A NINETEENTH-CENTURY BREAKFAST.
The very next morning, after the rain, and the vision I had had of
Madame de Sévigné, conjured up by my surroundings and the reading of
her letters, Monsieur Paul paid us an early call. He came to beg the
loan of our sitting-room, he said. He had had a despatch from a
coaching-party from Trouville; they were to arrive for breakfast. The
whip and owner of the coach was a great friend of his, he proffered by
way of explanation--a certain count who had a genius for
friendship--one who also had an artist's talent for admiring the
beautiful. He was among those who were in a state of perpetual
adoration before the inn's perfections. He made yearly pilgrimages from
his chateau above Rouen to eat a noon breakfast in the Chambre des
Marmousets. Now, a breakfast served elsewhere than in this chamber
would be, from his point of view, to have journeyed to a shrine to find
the niche empty. The gift that was begged of us, therefore, was the
loan for a few hours of the famous little room.
In less than a half hour we were watching the entrance of the coach by
the side of Madame Le Mois. We were all three seated on the green bench.
Faintly at first, and presently gaining in distinctness, came the fall
of horses' hoofs and the rumble of wheels along the highway. A little
cavalcade was soon passing beneath the archway. First there dashed in
two horsemen, who had sprung to the ground almost as soon as their
steeds' hoofs struck the paved court-yard. Then there swept by a jaunty
dog cart, driven by a mannish figure radiantly robed in white. Swiftly
following came the dash and jingle of four coach-horses, bathed in
sweat, rolling the vehicle into the court as if its weight were a thing
of air. All save one among the gay party seated on the high seats, were
too busy with themselves and their chatter, to take heed of their
surroundings. A lady beneath her deep parasol was busily engaged in a
gay traffic of talk with the groups of men peopling the back seats of
the coach. One of the men, however, was craning his neck beyond the
heads of his companions; he was running his eye rapidly up and down the
long inn facade. Finally his glance rested on us; and then, with a
rush, a deep red mounted the man's cheek, as he tore off his derby to
wave it, as if in a triumph of discovery. Renard had been true to his
promise. He had come to see his friends and to test the famous
Sauterne. He flung himself down from his lofty perch to take his seat,
entirely as a matter of course, beside us on the green bench.
"What luck, hey?--greatest luck in the world, finding you in, like
this. I've been in no end of a tremble, fearing you'd gone to Caen, or
Falaise, or somewhere, and that I shouldn't see you after all. Well,
how are you? How goes it? What do you think of old Dives and Monsieur
Paul, and the rest of it? I see you're settled; you took the palace
chamber. Trust American women--they know the best, and get it."
"But these people, who are they, and how did you--?" We were
unfeignedly glad to see him, but curiosity is a passion not to be
trifled with--after a month in the provinces.
"Oh--the De Troisacs? Old friends of mine--known them years. Jolly lot.
Charming fellow, De Troisac--only good Frenchman I've ever known.
They're just off their yacht; saw them all yesterday at the Trouville
Casino. Said they were running down here for breakfast to-day, asked
me, and I came, of course." He laughed as he added: "I said I should
come, you remember, to get some of that Sauterne. A man will go any
distance for a good bottle of wine, you know."
Meanwhile, in the court-yard, the party on the coach, by means of
ladders and the helping of the grooms, were scrambling down from their
seats. Renard's friend, the Comte de Troisac, was easily picked out
from the group of men. He was the elder of the party--stoutish, with
frank eyes and a smiling mouth; he was bustling about from the gaunt
grooms to the ladder, and from ladder to the coach-seat, giving his
commands right and left, and executing most of them himself. A tall,
slim woman, with drooping eyelids, and an air of extreme elegance and
of cultivated fatigue, was also easily recognizable as the countess. It
took two grooms, two of the gentlemen guests, and her husband to assist
her to the ground. Her passage down the steps of the ladder had been
long enough, however, to enable her to display a series of pretty
poses, each one more effective than the others. When one has an instep
of ideal elevation, what is the use of being born a Frenchwoman, unless
one knows how to make use of opportunity?
From the dog-cart, that had rattled in across the cobbles with a dash
and a spurt, there came quite a different accent and pose. The whitish
personage, whom we had mistakenly supposed to be a man, wore
petticoats; the male attire only held as far as the waist of the lady.
