aes Hae a 2 iBERE OF VIRG ToNet Sta e OIGSe ge ene ye anes Ss ts Pe. eo nee a Ma. on 42 Sek gras i Oe ade ero oe eee - ie te coat LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA ms y . \ i oe t G < . a . ++ ‘ . _ hae Ad ng ; y * - GIFT OF HARCOURT PARRISH, B.A. ‘20 IN MEMORY OF HIS MOTHER . FANNIE HARCOURT PARRISH Aeee «Ge > ie aa es chs ee a eee — a TEE Fae. ——— ee = = a “en, oa Aa) am td a, “a Lae #t pad LQ Pal es © fm ~ wD et é z A ’ i fFalatse § ND. ahs? oie ) fi 4 ) ad 24 fae if ]) Am F- . — = < e Vat OlN] TOT 2 9 _/- \ ! ) , a / ‘ . re —_ —.< mettle el Pow th ee ee 4 " pani a >. J = ae sr ee «=, ss e ; “etree eet veg el ee ee a a so a eed Stem “Ay Le °F r \ \. Se AEST BY AT fee C a a ot So 2 shy Tene Cy, : eee aele ~ = a — ee ee he Ac a es - ee ye af ae Ee ~~. ie = -CATILP BN _/ Sor OE Fk Pd aa. te ne tats. os. ee ea ie ee at od * — cyl Pas Se | gece eh ee -~ ryt ' \ O f / . j PA -. \ TT f- 4 f 7a Sf } rappe ~ ee ee ee Ra le a! * Ee ia ~-* _ oy oh a —_== nm _— = - ar oe a cae nFp oy mt —— > ote - ee A : 2/ —_ ‘as, - Cea > * wy + Ls te” _ —_ ” ? ;CONTENTS CHAPTER I. THe LAanp AND THE PEOPLE II. Tue Heroic Pertop III. A Curistran PARTHENON IV. GuimpPseEs OF THE RENAISSANCE V. Tue Torment or Monsieur pE RANCE VI. A Cueap KNIFE— I. CAEN AND THE GIRONDIN INSURRECTION 2. Marat’s [THEORIES Be Marat 1n ActIon 4. ‘THe Murper 5. [HE Rep CHEMISE INDEX PAGE 39 Us 107 14] 187 200 222 242 252THE CHOIR, BAYEUX CATHEDRAL . : FALAISE . . ; NOTRE-DAME, VIRE SAINT-SULPICE, FOUGERES . MONT SAINT-MICHEL, FROM THE EAST . EARLY NORMAN CHURCH, THAON NOTRE-DAME-SUR-L’ EAU, NEAR DOMFRONT ABBAYE AUX DAMES, CAEN CONCHES, THE APSE LISIEUX CATHEDRAL COUTANCES CATHEDRAL THE CHOIR, SEEZ CATHEDRAL SAINT-ETIENNE-LE-VIEUX, CAEN. HOTEL D’ESCOVILLE, CAEN A TURRET OF DOMFRONT CASTLE CHATEAU D’O CONCHES, THE CHOIR ARMAND JEAN LE BOUTHILLIER DE RANCE MARAT DEFYING THE GIRONDE . CHARLOTTE CORDAY AT THE TIME OF THE LIST OF TLUSTPRATIONS TRIAL PAGE Frontispiece 16 16 28 34 58 102 114 118 126 126 134 148 202 260TRANSLATOR’S FOREWORD Tus book by a distinguished and cultured Frenchman, having been primarily intended for his own country- men, abounds in passing allusions to incidents in French history, scraps from French legends, opinions concerning French celebrities, and so on, some of which might not be easily understood by the ordinary English reader who is not a student of French affairs. For this reason | have inserted a few foot-notes, the sole purpose of which is to offer some little help towards an appreciation of the wealth of knowledge wherewith M. Herriot has illustrated his book. For these notes the translator alone 1s responsible. J. HL.THE LAND AND THE PEOPLEAMID THE FORESTS OF NORMANDY CHAPTER I THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE I In the west of the land of France, between the plains of Beauce and the bay of Saint-Michel, a long fold of wooded hills stands out, marking the dividing line between the waters of the Seine and those of the Loire. From this ridge the Eure and the Orne glide to the north, and towards the south the three sister rivers, Mayenne, Sarthe and Loir spread out fan-wise. Built up of massive sandstone and intrusions of volcanic rock, their flanks clad by forests of which the most famous are those of Andaine and Ecouves, letting rivulets bubble up every here and there, cut in places by gorges where rivers rush along and exhibiting, where the spurs are piled together, storied terraces as in this picturesque town of Domfront whose site reminds one in certain aspects of Perugia or Assisi, these hills form a barrier between our two illus- trious provinces, Brittany and Normandy. The traveller climbing from the plains of the Loire sees them close the horizon in a continuous line. When the day is stormy all the landscape is wrapped in mist; fog covers the meadows, the paddocks, where the cattle seem to drowse. He feels that this land was delivered over to the two great forces of Nature; the forest and the sea. Such a region, with its hard skeleton of rocks stretching out below water beyond the coasts of Granville and Avranches, was often made a sacrifice throughout history, as is the way with debatable lands. For the Frenchman who loves his country, however, it is a sight to awaken emotion. From the Ile de France to the Channel, from the Epte Canal, by the Marche of Vexin, formerly the IAMID THE FORESTS OF NORMANDY frontier, covered with wheat, under the vast chalk table- lands of the Caux country, across the cultivated lands of the Roumois, the Seine traces a wide path which leads to and from Paris, a road incessantly in use for at least ten centuries, since the Scandinavians borrowed it to reach the heart of what already existed of our nation. Of the life which came into being around the historic river Rouen was and still remains the focus. The land which will detain