THE COTENTIN
The Cotentin peninsula is a great jutting finger of land which runs out
into that part of the Atlantic which Frenchmen know as La Manche, and
which Anglo-Saxons know as the English Channel.
It terminates in the Nez de Jobourg, a rocky formation which in its
detached fragments makes up the Chausey Islands and the northernmost of
the Channel Islands.
The chief places of note in the Cotentin are Cherbourg, Valognes, and
the ancient cathedral towns of St. Lô, Coutances, and Avranches, which,
with Vire, Mortain, Pontorson, and Granville, and on the north coast
Isigny, Carentan, and Harfleur, form a practical list of its important
towns and cities. It is a great grazing and pasture-ground, and the
little cows of the Cotentin, like those of Alderney, Jersey, and
Guernsey, are held in great repute.
The military port of Cherbourg, as it is known to-day, is a lively
up-to-date gateway for visitors to France, resplendent with hotels and
all modern conveniences. It was not so in a former day, when a travelled
Englishman said: “Cherbourg is not a place for residence longer than
necessary. I was obliged to go to a vile hole, little better than a
hogsty, where, for a miserable, dirty, wretched chamber, two suppers
composed chiefly of a plate of apples and some butter and cheese, with
some trifle besides, too bad to eat, and one miserable dinner, they
brought me a bill of nearly thirty shillings.”
Things have indeed changed, if there was no exaggeration in the
statement. Even the most modern and up-to-date hotel of a great
provincial town in France now seldom charges one more than twelve francs
per day.
There is not much of sentimental or romantic interest to be gleaned from
a contemplation of Cherbourg, which, in the minds of most new-world
travellers, is merely a landing-place whence one takes the train for
Paris.
As a matter of fact, Cherbourg is a great military port, which had its
inception a couple of centuries ago, when the French had no port for
war-vessels between Dunkerque and Brest, the former capable only of
receiving frigates. The deficiency was fatal to the French on more than
one occasion in their little wars with England, so admirably supplied
with a base at Portsmouth, inside the Isle of Wight, directly opposite
the peninsula of the Cotentin.
To remedy this defect, a môle was planned to be thrown across the open
bay to Cherbourg, but this proved so great an undertaking that the plan
was modified in favour of a system of artificial banks or bars. There
were two entrances for ships, each commanded by a fortress which it is
said was equipped a century ago with an apparatus for launching forth
red-hot shot.
On one of these bars, ultimately covered by the sea, was placed the
following inscription:
“Louis XVI.--Sur ce premier cone échoue le 6 Juin 1794, a vu
l’immersion de celui de l’est, le 23 Juin 1786.”
With the completion of the new harbour works, the hitherto dull city of
Cherbourg took on a new lease of life. New streets and new houses were
built; but, in spite of the present-day signs of progress and activity,
there is little here to appeal to the imaginative person.
The undertaking was a prodigious one for the time, and the famous dike
or breakwater was only recently completed, at a total cost of 62,500,000
francs. It took more than fifty years of constant labour, and four
million cubic feet of stone, and encloses an area of a thousand
_hectares_.
Cherbourg has one valuable architectural monument, the
fourteenth-century Church of the Trinity. It was consecrated in 1504 and
restored in our own day. The interior has really fine decorations.
The Henry Art Museum, named after its founder, contains a rather bulky
and ill-assorted lot of paintings of no particular merit or fame, except
a Van Eyck, a Poussin, an alleged Murillo, and a few minor works of the
Dutch and Italian schools.
The suburbs of Cherbourg, toward the tip of the peninsula, form one of
the most unspoiled and little travelled corners of modern France.
Near Cherbourg on the peninsula of the Hague, in the parish of Greville,
is the hamlet of Gruchy, the birthplace of the painter Millet. The house
bears an inscription on a tablet and is not difficult to find, if one
can only thread his way through the tangle of by-roads which lie
westward beyond Landemer, eleven kilometres from Cherbourg. It is an
artistic shrine of real interest; and tourists, when at Cherbourg, are
advised to explore this wonderful “land’s end” of Normandy, and pay
homage to the birthplace of Jean François Millet.
[Illustration: _Millet’s Home, Gruchy_]
Perhaps no modern picture is really so familiar to our eyes as “The
Angelus” of Jean François Millet, the struggling peasant painter of
Normandy. Those two figures, man and woman in the bare field, with the
village church peeping over the horizon, are “hung on the line,” so to
speak, in the mind of every one who has seen them.