The stiff white shirt-front, the knotted tie--a faultless male
knot--the loose driving-jacket, with its sprig of white geranium, and
the round straw-hat worn in mannish fashion, close to the level brows,
was a costume that would have deceived either sex. Below the jacket
flowed the straight lines of a straight skirt, that no further
conjectures should be rendered necessary. This lady had a highbred air
of singular distinction, accentuated by a tremendously knowing look.
She was at once elegant and rakish; the _gamin_ in her was obviously
the touch of _caviare_ to season the woman of fashion. The mixture made
an extraordinarily attractive ensemble. As she jumped to the ground,
throwing her reins to a groom, her jump was a master-stroke; it landed
her squarely on her feet; even as she struck the ground her hands were
thrust deeply into her pockets. The man seated beside her, who now
leaped out after her, seemed timid and awkward by contrast with her
alert precision. This couple moved at once toward the bench on which
madame was seated. With the coming in of the coach and the cart she had
risen, waddling forward to meet the party. Monsieur Paul was at the
coach-wheels before the grooms had shot themselves down; De Troisac,
with eager friendliness, stretched forth a hand from the top of his
seat, exclaiming, with gay heartiness, "Ah, mon bon--comment ça va?"
The mere was as eagerly greeted. Even the countess dismissed her
indifference for the moment, as she held out her hand to Madame Le Mois.
"Dear Madame Le Mois--and it goes well with you? And the gout and the
rheumatism, they have ceased to torment you? Quelle bonne nouvelle! And
here are the dear old cocks and the wounded bantam. The cockatoos--ah,
there they are, still swinging in the air! Comme c'est joli--et
frais--et que ça sent bon!"
Madame and Monsieur Paul were equally effusive in their inquiries and
exclamations--it was clearly a meeting of old friends. Madame Le Mois'
face was meanwhile a study. The huge surface was glistening with
pleasure; she was unfeignedly glad to see these Parisians:--but there
was no elation at this meeting on such easy terms with greatness. Her
shrewdness was as alive as ever; she was about to make money out of the
visit--they were to have of her best, but they must pay for it. Between
her rapid fire of questionings as to the countess's health and the
history of her travels, there was as rapid a shower of commands,
sometimes shouted out, above all the hubbub, to the cooks standing
gaping in the kitchen doorway, or whispered hoarsely to Ernestine and
Marianne, who were flying about like wild pigeons, a little drunk with
the novelty of this first breakfast of the season.
"_Allons, mon enfant--cours--cours_--get thy linen, my child, and the
silver candélabres. It is to be laid in the Marmousets, thou knowest.
Paul will come presently. And the salads, pluck them and bring them in
to me--_cours--cours_."
The great world was all very well, and it was well to be on friendly,
even intimate terms, with it; but, _Dieu!_ one's own bread is of
importance too! And the countess, for all her delicacy, was a _bonne
fourchette_.
The countess and her friend, after a moment of standing in the
court-yard, of patting the pelican, of trying their blandishments on
the flamingo, of catching up the bantam, and filling the air with their
purring, and caressing, and incessant chatter, passed beneath the low
door to the inner sanctum of madame. The two ladies were clearly bent
on a few moments of unreserved gossip and that repairing of the toilet
which is a religious act to women of fashion the world over.
In the court-yard the scene was still a brilliant one. The gayly
painted coach was now deserted. It stood, a chariot of state, as it
were, awaiting royalty; its yellow sides gleamed like topaz in the sun.
The grooms were unharnessing the leaders, that were still bathed in the
white of their sweat. The count's dove-colored flannels were a soft
mass against the snow of the _chef's_ apron and cap; the two were in
deep consultation at the kitchen door. Monsieur Paul was showing, with
all the absorption of the artist, his latest Jumièges carvings to the
taller, more awkward of the gentlemen, to the one driven in by the
mannish beauty.
The cockatoos had not ceased shrieking from the very beginning of the
hubbub; nor had the squirrels stopped running along the bars of their
cage, a-flutter with excitement. The peacocks trailed their trains
between the coach-wheels, announcing, squawkingly, their delight at the
advent of a larger audience. Above the cries of the fowls and the
shrieks of the cocks, the chatter of human tongues, the subdued murmur
of the ladies' voices coming through the open lattice, and the stamp of
horses' hoofs, there swept above it all the light June breeze, rustling
in the vines, shaking the thick branches against the wooden facades.
