Later on the crowd thins down, and a steady stream sets in toward the station. The women laden with enormous baskets carried by leather straps, and sometimes holding large red cotton umbrellas, compare notes as to the days events. At the station nearly every one, man and woman alike, invests in a paper for Sunday reading before they disperse to their homes on the flat plains of the Bessin. Some to go to homely cottages, others it may be to those castles fallen from their high estate, such as Argouges, once the fortress-dwellings of the highest nobles in the land.
Less than ten miles westward from Bayeux is Formigny, one of the historic battlefields of Normandy; it ranks with Val-ès-Dunes, Tinchebray, and Mortèmer. It was in 1450, when all Upper Normandy was already in the hands of Charles VII. of France, that a desperate effort was made to save Lower Normandy from the same fate. The English landed at Cherbourg and marched on into the Bessin; they were met and defeated at Formigny, and the battle was the final stroke that severed Normandy from England.
In a book like the present it would be as difficult as it would be futile to attempt to give in detail an account of every town. Those already described give the atmosphere of the country, and to go further would be wearisome, or lead to repetition, for in many of the towns the same features reappear. In Lisieux, prettily situated amid its broken green hills, we have a fine cathedral, which shares to the full in that irregularity so often found in Norman churches. One tall spire springs from a platform base, and its companion ends in a conical stumpy gable. The manufacturing part of the town lies mostly south of the railway, and the wonderful carved wooden houses which attract visitors from all parts reproduce the best features of those already noted elsewhere.
In a town like Evreux, we may see the narrow streets and cool green sun-shutters, with the stately cathedral rising over the roofs, its grey majesty softened to beauty by the lace-like fretwork. Down by a canal-like feeder of the river Iton, in a part reminiscent of the Cambridge “backs,” is the Allée des Soupirs, under whispering limes; by the river also are the washing-sheds, with tiled floors, where women and girls wring and beat and twist all day long, chattering the while, as if the perpetual dipping of hands and arms in the ice-cold water and the bending of backs were a mere game. Under the limes on a market day the usual Norman crowd can be seen. The prevailing tone of colour is blue—blue blouses, blue bodices, blue check aprons. Now and then a gendarme strolls down the centre, looking like a gorgeously coloured fly in his bright uniform. All the promenaders passing to and fro are in list slippers, which speaks volumes for the dryness of the climate; and none of the women wear hats, and only a few caps or folded cotton handkerchiefs.
The typical Norman town is for the most part irregularly built; we do not find the formal squares and straight streets to be met with in Touraine. There is almost always a cathedral, varying a little in its beauty, but at the worst wonderful. There is very often a barracks, and an open dusty space for the drill; and the other public buildings, the Préfecture, and Palais de Justice, if the town be the centre of its district, the Hotel de Ville, the public library, the Musée, the Mairie, according to its status. There is generally a river, sometimes very small, and an open space or two wherein wayfarers may sit.
TIMBER-FRAME HOUSE, LISIEUX
We may spring northwards to Pont Audemer, where we shall find some features in common with many Norman towns, and some peculiar to itself. We may go there on a Monday, for Monday is market day, and we shall find the wide street before the splendid old church filled with stalls—indeed, here, as ever in Normandy, the wonder is, where everyone is a vendor, who buys; perhaps it is a disguised form of barter. The men are good-looking as a rule, though the strong admixture of French blood has produced a race in which there are few of the characteristics of their countrymen further west. One sees all sorts, of course, but the type which might be selected as predominant is that of a slightly built, fairly tall man, with straight marked features, abundant hair showing strong tendency to curl, on head and lips; dark eyed and dark complexioned, good-looking, merry genial fellows, they are a sun-loving race. It makes a splendid picture this open-air market. The church with its great tower at the west end, carved and enriched, speaks of the richest period of the fifteenth century. By the grand western door are many decorative niches for saints, now empty.
Perhaps the western sun has fallen sufficiently to cast the long shadows of the odd medley of houses facing the cathedral over the rough cobbled street, and thereby to render the contrast of all that gallant fretwork, picked out, illuminated, and gilded by his splendour, all the grander. Within, the church is magnificent—and heartrending. Surely never in any other Catholic church, where loving hands are usually ready to perform devout offices, was more dirt seen.
There is rich stained glass of the fifteenth century in the side aisles. But for those who prefer their architecture unembellished, there is plenty here. The chancel was built at least two centuries before the nave, and is plain indeed. Heavy and solid arches, comparatively low, and somehow lacking the grace that usually appertains to this style, enclose the chancel. The singularly low central arch is not in line with the nave.