Millet waged a long battle for art against poverty. At times he would
exchange six drawings for a pair of shoes, or a picture for a bed. He
faced starvation, and was not moved from his purpose of painting the
truth as he saw it. Even his greatest pictures left him in poverty. He
said: “They wish to force me into their drawing-room art to break my
spirit. But, no, no; I was born a peasant, and a peasant I will die. I
will say what I feel.”
Certainly when one is before his birthplace at Gruchy, it is not
difficult to realize that at least there were no foppish or foolish
influences at work in his youth, and that it was natural perhaps for him
to carve out his future from the bald truth, as he saw it, in such
pictures as “The Angelus” and “The Man with the Hoe.”
There is a neglected corner of France in the extreme northwest of the
Cotentin peninsula, beyond Cherbourg even, and known locally as the
Hague. Cape Hague, the Hague lighthouse, and the Nez de Jobourg form a
trinity of attractions for the traveller jaded with the stock sights of
conventional watering-places.
It is but a short thirty kilometres from Cherbourg, _en route_ to
nowhere, unless one is heading for America, and is known to Frenchmen as
the most isolated spot of all the mainland of France. “One must not look
there,” they say, “for the wonders of art or civilization, for
vegetation, the life of the casino, or the _tables d’hôte_ of the
towns.”
Instead all is rock and sand and cliffs and zigzag paths cut in the
steep escarpment, against which the sea batters tumultuously throughout
the year.
The landlords have not spoilt this region with Restaurants de Paris or
Hôtels d’Angleterre, and, accordingly, it is one of the few accessible
and delightful spots where the lover of nature sees it as God made it.
What accommodation there is in the neighbourhood does not rise above the
dignity of modest tavern; but one will get such repasts of sea foods as
would make the fortune of the proprietor of a Parisian restaurant could
he but serve them as well and as cheaply.
Habitations of all sorts are rare, and roads and railways less prolific
here, perhaps, than in any other part of France. No railways,
post-offices, or telegraphs, save the line that runs to the
signal-station at the Hague lighthouse. But it has its advantages as a
place of resort, nevertheless.
The beautiful meadows of Urville and St. Martin are brilliant with their
carpets of flowers in spring-time, as green and fresh as if they were in
the south, and the hills between which tiny rivers flow into the
Atlantic or the Manche are as shady with leaves as Vallombrosa. Suddenly
all this changes as if by magic. The little river valleys become
shelving red and brown rock and yellow sand; and the prairies end in a
sheer fall of chalk-white cliff, tremendous to contemplate.
Cape Hague is the name of all of that tiny peninsula which forms the
northwest extremity of the Cotentin; and its minor topographical
formations, the cliffs of Gréville, the Creeks St. Martin, Jobourg, and
Vauville, are only known to the native.
The great highway stops abruptly at a height of 180 metres above
sea-level, just above the immense moors of Ste. Croix-Hague and Jobourg,
with a view of the sea on three sides.
In clear weather one may see the English coast through the glass of the
keeper at the lighthouse, and at one’s very feet, almost, are the
jagged fangs of rocks which surround the Channel Isles, showing plainly
how intimately they were once connected with the French mainland.
This highroad runs straight away from Cherbourg to the Nez de Jobourg,
which is itself a high promontory of granite, carved curiously by the
waves into grottoes, which are one of the principal curiosities of the
region.
After one leaves the highroad, the only progress is on foot; even
bicyclists had best leave their machines behind, and, as for
automobilists, why, the chauffeur will doubtless not object to a repose
in the tonneau, with nothing but the lap of the waves and the cries of
sea-birds to disturb him.
The little zigzag paths and tracks will require all the attention and
energies of the most sure-footed as he explores the region. But so much
the better; for the picturesqueness and desolation of it all will amply
repay one for his pains.
Between Cherbourg and the extremity of the cape is Querqueville. The
road undulates, with occasional views of the great harbour and shipping
of Cherbourg until one passes the fortifications on the moor of Ste.
Anne.
Here in the open country one may see a tiny church, one of the oldest
places of worship yet standing intact in all France. The choir is in the
form of a _tréfle_, and is a rare archæological curiosity.
To the right, half-hidden in a deliciously shaded vale, is the Château
of Nacqueville. Its amiable guardian will permit you to examine it if
you happen to be a member of the Touring Club of France.