The two ladies soon made their appearance in the sunlit court-yard. The
murmur of their talk and their laughter reached us, along with the
froufrou of their silken petticoats.
"You were not bored, _chère enfant_, driving Monsieur d'Agreste all
that long distance?"
The countess was smiling tenderly into her companion's face. She had
stopped her to readjust the geranium sprig that was drooping in her
friend's cover-coat. The smile was the smile of a sympathizing angel,
but what a touch of hidden malice there was in the notes of her
caressing voice! As she repinned the _boutonnière_, she gave the
dancing eyes, that were brimming with the mirth of the coming retort,
the searching inquest of her glance.
"Bored! _Dieu, que non!_" The black little beauty threw back her
throat, laughing, as she rolled her great eyes. "Bored--with all the
tricks I was playing? Fernande! pity me, there was such a little time,
and so much to do!"
"So little time--only fourteen kilos!" The countess compressed her
lips; they were smiling no longer.
"Ah, but you see, I had so much to combat. You had a whole season, last
summer, in which to play your game, your solemn game." Here the gay
young widow rippled forth a pearly scale of treble laughter. "And I
have had only a week, thus far!"
"Yes, but what time you make!"
And this time both ladies laughed, although, still, only one laughed
well.
"Ah! those women--how they love each other," commented Renard, as he
sat on the bench, swinging his legs, with his eyes following the two
vanishing figures. "Only women who are intimate--Parisian
intimates--can cut to the bone like that, with a surgeon's dexterity."
He explained then that the handsome brunette was a widow, a certain
Baronne d'Autun, noted for her hunting and her conquests; the last on
the latter list was Monsieur d'Agreste, a former admirer of the
countess; he was somewhat famous as a scientist and socialist, so good
a socialist as to refuse to wear his title of duke. The other two
gentlemen of the party, who had joined them now, the two horsemen, were
the Comtes de Mirant and de Fonbriant. These latter were two typical
young swells of the Jockey Club model; their vacant, well-bred faces
wore the correct degree of fashionable pallor, and their manners
appeared to be also as perfect as their glances were insolent.
Into these vacant faces the languid countess was breathing the
inspiration of her smile. Enigmatic as was the latter, it was as simple
as an infant's compared to the occult character of her glance. A wealth
of complexities lay enfolded in the deep eyes, rimmed with their mystic
darkened circlet--that circle in which the Parisienne frames her
experience, and through which she pleads to have it enlarged!
A Frenchwoman and cosmetics! Is there any other combination on this
round earth more suggestive of the comedy of high life, of its elegance
and of its perfidy, of its finish and of its emptiness?
The men of the party wore costumes perilously suggestive of Opera
Bouffe models. Their fingers were richly begemmed; their watch-chains
were laden with seals and charms. Any one of the costumes was such as
might have been chosen by a tenor in which to warble effectively to a
_soubrette_ on the boards of a provincial theatre; and it was worn by
these fops of the Jockey Club with the air of its being the last word
in nautical fashions. Better than their costumes were their voices; for
what speech from human lips pearls itself off with such crispness and
finish as the delicate French idiom from a Parisian tongue?
I never quite knew how it came about that we were added to this gay
party of breakfasters. We found ourselves, however, after a high
skirmish of preliminary presentations, among the number to take our
places at the table.
In the Chambre des Marmousets, Monsieur Paul, we found, had set the
feast with the taste of an artist and the science of an archaeologist.
The table itself was long and narrow, a genuine fifteenth century
table. Down the centre ran a strip of antique altar-lace; the sides
were left bare, that the lustre of the dark wood might be seen. In the
centre was a deep old Caen bowl, with grapes and fuchsias to make a
mound of soft color. A pair of seventeenth-century candélabres twisted
and coiled their silver branches about their rich _repoussé_ columns;
here and there on the yellow strip of lace were laid bunches of June
roses, those only of the rarer and older varieties having been chosen,
and each was tied with a Louis XV love-knot. Monsieur Paul was himself
an omniscient figure at the feast; he was by turns officiating as
butler, carving, or serving from the side-tables; or he was crossing
the court-yard with his careful, catlike tread, a bottle under each
arm. He was also constantly appealed to by Monsieur d'Agreste or the
count, to settle a dispute about the age of the china, or the original
home of the various old chests scattered about the room.
