No. 26. ST. GERMAIN-EN-LAYE TO GISORS.
Notre Dame, the other church, is chiefly in the Classic style of the latter half of the sixteenth century. It contains a fine altar-tomb of 1146, bearing the recumbent effigy of St. Gautier, Abbé of Meulan, with four angels swinging censers. There is also an ancient Madonna which attracts pilgrims to the church.
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Leaving Pontoise by the road to Gisors, one passes through several picturesque villages. The first is Cormeilles-en-Vexin, whose church (partly twelfth century), with big flying buttresses and gargoyles, stands out prominently over the green and wooded country as the village is approached.
There are two or three stretches of paving-stones on this road, necessitating a slow pace to avoid dislocating every part of the car and its occupants, and there is thus plenty of time to enjoy the rural charm of the red-roofed villages, the big picturesque farms, and the extensive woods.
Marines is a small village with a seventeenth-century château containing a notable staircase. It belonged to Chancellor Sillory, who was Chancellor of France under Henri IV. In the church is the sixteenth-century chapel of St. Roch, standing over an octagonal crypt.
Three short stretches of pavé follow after leaving Marines, then the road drops down through a cutting in yellow sandstone to Chars (on the River Voisne), where there is a church of the twelfth and fourteenth centuries. The earlier work is worth studying, and there is also an interesting tomb to Jeanne de Ferrières, of the fourteenth century.
Passing over a level-crossing, the village of Bouconvilliers lies on the left. It has a large farm of the Sussex Downs type, sheltered by big trees, a church with a Romanesque tower, and a castle of the time of Louis XIII. (seventeenth century) on the site of a much earlier one, of which the entrenchments remain.