The little village of Urville is hardly more than a score of
coquettish-looking little houses, charmingly disposed along the shady
roadway. Here on a great sandy beach the English disembarked in 1758,
when they besieged Cherbourg and invaded the Cotentin. Certainly they
chose a most suitable spot; but all is peaceful now, and the only
invader one is likely to see is an American or an English artist, who
has set up his easel far away from the madding throng.
A little farther on, beyond the village of Laudemer, is a little hotel,
all white and high up above the rocky escarpment which pares off toward
the sea. It is the Hôtel Millet, founded by the brother of the painter
of “The Angelus.” Truly we are now in an artists’ paradise, and, if not
wholly an undiscovered land, it is a region not yet overrun with the
conventional tourists. True, Barbizon is better known than Hague, but
it is no more entrancing. In mid-August you will hardly find a dozen
guests at the _table d’hôte_ of Hôtel Millet.
Far away extends Cape Levi, and the Gatteville lighthouse is just
discernible.
The isolated villa of Valtelles is camped securely upon a rock
dominating the sea below, and a little thread of a foot-path marks the
daily tramp of the coast-guard and the custom-house officer.
At the opposite corner of the Cotentin peninsula is the little maritime
port of Barfleur, of 1,200 inhabitants. It would perhaps hardly be
remembered to-day were it not for the celebrated naval battle of
Barfleur. The town is quite worth the visiting for its own quaintness
and charming situation, but is usually passed by.
The Gatteville lighthouse is one of those wonderful monumental
lighthouses which the French are so fond of erecting. This really great
work lies just to the northward of Barfleur, and is a vast granite pile
some ninety feet in circumference at its base, half that at its summit,
and has a height of two hundred odd feet above its already imposing
foundation.
The rays of its great electric lamp shine out over the waters of the
Channel for ninety kilometres, over fifty-five miles.
From the top of this great tower the view is of great extent, embracing
the whole peninsula of the Hague; and, at night, one may clearly see the
great light at St. Catherine’s on the Isle of Wight.
At Brix, a small town of two thousand inhabitants, between Cherbourg and
Valognes, is a fine church built from the remains of an old fortress.
This will, or should, recall the fact that Brix was the native town of
the illustrious family of Bruce which gave to Scotland Robert the Bruce.
Valognes, the ancient Alaounia of the Romans, and a strong fortress in
the middle ages, is a small town, though it is the principal one of its
district. It possesses a library of twenty thousand volumes and a
handsome church of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, which is said
to have the only Gothic dome in France.
There are a number of magnificent old houses which have come down from
the time when Valognes was a viscounty.
A great cattle market is held here every Monday, and the great
establishment which packs and exports the butter, eggs, and cheese of
the neighbourhood is a sight worth seeing.
The remains of the old fortress-château of the middle ages, now
moss-grown, still exist in the suburbs of Alleume.
Carentan is an unassuming little town in the midst of the butter farms
of the Cotentin. With Isigny it leads the butter market of France so far
as its first blends are concerned. Due to the prosperity arising from
its milk products is a fine, rebuilt fifteenth-century church, and there
are many memories of the ancient importance of the town. Edward III. of
England burned it in 1346, some days before the eventful battle of
Crecy, and in 1679 a conflagration destroyed over five hundred houses.
Besides being the greatest centre for the trade in butter in all
Normandy, it is also the centre of the region which raises the
half-breed trotting-horse.
Carentan is connected with the sea by a canal eight kilometres in
length, and there is considerable small coasting trade with neighbouring
ports.
Isigny, like Carentan, is noted for its cream and butter. Isigny butter
is the name given to the product of all that region of Normandy lying
between Bayeux, Barfleur, and Coutances.
The grain elevators and the cattle market are truly the sights of the
town on market-days, and all else pales before the importance of this
trade.
Grandcamp, beneath which are the celebrated Rocks of Grandcamp, is a
summer resort and a tiny fishing port.
It has a real artists’ resort in its Hôtel de la Croix Blanche, whose
dining-room is a veritable picture-gallery, with landscapes and
seascapes by Boutigny, Gagliardini, Mathon, Bonne Maison, and others.
In reality there is no port here at Grandcamp, only a sloping beach upon
which boats are drawn as they fetch and carry from the vessels which
anchor at some distance from the shore, beyond the bank of wild
fairylike rocks at the base of the little cliffs.