"Paul, your stained glass shows up well in this light," the count
called out, wiping his mustache over his soup-plate.
"Yes," answered Monsieur Paul, as he went on serving the sherry,
pausing for a moment at the count's glass. "They always look well in
full sunlight. It was a piece of pure luck, getting them. One can
always count on getting hold of tapestries and carvings, but old glass
is as rare as--"
"A pretty woman," interpolated the gay young widow, with the air of a
connoisseur.
"Outside of Paris--you should have added," gallantly contributed the
count. Everyone went on eating after the light laughter had died away.
The countess had not assisted at this brief conversation; she was
devoting her attention to receiving the devotion of the two young
counts; one was on either side of her, and both gave every outward and
visible sign of wearing her chains, and of wearing them with
insistance. The real contest between them appeared to be, not so much
which should make the conquest of the languid countess, as which should
outflank the other in his compromising demeanor. The countess, beneath
her drooping lids, watched them with the indulgent indolence of a
lioness, too luxuriously lazy to spring.
The countess, clearly, was not made for sunlight. In the courtyard her
face had seemed chiefly remarkable as a triumph of cosmetic treatment;
here, under this rich glow, the purity and delicacy of the features
easily placed her among the beauties of the Parisian world. Her eyes,
now that the languor of the lids was disappearing with the advent of
the wines, were magnificent; her use of them was an open avowal of her
own knowledge of their splendor. The young widow across the table was
also using her eyes, but in a very different fashion. She had now taken
off her straw hat; the curly crop of a brown mane gave the brilliant
face an added accent of vigor. The _chien de race_ was the dominant
note now in the muscular, supple body, the keen-edged nostrils, and the
intent gaze of the liquid eyes. These latter were fixed with the fixity
of a savage on Charm. She was giving, in a sweet sibilant murmur, the
man seated next her--Monsieur d'Agreste, the man who refused to bear
his title--her views of the girl.
"Those Americans, the Americans of the best type, are a race apart, I
tell you; we have nothing like them; we condemn them because we don't
understand them. They understand us--they read us--"
"Oh, they read our books--the worst of them."
"Yes, but they read the best too; and the worst don't seem to hurt
them. I'll warrant that Mees Gay--that is her name, is it not?--has
read Zola, for instance; and yet, see how simple and
innocent--yes--innocent, she looks."
"Yes, the innocence of experience--which knows how to hide," said
Monsieur d'Agreste, with a slight shrug.
"Mees Gay!" the countess cried out across the table, suddenly waking
from her somnolence; she had overheard the baroness in spite of the low
tone in which the dialogue had been carried on; her voice was so
mellifluously sweet, one instinctively scented a touch of hidden poison
in it--"Mees Gay, there is a question being put at this side of the
table you alone can answer. Pray pardon the impertinence of a personal
question--but we hear that American young ladies read Zola; is it true?"
"I am afraid that we do read him," was Charm's frank answer. "I have
read him--but my reading is all in the past tense now."
"Ah--you found him too highly seasoned?" one of the young counts asked,
eagerly, with his nose in the air, as if scenting an indiscretion.
"No, I did not go far enough to get a taste of his horrors; I stopped
at his first period."
"And what do you call his first period, dear mademoiselle?" The
countess's voice was still freighted with honey. Her husband coughed
and gave her a warning glance, and Renard was moving uneasily in his
chair.
"Oh," Charm answered lightly, "his best period--when he didn't sell."
Everyone laughed. The little widow cried beneath her breath:
"_Elle a de l'esprit, celle-là_---"
"_Elle en a de trop_," retorted the countess.
"Did you ever read Zola's 'Quatre Saisons?'" Renard asked, turning to
the count, at the other end of the table.
No, the count had not read it--but he could read the story of a
beautiful nature when he encountered one, and presently he allowed
Charm to see how absorbing he found its perusal.
"_Ah, bien--et tout de même_--Zola, yes, he writes terrible books; but
he is a good man--a model husband and father," continued Monsieur
d'Agreste, addressing the table.
"And Daudet--he adores his wife and children," added the count, as if
with a determination to find only goodness in the world.
"I wonder how posterity will treat them? They'll judge their lives by
their books, I presume."
"Yes, as we judge Rabelais or Voltaire--"
"Or the English Shakespeare by his 'Hamlet.'"