us in this book, this land where the rivers dig stern ravines for themselves and trace out complicated windings over a country that is cut into sharp outlines, this land which slopes down gently towards the sands ‘of Calvados, which is shut in from East to West by the valley of the Touques and the coast of Manche which are almost parallel to one another, this land so much more of a unity, if confined to these limits, than the province created by history, this land is a more secret Normandy. Its capital is Caen. If In this country the tree is king. This climate, almost always damp, favours wood and meadow, according to the rhythm that associates the forest with pastoral country. Where the grass remains green the forest flourishes, and as the latter itself draws the vapours together, as the transpiration of its foliage increases the quantity of moisture borne in the air, as the forest is the mother of rain and dew, so the trees would increase and multiply in every place where resistance to their cruel enemy, the wind, is possible, did not human activities destroy and set limits to this growth. Here at all events more is left than the mere ruins of that splendid sylvan establishment which it was the amusement of our kings to preserve. Among these hills, under this gentle sky, the tree lives on terms of familiarity with the grass; 1t towers above the hedges of the grove and springs skywards from the heart of the woodlands of Perseigne or Belléme. During the winter the forest slumbers; at the first warmth of 2THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE spring it pushes out its buds and branches, developing the tender flesh of its webbed leaves which summer will imbue and tint. Even as all life is, this growth is a struggle; the struggle of species against species, but also the struggle of branches against one another and of the branches against the stem, against the weight of the snow which bears down the bough, or against the excessive foliage which distorts the tree while enriching it. Astruggle, above all, for light. The thrilling beauty of the forest lies in the upward striving visible in all its parts, an effort on the part of each individual to be free from the deadly shadow of the covert, an impulse, more ardent in the tree’s youth but as prolonged as its life, to breathe freely under the wide azure; so that this appar- ently immovable mass is continually thrilling with an effort that tends towards increasing its distance from the earth, is constantly re-modelling and re-creating itself, suffering, as we do, seeking, as we do, a social equilibrium which is destroyed in the very process of being established. A life that is laborious and almost painful, complicated, moreover, by the calamities and chances of reproduction, when the tree, having become adult and strong, drops upon the ground that seed which a sterile soil will refuse but which a mellow and fruitful soil will nourish full of lite that will impel it, in its turn, towards the skies. Ecouves, Andaine, Perseigne, these are real French forests. ‘hey preserve the old hierarchy: the oak and the beech, high-born beings, bear sway there over the plebeian class, the brushwood. Yes, the forest really forms a social state, a state wherein Nature disposes and upholds the social ranks. In the species that thrive in the shadows, the young subject requires shelter in order to grow; in the species that need light, it desires, from birth, the dazzling environ- ment of sunshine. But, in its hierarchy, this life in common demands from all the members of the vegetable family, even from the strongest, discipline and a certain amount of frugality. It cannot welcome, unless chance has put deep rich soil at its disposal, those too-exacting 3AMID THE FORESTS OF NORMANDY trees, which can only thrive at a distance from their fellows and claim the right of destroying, by starva- tion, a neighbour that has become troublesome. The forest musters together that familiar society which the oak and beech form with the spruce. To its own egoism ‘t abandons the ash, whose long roots seem to delight in exhausting the soil, and which appears to taste a malicious joy in letting fall upon neighbouring plants, at the very moment they are enjoying the rain or the dew, that viscous liquid which will be their death. The elm with its air of simplicity, its clumsy leaves, its aspect of a kindly churl, the elm is a bourgeois; it loves to be seen along the high roads and promenades, even when its brown coat has become tattered with oldage. Itisa constant attender at performances by military bands. A cunning bourgeois who, with the excuse that cockchafers feed on its fruit, devours in an underhand way, with all the rapacity of its tentacles, the strength of the soil where it has settled ! The forest is a family. ‘The egoistical species produce light, winged seeds