St. Lô is of ancient Gallic origin, and was once called Briovera, which
in the Celtic tongue signified Bridge-over-the-Vire, as the little
stream which passes by the foundations of the town is called. St. Laud
or St. Lô, Bishop of Coutances, came here to preach evangelization. Soon
after his death personal relics of the saint were brought here, and
finally the ancient town took his name.
The religious history of the town is most profound, and as a place
celebrated in warfare St. Lô ranks among the most important in Lower
Normandy. The Catholics captured the town in 1574, after the Calvinists
had been its masters for a dozen years, and massacred three thousand of
its inhabitants.
During the Revolution St. Lô was called the “Rock of Liberty.”
The very beautiful Church of Notre Dame, the _ci-devant_ cathedral, is
admirably placed on the edge of the table-land overlooking the valley of
the Vire. Before it became a cathedral it was an ancient collegiate
church, but this fine Gothic edifice as seen to-day dates only from the
fourteenth to sixteenth centuries.
Its towers quite rival, and are reminiscent of, those of either
Chartres, Séez, or Senlis, and are far more beautiful and imposing than
those of any church of its rank in all Normandy.
There is also a fifteenth-century open-air pulpit, almost a unique
attribute of a great French church, which is artistically charming. From
it were, and still are, read publicly the acts of episcopal
jurisdiction.
In the Rue Poids-de-Ville, at No. 4, is the fifteenth-century Maison
Dieu, a fine stone structure richly ornamented with stone sculptures.
On the square before the cathedral one notes a charming statue of a
water-carrier, depicting the local custom which has not yet died out
here. To-day even one may see these sturdy Cotentin maidens carrying
their picturesque water-jugs in exactly the same pose as depicted in the
statue itself.
From St. Lô to Coutances is thirty kilometres by road. The city is an
ancient bishopric, and its great cathedral is one of the most imposing
and celebrated of those of the second rank in all France.
Anciently known as Cosedia, the city became in time known as Constantia,
after, it is believed, Constance Chlore, who fortified it and made of it
a stronghold long before the end of the Roman occupation of Gaul.
The city was taken and retaken in the course of the wars which continued
during the lives of the sons of Norman William, in the Hundred Years’
War, and in the other religious wars.
During the massacres of St. Bartholomew it was saved through the
moderation of its governor, the Count of Matignon.
The cathedral sits upon the crest of a hill three hundred feet above the
surrounding plain, and is, in every respect, an exceedingly beautiful
structure, with its two great towers rising to a height of nearly 250
feet. There is also a great octagonal tower at the crossing, from which
may be had a magnificent view of the surrounding country, south to
Avranches and Granville and, perhaps, on a clear day to Mont St. Michel,
and westward to the isles of Jersey and Guernsey.
Coutances has another remarkable old church in St. Pierre, fitted with
pews, seldom seen in Normandy or indeed in France. It is a rebuilt
fifteenth-century structure showing many Renaissance interpolations;
but, on the whole, it is imposing and pleasing.
St. Nicholas is another ecclesiastical shrine with a tall square tower
reminiscent of an English parish church. Its chief distinction lies
perhaps in the great monocylindrical columns which divide the arcades of
the nave.
The public garden of Coutances is an exceedingly ample and beautifully
disposed park for a town of but seven thousand inhabitants.
The aqueduct of Coutances, to the west of the town, was one of the most
remarkable works of its time. The Romans built more magnificent ones,
and many have been constructed in later days; but the pointed and
buttressed arches of the thirteenth-century Coutances aqueduct, now
almost entirely disappeared, must remain always one of the chief works
of its kind.
On the coast, midway between Coutances and Avranches, is Granville. It
once had the reputation of being a vile, ugly, ill-built hole, whose
only gaiety was due to the triflers on market-day. To-day the
description does not fit, though it is gay enough in all conscience, and
at all seasons, with its steamer traffic, its fishing, and summer
visitors, for four months of the year. Before one is the Bay of Cancale,
noted for its oysters; and in the far distance is St. Michel’s rock,
with its satellite of Tombelaine. Down at the head of the bay is the
gateway into Brittany, through the episcopal town of Dol, itself a
queer, sleepy old place, with a street of decrepit houses, over which
artists rave, and a grim weather-beaten cathedral, which looks like the
bastion of a fortress.
Just off the shore from Granville is a group of nearly three hundred
fanglike rocks which protrude toward the sky at low water, and are known
as the Chausey Isles.