"Ah! what would not Voltaire have done with Hamlet!" The countess was
beginning to wake again.
"And Molière? What of _his_ 'Misanthrope?' There is a finished, a
human, a possible Hamlet! a Hamlet with flesh and blood," cried out the
younger count on her right. "Even Mounet-Sully could do nothing with
the English Hamlet."
"Ah, well, Mounet-Sully did all that was possible with the part. He
made Hamlet at least a lover!"
"Ah, love! as if, even on the stage, one believed in that absurdity any
longer!" was the countess's malicious comment.
"Then, if you have ceased to believe in love, why did you go so
religiously to Monsieur Caro's lectures?" cried the baroness.
"Oh, that dear Caro! He treated the passions so delicately, he handled
them as if they were curiosities. One went to hear his lecture on Love
as one might go to hear a treatise on the peculiarities of an extinct
species," was the countess's quiet rejoinder.
"One should believe in love, if only to prove one's unbelief in it,"
murmured the young count on her left.
"Ah, my dear comte, love, nowadays, like nature, should only be used
for decoration, as a bit of stage setting, or as stage scenery."
"A moonlight night can be made endurable, sometimes," whispered the
count.
"A _clair de lune_ that ends in _lune de miel_, that is the true use to
which to put the charms of Diana." It was Monsieur d'Agreste's turn now
to murmur in the baroness's ear.
"Oh, honey, it becomes so cloying in time," interpolated the countess,
who had overheard; she overheard everything. She gave a wearied glance
at her husband, who was still talking vigorously to Charm and Renard.
She went on softly: "It's like trying to do good. All goodness, even
one's own, bores one in the end. At Basniège, for example, lovely as it
is, ideally feudal, and with all its towers as erect as you please, I
find this modern virtue, this craze for charity, as tiresome as all the
rest of it. Once you've seen that all the old women have woollen
stockings, and that each cottage has fagots enough for the winter, and
your _role_ of benefactress is at an end. In Paris, at least, charity
is sometimes picturesque; poverty there is tainted with vice. If one
believed in anything, it might be worth while to begin a mission; but
as it is--"
"The gospel of life, according to you, dear comtesse, is that in modern
life there is no real excitement except in studying the very best way
to be rid of it," cried out Renard, from the bottom of the table.
"True; but suicide is such a coarse weapon," the lady answered, quite
seriously; "so vulgar now, since the common people have begun to use
it. Besides, it puts your adversary, the world, in possession of your
secret of discontent. No, no. Suicide, the invention of the nineteenth
century, goes out with it. The only refined form of suicide is to bore
one's self to death," and she smiled sweetly into the young man's eyes
nearest her.
"Ah, comtesse, you should not have parted so early in life with all
your illusions," was Monsieur d'Agreste's protest across the table.
"And, Monsieur d'Agreste, it isn't given to us all to go to the ends of
the earth, as you do, in search of new ones! This friction of living
doesn't wear on you as it does on the rest of us."
"Ah, the ends of the earth, they are very much like the middle and the
beginning of things. Man is not so very different, wherever you find
him. The only real difference lies in the manner of approaching him.
The scientist, for example, finds him eternally fresh, novel,
inspiring; he is a mine only as yet half-worked." Monsieur d'Agreste
was beginning to wake up; his eyes, hitherto, alone had been alive; his
hands had been busy, crunching his bread; but his tongue had been
silent.
"Ah--h science! Science is only another anaesthetic--it merely helps to
kill time. It is a hobby, like any other," was the countess's rejoinder.
"Perhaps," courteously returned Monsieur d'Agreste, with perfect
sweetness of temper. "But at least, it is a hobby that kills no one
else. And if of a hobby you can make a principle--"
"A principle?" The countess contracted her brows, as if she had heard a
word that did not please her.
"Yes, dear lady; the wise man lays out his life as a gardener does a
garden, on the principle of selection, of order, and with a view to the
succession of the seasons. You all bemoan the dulness of life; you, in
Paris, the torpor of ennui stifles you, you cry. On the contrary, I
would wish the days were weeks, and the weeks months. And why? Simply
because I have discovered the philosopher's stone. I have grasped the
secret of my era. The comedy of rank is played out; the life of the
trifler is at an end; all that went out with the Bourbons.