which go off to marry at a distance, the wind being their accomplice. In the forest, the children live around the parents, and to shelter them one common covering is used. But in this family, so united in spite of its hierarchy, since the lite of each depends upon the health of all (and inversely), in this sphere where the law of selection applies in its utmost rigour, one chieftain has the mastery: the oak, the sacred tree, the very symbol of France herself, the tree for which the end of a century marks, at most, the limit of youth, the old and dear comrade of our history, our trials, our sorrows, which during the late war once again became a sacrifice. I admire it freely here in Andaine, in the forest which ‘5 so full of life that when the broom is in flower the air ‘s full of the vibration of bees’ wings. This tree 1s not particular in choosing a situation; any nourishment 1s good, provided there is plenty of it. But water: the oak loves drinking, and must drink fresh liquor. Its vigorous youth can resist summer heats and winter frosts, what it dreads are the caprices of spring, that whimsical 4THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE season. In spite of the common prejudice, age in itself possesses nothing to be respected. That of the oak, when we come across it, blossoms with integrity, a good conscience, duty accomplished. To keep one’s distance and to demand proper respect, that is no display of arrogance, it is to show the same respect for the rights of others as you expect to have shown to your own. Such is not the conduct of that madman, the maple sycamore, which in its haste to grow thrusts itself through the thickets, annoys and damages all and sundry, or of the birch, that savage vulgarian, level-headed but insolent, which profits by the first storm to break off with great blows of its branches the buds of its enemy the spruce. The.oak has the calmness of its strength, the majesty of its slowness ; it wisely conforms to the resources of its dwelling- place. When the rest of the forest falls into ruins 1t remains standing like to a tower; in the living forest 1t demands its proper place, the first place truly, but no more than that, until that day, so long in coming, when the shoots growing from its trunk tell, in the forester’s idiom, that its “* top is crowned ” and that, with one last burgeoning of its vertex, it is beginning to die. In a wood of lofty trees—the permanent forest—the beech appears like to a younger brother of the oak. It achieves neither the height nor the age of its splendid senior. The beech, too—the fau or the fou, as it is termed in the local patois, from a Latin original—would have a tendency to rule, should its master not be near at hand, who has reserved for himself the higher places of the forest. Active, calm, fruitful, rich in abundance of nuts, it will be content to remain second in command. If light-loving species try to overshadow it, it will crush them brutally : but with its covering it protects the kinds that like shade ; it strengthens the soil which feeds them ; it protects the delicate childhood of the spruce and admits to its company this kindly creature, which is somewhat intrusive but of a very accommodating char- acter and ready to find life easy when lent a little earth wherein to strike root. 5 BAMID THE FORESTS OF NORMANDY Thus is the forest family constituted, the regular and classical family, such as is met in this land of tradition, in this damp and mild climate which develops the expanse of the leaves and enlivens them with a dark green. In these groves the shadows themselves creep down as if by degrees, lighter around the summits of the oaks, deeper under the vault of beeches and among the dense ranks of the spruces. The shadows have stripped bare the stem of the tree, but conceal its nakedness. ‘They grow thicker still in the underwood, among the bushes which are needed for the life of the subsoil, for its activity, its freshness, its supple- ness. They temper the light to the shallow-rooted shrubs, to the useful heather plants, which, before being sacrificed to enrich the earth with their cinders, stipple the forest with their enduring foliage and their half violet, half pink flowers; to the angular-stemmed whortle- berries with serrate leaves like to the myrtle which stock the woods with their bunches of wild fruit. In places the gorse breaks out, spiny and shaggy, in its poverty also sensitive to the seasons, since its leaves, lissom in the spring, turn in autumn into hard dark thorns. And there are swarms of lively ferns with their fronds rolled up into crosiers. Lower down still, the forest which seems dead to us is alive and at work under the heaps of pine-needles, berries, twigs and shreds of bark. ‘This is the garment, the delicate and sensitive epidermis which protects the soil itself against the