They seem a worthless pile of rocks at first glance, but when one
recalls that Paris draws its supply of flagstones for its sidewalks from
these granite protuberances their mission is seen to be an economic one.
To the west of the Chausey Isles are the very rocks described by Victor
Hugo in his “Toilers of the Sea.” Still further from the mainland are
the Minquiers and the Grelets, which at high water are, for the most
part, hardly more than pin-heads above the level of the sea.
On the principal isle of the Minquiers, scarce a dozen feet above
sea-level, is a little hamlet of a few huts and cabins of refuge built
by the fishermen of Jersey and Guernsey.
Granville is indeed a city of sturdy sailors and men of affairs. It is
situated at the very tip of an abrupt promontory, picturesque in the
extreme, known as the Rock of Granville. The upper town and the lower
town each adds its own variety of life; and there is no city in Normandy
where one may observe more contrasting features than here on this
rock-cut town overlooking the blue waters of the Manche.
The place is a summer resort of the very first rank, and its hotels are
all that the most fastidious could require, in spite of which there
still hangs about it all an atmosphere that has not yet become vitiated
by the conventions of society. The tides of the ocean here rise and fall
to greater heights and depths than on any other part of the European
coast, and the sea is the great and abounding attraction of the city,
which has twelve thousand inhabitants.
As early as the twelfth century a chapel was built upon the projecting
rock; and from it and its influences grew up the present city. For many
years the city was held by the English, but was retaken by the Normans
in 1441, at whose head was Louis d’Estouteville, governor of Mont St.
Michel. In 1695 it was bombarded by the English, and Louis XIV. ordered
the fortification to be demolished.
In 1793 Granville opposed, with a courageous resistance, the Vendean
army of twenty thousand men, commanded by La Rochejacquelin, who was
forced to raise the siege.
Again, in 1803, the English bombarded the town, but with little effect.
Granville was the port of departure for a great number of privateers,
who did considerable damage during the struggles between the French and
English.
The Church of Notre Dame is Granville’s most interesting monument. It is
built upon the point which culminates in the celebrated Granville Rock,
and preserves many details of its ancient Roman construction. In its
ensemble, however, it is highly florid Gothic, its later additions
coming well down into the seventeenth century. In the interior is the
Chapel of St. Nicholas, containing numerous donations of fishermen
and sailors,--gilded anchors, models of full-rigged ships, and similar
gifts.
[Illustration: _The Rock of Granville_]
There is an unobtrusive casino and the usual watering-place
appurtenances, but all is subservient to the life of the port and the
town.
The port itself is a wonder of what one might call marine architecture,
were the term not applied to ships themselves. It has two great basins
and a superb _môle_ considerably over a quarter of a mile in length.
For the most part, the activity of the port is due to the local
fishing-boats, the coasters or _caboteurs_, and the deep-sea
fishing-craft which sail to far-away Newfoundland and St. Pierre de
Miquelon.
There is some ship-building and considerable industry in fish-curing and
the production of cod-liver oil.
Avranches was once an old cathedral town, but the Revolution made away
with its cathedral, along with many another ecclesiastical monument of
France; but since the ancient bishopric of Avranches was in existence
from 511 to 1790, it may be inferred that its importance was
considerable.
To-day it is a most interesting tourist point, though manifestly its
position is not as proud as it once was.
A single shaft surrounded by a few poor, broken fragments is all that
now remains of the edifice before which Henry II. of England did penance
for the murder of Becket.
The ancient episcopal palace is now the court-house, a modern
reconstruction built upon remains which date from the fifteenth century.
The public library contains fifteen thousand volumes and some valuable
historical manuscripts of as early a period as the twelfth century.
The Jardin des Plantes is the ancient garden of a former Capucin priory
(1618), now actually occupied by a community of Ursulines. The remains
of a fortified gateway and an ancient tower and some moss-grown
fragments of an ancient donjon are still left to suggest the aspect of
other days from a military and strategic point.
The view from the height of the upper town, the plateau on which once
stood the former cathedral, and indeed where all of the modern town is
situated, is one of great and wonderful beauty, particularly out toward
the bay of Mont St. Michel, through the estuary of the river See. Indeed
it is the altogether remarkable situation of the modern city on the
summit of a great promontory plateau that constitutes its chief charm.
One may eat of the best of sea and shore, including the famous oysters
of Cancale, at any of Avranches’s inns, so there is every excuse for not
omitting it from one’s itinerary.
