There are the remains of a Norman church near the sea. It is said to occupy the spot where the people watched the great flotilla of William the Conqueror drift to St. Valery, there to take the Norman army to England.
A French watering-place is quite different from an American seaside resort. You have your board and sleeping-room in one of the hotels, but your parlors, piazzas, and places of recreation are in an elegant pleasure house, called the Casino. For the privileges of the Casino you pay a small sum; at Étretat it amounts to about ten dollars a month. The billiard-rooms, ball-room, and the rooms for general conversation are in the Casino.
Every one bathes in the sea at Étretat, women and children, whole families together, and most of the girls are expert swimmers. It is delightful to sit upon the shingle, as the pebbly beach is called, and watch the sport in the sun-bright mornings or golden and dreamy afternoons. The costumes of the bathers are so pretty that the scene seems like a ball in the sea. Bathing men are stationed here and there to render any needed assistance.
The great caverns which the sea has worn in the rocks at Étretat remind one of the ruins of immense cathedrals, and are grand indeed in the light of the full summer moon.
The place abounds with story-telling fishermen. The Class was told one story here which is worthy of a poem.
“A beautiful stream once watered the valley. Its bed may still be seen, but it now runs under ground. On the stream an industrious miller built his mill and did a thriving business. One day a woman, sick and destitute, came to him for help. He turned heartlessly away from her with abuse. The poor creature raised her withered arm, and said,—
“‘To-morrow thou shalt have thy reward.’
“When the miller awoke the next morning he found his mill standing on dry ground. The river had gone down into the earth, where it still runs.”