extremes of heat or cold, deadens the shock of the rain, gathers nourishing elements from the air, and shelters what animal life 1s needed to stock this soil where the labourer never comes. These leaves you think dead are working for the tree from which they have fallen. By them, by their mystert- ous but unceasing labour that rhythm is completed which makes the forest a harmony, from the depths of the soil to the vertex of the tallest tree. From above to below, from below to above, life rises and descends, from the brakes to the covert, from the covert to the grove distributing, in due measure, light and water, the 6THE LAND AND “DE PEOPLE blood of the forest. Man may intervene for his own advantage, mutilate on a pretext of good husbandry ; he will only upset this equilibrium which is assured by a thousand precautions of Nature. Andit is evena barbarous act to remove a fallen tree trunk, since the life of the soil will be enriched to-morrow by this seeming corpse. Is it not enough that the forest has to defend itself against hostile plants, against the roots of the mistletoe and the grappling-irons of the ivy? Hat on head, as Jews in the synagogue, the toadstools distil their venom. One would like to believe in the innocence of the honey- suckle ; it is a sweet-scented hypocrite ; 1t embraces with the design of strangling. Happily, the forest has its friends, easily recognisable, because, by a miracle of our magnificent intelligence, we usually hate them. ‘Try to see on that high branch, set in deep shadow, the buzzard which we have made the emblem of our own stupidity, because, perching there for hours at a time, she seems cut off from the living world; her piercing cry is not heard, and she is hiding her feathered claws and hooked beak beneath her long wings. A patient sentinel, she is watching for that hateful little mouse, the symbol of deadly hoarding, the miserly housewife who gathers up for the winter a store of seeds which she will never use. The placid owl, crowned with the two tufted plumes, has constituted himself night watchman in the forest’s service. He is waiting the hour when twilight will conceal the white patches on his plumage. The kite will account for every kind of carrion ; unfortunately, he is a coward and shows most vigour in beating a retreat. For a wage paid in juniper berries the fox, with his red muzzle, chases insects and grubs. The wolf himself destroys the fieldmouse, a glutton for seeds. One of the forest’s cruellest enemies is the wind, the hurricane which suddenly smashes down a clearing, strewn with fallen timber, like to a battlefield. It develops its energy in the plains; it attacks heavily in flank, scythes down the stems, striking dead young and old or crippling those it seems to spare with wounds the fiAMID THE FORESTS OF NORMANDY gravity of which will only appear later. In the forest of Andaine it cut down the large treeless space from which, looking towards Alengon, we can see the two highest hills of Maine, Mont Souprat and Mont des Avaloirs. In winter, when branches are singing at the top of the mournful pines, the wind increases the nip of the cold which grips the tree to its core and splits it with frostbite ; even the oak has not enough power of resistance. he wind propagates fires. Over there below the rock of L’Ermitage, around the plateau crowned by a group of spruce trees set there as a vanguard and whence you can see the new steeple of Domfront, the Chateau de Ceris1, rising from the sea of foliage, the flame carried by the wind created a vast desert and destroyed even the humble buckthorn which intoxicated the stags in spring. III But of all these sworn enemies, the most atrocious is—man. By degrees, he has chased away all the other wild beasts. Formerly,—old Normans still remember them—there were wolves in Ecouves and Andaine. When they had become numerous, when they were heard howling of an evening in the moonlight, people used to organise great hunting parties on the outskirts of the woods, to leeward of the wind. At a signal given by the chief huntsman pandemonium would break loose: shouts, pistol-shots, horns, scythe-blades striking against iron, while the hunters advancing in order beat up the bushes. ‘The wolf would hear the fearful music, and attempt to gain the open country. He would slip out silently ; they would see his flaming eyes, the short prick ears, the long greyish plume of his tail, his short neck which did not admit of his looking sideways. If it was an old beast, he would not attempt cunning, but make off cautiously at once, straight ahead as fast and keeping himself as much concealed as may be. He would seek for an unguarded spot; after having made a circuit twenty times of the ring which was continually being 8DHE LAND AND fHE PEOREE contracted by the beaters, he would make up his mind to break through it. That