From the height of Avranches is the first clear view of the famous Mont
St. Michel, so well known that one almost forbears attempting to write
of its somewhat terrible historical memories. It is indeed wonderful,
but is difficult to enjoy properly, owing to the number of people sent
around with one guide, and the touts who throng the single street, and
who do not leave you a moment’s peace.
Impossible as it is mentally to plunge back into the past, as ought to
be done when at such a place, there is always a remembrance to take
away, and the gaps can be filled up afterward.
One can imagine how grand the place must look at neap tides, when the
sea rushes in faster than a horse can gallop, or in winter in a storm,
for it has been justly called “_St. Michel au Peril de la Mer._”
Tombelaine, the island from which the English made their gallant attack
on St. Michel, offers a curious instance of the delusiveness of space.
It looks to be within a stone’s throw of Avranches and the mount
itself, but it really is quite an hour’s hard walking, if one has the
temerity to brave the always possible danger of the quicksands which
surround it.
[Illustration: BAY of Mt. ST. MICHEL]
The bay of Mont St. Michel of a moonlight night, when seen from the
causeway leading to Pontorson, or, better yet, from a boat on the bosom
of the bay itself, is indeed enough to have inspired the verses of Jean
Richepin, entitled:
“LES ECUS DE LA LUNE
“La lune au ras des flots étincelants
Casse en morceaux ses jolis ecus blancs.
Bon sang! que de pécune!
Si ton argent, falle, t’embarrassait,
Pourquoi ne pas le mettre en mon gousset,
Ohé, la Lune?”
It is a fine road that runs from Avranches via Pontaubault to Pontorson,
whence one makes his way along the causeway to the mount itself.
It seems futile to attempt to describe one’s emotions at first sight of
that stupendous and wonderful fortress-abbey of Mont St. Michel. To know
this wonderful place is to love it; but no one can become intimately
acquainted with it in a few hours, or even in a few days.
[Illustration: _Mont St. Michel in 1657_]
A rampart of walls and towers surrounds the little cluster of houses at
the base of the mount; and before its ancient barbican the steam-cars,
omnibuses, and automobiles set down their hordes of visitors of all
nationalities, to say nothing of the countless hundreds who come on
foot and on bicycles over the causeway from Pontorson. The year’s
visitors are supposed to approximate fifty thousand.
These ancient walls enclose a population of 250 souls. Where they all
live, and what they all do when tourists are few and far between, is a
question. Viewed from a distance of a mile, the great rock with its
crowning abbey does not look as if it had any other attribute save that
of a vast mediæval religious establishment. As one draws nearer, he sees
the few score of houses huddled about the abbey’s haunches; but even
then he doubts as to whether a quarter of a thousand people can stow
themselves comfortably away, and wonders where they find room for the
visitors.
The Porte du Roi, the Claudine and the Châtelet towers, and the
fortified bridge all prove the fact that the abbey was also a great
fortress. These, however, together with the Michelette and the home of
Duguesclin, are but minor attractions. The real and overpowering feature
of it all is the great abbey itself, which rises tier upon tier, its
statue-crowned pinnacle seeming literally to pierce the sky.
[Illustration: _Porte du Roi, Mont St. Michel_]
In entering, one crosses the guard-hall, and goes up fifty steps to the
court of the church, that tiny plateau from which one gets so wide a
view of sea and shore and sky that he wonders if it is not the most
ample and interesting in all the known world. Pontorson, Avranches,
Granville, Dol, and St. Malo, on the mainland, are all spread out in the
vast panorama. Near by is Tombelaine, a little brother to the mount
itself, while on the dim horizon are the Chausey Isles, the Minquiers,
and, if the day be clear, perhaps Jersey.
Within the sanctuary one remarks all eras of mediæval architecture, from
the Roman nave to the flamboyant Gothic choir.
A narrow staircase to the right leads to a little terrace cut from the
rock itself, which supports the Crypt of the Gros-Piliers. On this same
little terrace the great supporting buttresses of the upper works find
their foundations, and one may climb a story, if he choose, on the
charming _Escalier de Dentelle_.
To enter the Merveille one descends again, and passes through the
cloister, one of the most originally and gracefully disposed of any of
its kind extant, surrounded by 120 svelt little columns forming the
arcade. The refectory is a wonderfully brilliant apartment, and the Hall
of the Chevaliers beneath, supported by three ranges of columns, will
awake the memories of other days in the minds of all who know the
romanticism of historical details in the least degree. It was here, in
this wonderfully old abbey, that the order of St. Michel was first
instituted.
