We had just left Rouen and were galloping along the road to Jumieges. The
light carriage flew along across the level country. Presently the horse
slackened his pace to walk up the hill of Cantelen.
One sees there one of the most magnificent views in the world. Behind us
lay Rouen, the city of churches, with its Gothic belfries, sculptured
like ivory trinkets; before us Saint Sever, the manufacturing suburb,
whose thousands of smoking chimneys rise amid the expanse of sky,
opposite the thousand sacred steeples of the old city.
On the one hand the spire of the cathedral, the highest of human
monuments, on the other the engine of the power-house, its rival, and
almost as high, and a metre higher than the tallest pyramid in Egypt.
Before us wound the Seine, with its scattered islands and bordered by
white banks, covered with a forest on the right and on the left immense
meadows, bounded by another forest yonder in the distance.
Here and there large ships lay at anchor along the banks of the wide
river. Three enormous steam boats were starting out, one behind the
other, for Havre, and a chain of boats, a bark, two schooners and a brig,
were going upstream to Rouen, drawn by a little tug that emitted a cloud
of black smoke.
My companion, a native of the country, did not glance at this wonderful
landscape, but he smiled continually; he seemed to be amused at his
thoughts. Suddenly he cried:
“Ah, you will soon see something comical--Father Matthew's chapel.
That is a sweet morsel, my boy.”