was the moment to shoot at him. His cry would be heard; wounded, he would let himself be finished off without making any further resistance. In order to extirpate him more completely, men preferred the snare, the iron trap, the pitfall hidden beneath moss towards which the animal was enticed by a trail of vile baits. If he became suspicious in time, if only his paw was caught, the wolf would amputate his own leg with his teeth and await, in this suffering state, till his brethren came and, with a cruel kindness, devoured him. Man then redoubles his cunning. ‘The last wolves of Andaine have disappeared, tempted by skilfully poisoned carrion. The stag alone has withstood till this day all attempts to extirpate him. You may happen to see him at break of day or when the noise of the downpour stirs him up in rainy weather. In winter, when he can find no food in the depths of the forest, he will venture into the clearings, the little coppices, and even come on cultivated land. The noise of his browsing accompanied by a sort of hiccup can be heard. In rutting time, towards the end of the glorious summer, when love grips him, when he is seeking the wandering doe, he goes in search of water ; the dew on the grass is not enough for him now; he runs to ponds, streams, springs to slake his terrible heat. But to capture him you will need all the regal preparations of the chase of former times. In old France, whereof these forests preserve a picture for us, the chase is the pleasure and the privilege of the king. Jurists with a ridiculous and solemn stateliness completely establish this fact ; wild beasts do not belong to the individual whose land they frequent ; to him they only represent a hope. Now, hope cannot be ranked among possessions actually in existence! On this error, in justifying which they made even Providence a party to the suit, the harsh lawyers of the ancien régime—the Old Order—built up that circumstantial, complicated code 9AMID THE FORESTS OF NORMANDY against which the revolutionary urge was to rebel. In the struggle which the French peasant was w aging against the forest in order to create field and meadow, in ERie battle which would have resulted in the thinning of the Norman woodlands, the king intervened; he took sides with the forest, his dear delight. You must read his edicts and decrees, you must go through the laws administered by his forest-rangers, before understanding the bitterness of this duel which, as well as being a conflict of ideas, sets the gentleman and the peasant at war with each other. ‘The clown is forbidden to cut or mow grass outside his own holding before the Feast of Saint John the Baptist and without a previous visit from the parish constable. “hose who have sown vetches to feed their poultry or to make into bread are forbidden to visit their land before the first day of April, in case the partridges and pheasants should suffer. Owners or farmers may not remove thistles or other noxious weeds before a fixed date; they are forbidden to tear off the old thatch before the first day of October or ever to burn it; they are forbidden to allow their cattle to graze on the grass in the ditches ; forbidden to gather pornflow ers ; forbidden to wander or stroll in plains, woods or covers off the main roads; shepherds are for- bidden to step on ground sown with wheat ; forbidden to allow beasts to remain in the pasture after sunset ; every- one is forbidden to have dogs, except ona leash ; forbidden to gather mushrooms and strawberries in the woods ; forbidden to cut holly or broom. The windows and cellar vent-holes of houses on the outskirts of a forest have to be closed with a grating of trellised wire or wickerwork. ‘To carry a gun is forbidden. And if some of ‘the common people” are caught hunting game, big or little, what are the penalties? For the first offence, a fine or ‘whipping till blood flows ; for the second offence, banishment ; for the third, the galleys and confiscation of all property. The law acdeas that the peasant may be suspected of contemplating poaching if he has left open a door fronting the open country or woods ; without leave 1OTHE LAND AND THE PEOPLE he may not pierce a new entry in the wall surrounding his field or homestead. And, by a really admirable legal quiddity, the man who has been found guilty of having transgressed any of these enactments will be declared a useless person and, as such, banished. ‘They tell us indeed that in Normandy these forest laws were not always rigorously enforced, that concessions were made to the bourgeois and even to peasants, who were licensed to catch little birds in nets. These licences were restricted as the royal hunting grounds became better organised. Our histories have recorded the influence which the theories and social reflections of philosophers exercised in forming the revolutionary spirit; we