To one side is the visitors’ room, a remarkably graceful, though much
smaller chamber than any of the foregoing.
The next lower floor is occupied by the cellar and the armory, all in
the most sober architectural display.
Crossing the walk and the crypts, one comes to the “_Roue
monte-charges_,” a great machine turned by the hands of prisoners of
other days, by which materials and supplies were brought to this vast
height from the sea-level below.
In the thick granite of the walls of the old fortress-church were many
dungeons and caves, where were hidden away criminal and political
prisoners of all ranks. Here Barbés, Blanqui, and Raspail were
imprisoned.
In returning across the Hall of the Chevaliers it is necessary to
descend some steps graven in the rock itself; following respectfully
behind the guardian, who jingles his great bunch of keys, as if to hurry
along the unwilling ones, which is practically what it amounts to, for
he is a much overworked individual, this guardian. If you wish, you may
make another round, for he will not leave you behind, and he journeys
through these silent, untenanted halls and chambers many times a day,
with the precision and routine of a soldier on sentry duty, or a
corporal inspecting the guard.
If one spends the night on the mount, he may see the most splendid
sunrise he has ever witnessed. One need not rise, for his chamber, if it
is on the water side, faces the east. It is incomparable to anything to
be seen elsewhere. It is as if one were in mid-ocean. The Normandy
coast, not so very far distant, is silhouetted against the sky as the
refulgent sun breaks through the clouds and mists of early morning.
Suddenly the sea reflects it with mirror-like brilliancy,--another day
is born.
West of Avranches is Mortain, situated in the midst of the most
picturesque country-side of the Cotentin. It sits high on the flank of
what, in Normandy, may well be called a mountain, and below it runs the
tiny river Cance.
The chief artistic monument of Mortain is the Church of St. Evroult,
erected during the early part of the thirteenth century, with a Roman
portal thought to belong to an ancient collegiate church of three
centuries before. There is a series of fifty-eight elaborately
sculptured stalls of the fifteenth century, and, altogether, it is quite
as worthy of enthusiastic admiration as many a more famous one
elsewhere.
To the northward, a half-hour’s brisk walk, is the ancient Abbaye
Blanche, or a reconstruction of it, founded in 1105 for the
Benedictines, and some years later affiliated with the order of Citeaux.
The Cance below Mortain is one of those rocky river-beds that awaken
one’s admiration and surprise. It does not resemble in any way the Grand
Cañon of the Colorado or the Gorges of the Tarn, but it is an unspoiled
bit of nature, quite as God made it.
A Norman poet--Pontgibault--has eulogized it thus:
“Combien j’eusse aimé mieux m’en aller avec vous
Parcourir ces vallons dont un Suisse est jaloux,
Jouir (comme on jouet lorsqu’on est en vacance)
Des méandres charmants que dessine la Cance;
Voir ce ‘Pas,’ où, dit-on, les Diables s’égara,
La ‘Cascade’ aux flots bleus, petit niagara,
La ‘Grotte aux Sarrasins,’ dont la fraicheur sinette
Le dispute à ses eaux Fontaine Perrinette!”
Vire is another town of the Cotentin which, like most of its brothers or
sisters, sits high upon an escarpment of surrounding hills. It occupies
a veritable amphitheatre, and it is most curiously, if not beautifully,
planned. It was an ancient feudal settlement which grew in time to some
importance as far as its military history is concerned.
It is the birthplace of Olivier Basselin, the “_satirique_” of the “Vaux
de Vire” and the inventor (in the fifteenth century) of that form of
dramatic representation which we of a later day have come to know as
“vaudeville.” The evolution of the term is thus made simple enough,
though what such representations themselves have actually become in
these days is perhaps not so easy to define.
The great Clock Tower and its ogival gate of the thirteenth century is
Vire’s chief architectural curiosity.
Its greatest and most artistic architectural attribute is the Church of
Notre Dame, which dates from the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth
centuries. Its interior appointments are marvellously elaborate,
including a fine sculptured pulpit in wood dating from 1643.
The town hall, a seventeenth and eighteenth century edifice, encloses a
library of forty-four thousand books and 240 manuscripts, including a
rich collection of works relating to the country. There is also a very
considerable collection of paintings.
[Illustration: _Clock Tower, Vire_]