We spent that night at Noyon of blessed memory. Noyon is not down in the itineraries of many guide-book tourists, which is a pity for them. It is altogether the most unspoiled old-world town between the Ile de France and the Channel ports of Boulogne and Calais through which so many Anglo-Saxon travellers enter. It is off the beaten track, though, and that accounts for it. Blessed be the tourist agencies which know nothing beyond their regular routes, and thus leave some forgotten and neglected tourist-points yet to be developed.
The majesty of Noyon's cathedral of Notre Dame is unequalled in all the world. The grim towers rise boldly without ornament or decoration of any kind, and are cowled by a peculiarly strange roofing. The triple porch is denuded of its decorative statues, and there is a rank Renaissance excrescence in the rear which is unseemly, but for all that, as a mediæval religious monument of rank, it appeals to all quite as forcibly as the brilliantly florid cathedral at Beauvais, or the richly proud Amiens, its nearest neighbours of episcopal rank.
We did not sit in front of the Hôtel du Nord at Noyon, as did Stevenson, and hear the "sweet groaning of the organ" from the cathedral doorway, but we experienced all the emotions of which he wrote in his "Inland Voyage," and we were glad we came.
The Hôtel de France and the Hôtel du Nord share the custom of the ever-shifting traffic of voyageurs at Noyon. The latter is the "automobile" hotel, and accordingly possesses many little accessories which the other establishment lacks. Otherwise they are of about the same value, and in either you will, unless you are a very heavy sleeper, think that the cathedral-bells were made to wake the dead, so reverberant are their tones and so frequent their ringing.
It was Stevenson's wish that, if he ever embraced Catholicism, he should be made Bishop of Noyon. Whether it was the simple magnitude of its quaint, straight-lined cathedral, or the generally charming and riant aspect of the town, one does not know, but the sentiment was worthy of both the man and the place.
"Les affaires sont les affaires," as the French say, and business called us to Paris; so, after a happy ten days on the Seine and Oise, we cut our voyage short with the avowed intention of some day continuing it.
Chapter VI
The Road To The North