Individualism is the new order. To-day a man exists simply by virtue of
his own effort--he stands on his own feet. It is the era of the
republican, of the individual--science is the true republic. For us who
are displaced from the elevation our rank gave us, work is the
watchword, and it is the only battle-cry left us now. He only is
strong, and therefore happy, who perceives this truth, and who marches
in step with the modern movement."
The serious turn given to the conversation had silenced all save the
baroness. She had listened even more intently than the others to her
friend's eloquence, nodding her head assentingly to all that he said.
His philosophic reflections produced as much effect on her vivacious
excitability as they might on a restless Skye-terrier.
"Yes, yes--he's entirely right, is Monsieur d'Agreste; he has got to
the bottom of things. One must keep in step with modernity--one must be
_fin de siècle_. Comtesse, you should hunt; there is nothing like a fox
or a boar to make life worth living. It's better, infinitely better,
than a pursuit of hearts; a boar's more troublesome than a man."
"Unless you marry him," the countess interrupted, ending with a
thrush-like laugh. When she laughed she seemed to have a bird in her
throat.
"Oh, a man's heart, it's like the flag of a defenceless country--anyone
may capture it."
The countess smiled with ineffable grace into the vacant, amorous-eyed
faces on either side of her, rising as she smiled. We had reached
dessert now; the coffee was being handed round. Everyone rose; but the
countess made no move to pass out from the room. Both she and the
baroness took from their pockets dainty cigarette-cases.
"_Vous permettez?_" asked the baroness, leaning over coquettishly to
Monsieur d'Agreste's cigar. She accompanied her action with a charming
glance, one in which all the woman in her was uppermost, and one which
made Monsieur d'Agreste's pale cheeks flush like a boy's. He was a
philosopher and a scientist; but all his science and philosophy had not
saved him from the barbed shafts of a certain mischievous little god.
He, also, was visibly hugging his chains.
The party had settled themselves in the low divans and in the Henri IV
arm-chairs; a few here and there remained, still grouped about the
table, with the freedom of pose and in the comfort of attitude smoking
and coffee bring with them.
It was destined, however, that the hour was to be a short one. One of
the grooms obsequiously knocked at the door; he whispered in the
count's ear, who advanced quickly toward him, the news that the coach
was waiting; one of the leaders.
"Desolated, my dear ladies--but my man tells me the coach is in
readiness, and I have an impertinent leader who refuses to stand, when
he is waiting, on anything more solid than his hind legs. Fernande, my
dear, we must be on the move. Desolated, dear ladies--desolated--but
it's only _au revoir_. We must arrange a meeting later, in Paris--"
The scene in the court-yard was once again gay with life and bristling
with color. The coach and the dog-cart shone resplendent in the
slanting sun's rays. In the brighter sunlight, the added glow in the
eyes and the cheeks of the brilliantly costumed group, made both men
and women seem younger and fresher than when they had appeared, two
hours since. All were in high good humor--the wines and the talk had
warmed the quick French blood. There was a merry scramble for the top
coach-seats; the two young counts exchanged their seat in their saddles
for the privilege of holding, one the countess's vinaigrette, and the
other, her long-handled parasol. Renard was beside his friend De
Troisac; the horn rang out, the horses started as if stung, dashing at
their bits, and in another moment the great coach was being whirled
beneath the archway.
"_Au revoir--au revoir!_" was cried down to us from the throne-like
elevation. There was a pretty waving of hands--for even the countess's
dislike melted into sweetness as she bade us farewell. There were
answering cries from the shrieking cockatoos, from the peacocks who
trailed their tails sadly in the dust, from the cooks and the peasant
serving-women who had assembled to bid the distinguished guests adieu.
There was also a sweeping bow from Monsieur Paul, and a grunt of
contented dismissal from Madame Le Mois.
A moment after the departure of the coach the court yard was as still
as a convent cloister.
It was still enough to hear the click of madame's fingers, as she
tapped her snuff-box.
"The count doesn't see any better than he did--_toujours myope, lui_"
the old woman murmured to her son, with a pregnant wink, as she took
her snuff.
"_C'est sa façon de tout voir, au contraire, ma mère_," significantly
returned Monsieur Paul, with his knowing smile.
The mother's shrug answered the smile, as both mother and son walked in
different directions--across the sunlit court.
A LITTLE JOURNEY ALONG THE COAST.
CAEN, BAYEUX, ST. LO, COUTANCES.