may be certain that this stern code of forest laws, penning in the peasant, making him a slave every hour of the day, not allowing him properly to enjoy the highway, his house or his field, did more than Rousseau’s Contrat Social itself to fan those deep hatreds which were ultimately bound to end in an explosion. The peasant will revolt not so much to gain a theoretical liberty as to acquire the right, which was refused him, to fence his meadow with a growing hedge, to dig a well, to draw the sand he needs from a pit, and to wander at will when he likes, and as he likes, on his old ancestral soil. From this double battle against the forest and against the king the Norman woodland was born. ‘The peasant, a silent master, keeps on working. In the history of the smallest village you may follow his patient and brave ascent, in the shadow of the lord’s manor and the church. To the forces which bear rule over him he opposes his cunning, the fruit of his dangerous meditations. He keeps watch, while waiting the moment to act. The monks help him to increase the arable land; they have a right of tithe over the villages, and for a long time now they have had their barns and sheepcotes installed in the forest. [hatched roofs spring up on the clearings and become more numerous ; parishes come into being around the church and graveyard; each of them has its scanty archives, its humble annals. IIAMID THE FORESTS OF NORMANDY An example? Here is one. In the neighbourhood of Joué-du-Bois is found a brightly coloured granite which the local workmen still call the green stone. On contact with the air this rock corrodes, whence the appearance, blue and red mingled, of some church walls. ‘The crosses of some of the Norman calvaries have been cut from it into stately monoliths. In that place, formerly, lofty furnaces were wont to blaze while forges re-echoed to the noise of hammers. Roads faced with hewn stone led through the wooded hills. The vicar reigns over the parish, supported by gifts and tithes from corn, fruit and fleeces. In good years the people make a special offering to restore church windows or repair its roof ; their reward is an inscription of honour on the walls. ‘The vicar has the altar-screen gilded at his Own expense. Sometimes a worthless or incapable priest finds his way into the parish, till the day comes when Monseigneur the Bishop of Séez will turn him out of his office. Nevertheless, though the church belongs to the vicar, the adjoining chapels are the lords’ private property. The alms-collector moving among the con- gregation with his shell, must not pass beyond the nave, even if candles and incense have to be paid for. Gradually the parish becomes a sort of republic. The inhabitants hold meetings to fix the fees of the grave- digger and the cost of tolling the bells ; those present give an undertaking on behalf of those who are absent. ‘The bishop’s visit is a great festival. The altar cloths have been changed and the lace of the albs and the veil of the communion table washed. ‘The chaplain has got out the sacred vessels, the chalices, the wooden cross adorned with silver cords. ‘The bishop offers up his prayer at the high altar, censes the baptismal fonts, gives absolution to the dead in the graveyard. If he has time, he visits the hospital reserved for the sick and the lepers’ spital. In some privileged parishes, of which Joué-du-Bois was one, a schoolmaster teaches the children to read, to sing the Salve regina and the Anthem of Saint Sebastian. 'Thither come also to sit for a longer period candidates for the 12THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE post of village doctor or lawyer and future merchants, the pedlars. The manor is surrounded by ditches and defended by its loopholed out-buildings. ‘The lord owns gardens and warrens, farms and messuages. The leading gentry, the vavasors, gather and bring in the taxes. But what law- suits, what contests! "The churls gather together to take counsel before the church door. One must pay the tally which the unlettered collector has marked by a notch, satisfy the tax-gatherer, and hand over the hearth- tax and the feudal-tax and, if one has inherited property, the relief to the overlord. Ifthe State is passing through hard times, there are the tenth and the twentieth to pay as well. Exorbitance is tempered by fraud; the plebeian hides the price of what he sells. In order to defend him- self, a malcontent will lodge his plea in the bailiff’s court of Falaise. In the days of the Great King, also, the parish will have to supply its proper quota of recruits. They enlist, in particular, the unemployed, by force, but the syndic is keeping watch and, in spite of what the conscription council can do, protects abuses. Thus misery often enters, not the home of the farmer who 1s so comfortable in his house with the large oak bedstead and well-filled cupboard, but the home of the white-gaitered labourer who has to be content to live on oaten porridge, buckwheat bread and fresh milk. Every day is a struggle against the hostility of the masters and the seasons. Yes, but in this school of patience a being, both vigorous and subtle, is in process of formation, a thoughtful uncommuni- cative being, appreciative, full of life : the Norman peasant. IV Little by little, to the north of that series of hilltops which divide the waters of the Loire and Seine valleys, bordering that little range of hills where the presence of a river or the jut of a hillside will give birth to towns— towns dead or towns transformed, Falaise and Vire, Domfront and Mortain, Fougéres—the Bocage (wood- land) is displayed. 13AMID THE FORESTS OF NORMANDY Looking at it to-day, one feels that its real aspect is not its summer one, when the sun prolonging his rays to the latest hour of the day, drying up the meadows, gives to the blue-enamelled evenings that infinite peace which makes this land a privileged region for repose of spirit. In such delicious hours these districts of Lower Normandy recall the pastures of Mantua. ‘They must be seen when the mist hangs to the leafless trees, crawls along the hedges, shuts out the horizon. A cattle-breeding country before all; but also an industrial country. In this region which Vire and Falaise bound on the north, Carouges and Domfront on the south, in this quadrilateral, the peasant has added to the natural by joining industrial resources. Tanneries and forges have for a long time now employed windmill power. ‘Tinchebray, where the match was played that handed over Normandy to the king of England, is proud of its hardware and ironwork which provide employment for both factory hands and home- workers. F'lers bleaches cottons and yarns. More than fifteen thousand weavers are found around Condé-sur- Noireau. Judging by the dates of their churches, built for the most part in the twelfth or thirteenth century, these communities are ancient. It was right in the middle of the Woodland, at Villers, in the town where one of the most important French markets of milch cows is held, that Richard-Lenoir! was born, an admirable example of what ingenuity there may be in a Norman brain. But this adaptation to industrialism has not altered the character of the Norman Woodland, solidly fixed upon granite, striped with red sandstone, peopled with thatched roofs. ‘lhe industrial region even embraces districts that are not without a beauty of their own. Although the forest may be left far behind, the tree still dominates the landscape. It forms a landmark rising above hedges of hazel, gay with honeysuckle. In the dazzling months of summer, it spreads its leaves right aloft in the light under a sky which is the colour of a hydrangea. Every shade of ' Frangois Richard-Lenoir (1765-1839) introduced cotton spinning into France.—Tvans/ator’s note. 4THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE ereen can be discerned there. And flowers are every- where, as a symbol of the sweetness of this land. Roses erow luxuriantly, in every colour but above all white, even at the foot of the calvaries hewn out of grey stone. There are still left charming secluded silences, of which one may catch a chance glimpse during a ramble, and where one would like to live. Above and to the right of the Orne valley, near a cross-roads, in a spot named Saint- Clair, a walnut tree overshadows a group of mean houses, resplendent with hollyhocks, geraniums, dahlias. Some yards farther along, the view embraces all the sunny hills of the left bank of the river tinted with azure by the woods. A Norman Switzerland? ‘The phrase seems somewhat pretentious. The Vere, the Noireau, the Orne itself, have dug narrow passages for themselves where the road has difficulty in finding room to get past the inns decked with flowers. The red sandstone rocks between the thickets are brave with heather. At least, it 1s a country worthy to be compared with our Bugey. The factory which bars the river is the sole thing to destroy the harmony of this remote district where one loses all memory of the town, where, helped by imagination, we may rediscover some impressions of the sub-alpine country. Nothing could be more peaceful. When the road 1s being warmed in August by the midday sun, when the light, enveloping all the horizon of wooded sunny hills, 1s driving back the shadow to the very foot of the hedge, when in the sky little gossamer clouds are folding and unfolding themselves on the bosoms of the hills as if they were scarves, when the water is gliding under the lilac sandstone of the rock, this district which is so silent and, for long distances, so deserted, but made gay by gardens, flecked, even under the thatches, by the scarlet splash of geraniums, this district where the most humble wall 1s starred with roses offers one of the most delightful pictures France has to offer. At Clécy, the Orne itself goes into hiding and seems to fall asleep. 15AMID THE FORESTS OF NORMANDY V Time has determined what part each one has to play, has given the province poise, assured its future. : The Norman Woodland has its own capital, Vire, between the great forest of Saint-Sever, the last wooded plantation before the coast of Manche, and the historic vales of ‘Tinchebray. A little town of granite and slate, of calm and wealth, of quiet and good cheer, it is the meeting place where the activities of commerce come to exploit the wealth of cattle-breeding and industrialism. The interest of the little city does not depend upon the jarring assembly of remains which are grouped between the Gothic gateway of the Clock-tower and the church of Notre-Dame : some defaced Renaissance facades, a watch- tower at the angle of a citizen’s house, old streets, meandering like to the beds of dried-up torrents, at the side of which, solitary in its pride, rises the entrance to an eighteenth-century nobleman’s hotel. The interest depends upon the collective unity of these houses, which are solid and severe of aspect, hewn and, as it were, carved in local stone, from Montjoie and Gathemo. The church of Notre-Dame would be pleasing, with its charming sixteenth-century choir, if it were not disfigured by excess of gold, by the brutal costliness of its altar. No more is to be found here than fragments and ruins scattered round a donjon-keep which served in turn as a stronghold for warriors, as a Calvary for devotees, and as a Mountain for revolutionaries. It is here, around the historic capital of the Woodland, that the valour of the Norman peasant can best be estimated. Here it was that he furiously attacked the primeval forest, tearing up with the hoe and the strength of his arm the roots of the broom, the gorse and the brier. The earth thus freed would bear crops for only three or four years ; at the end of this respite, the peasant had to begin the work of conquest over 16el : z= e ow Photos NOTRE-DAME, VIRE.a + n A H ol i , i {THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE again in order to sow a little corn, more especially the rye and buckwheat needed for his porridge. To the tallages, to the poll-tax, to the twentieths, were added the salt-tax and the reliefs. In some ways the Woodland seems privileged. It 1s a quart bouillon district ;+ salt costs less than in the districts where the full tax is levied, but each peasant must buy seven pounds of it yearly, and use it in pot and salt-box ; if he fails to carry out these injunctions, he will be arrested, perhaps sentenced to the lash, banishment, the galleys. All the same, beasts destroy this corn sown with so much pains. The hunt must be allowed to pass over it at will. The game- keepers of the Prince of Condé rear young wolves, which they set free at the beginning of winter. he peasant of the Woodland obstinately persists in breaking up fresh arable land. ‘The country does not even possess roads or bridges. The rivers have to be crossed by fords or on planks. ‘The lord encroaches upon the commons’ land, extends his fences, diverts streams. Obstinate creature that he is, the peasant clears the barren moors of Martilly at the very gates of Vire, turns the heather into meadows and the brushwood into gardens. He dries up the ponds, plants nursery gardens; by degrees, he takes up cattle-breeding, and transforms into a noble breed the race of indifferent horses which he found in the land. ‘The whole actual fortune of the Woodland is his work. Against the natural wealth which he has destroyed he can now, sure of his livelihood, proudly set the things he has created by personal endeavour, those which give the province its originality. VI And, first of all, he has developed the culture of the apple-tree. In his book, so full of honesty and learning, 1 These were the districts allowed to take their salt from specified works, and pay a tax of a quarter-bushel (d0wi//om) instead of the usual gabelle —Translator’s note. 17AMID THE FORESTS OF NORMANDY on Norman agriculture in the Middle Ages, Monsieur Leopold Delisle proves that Normandy in the eleventh and twelfth centuries owned some famous and prosperous vineyards. On the sunny hill-slopes near the abbeys were not the monks bound to make sure of the liquor needed for the daily Mass? But, in the course of the ages, the Norman peasant set himself above all to improve the national drink, that bitter cider which the heroes in the legends would only swallow as a proof of their self-morti- fication. He was no longer content to go at the seasons prescribed by custom and gather in the woods wild fruits, the medlar and the sloe, the bitter service-berry and the nut, the pear and the apple. