and only taken after a bitter siege; otherwise it has not much recorded history. It is peaceful enough at present, surrounded by a charming garden, where one may wander at will, gazing out over the widespread view, watching the swallows wheel and skim far below, and hearing the song of countless birds, which, here as elsewhere in Normandy, build preferably in the neighbourhood of man to escape their more dreaded foe, the magpie.
There is an old rhyme which says:—
“Domfront, ville de malheur
Arrivé a midi pendu à une heure.”
Though the reason why the town should have earned so unhappy a reputation is lost in the mists of antiquity.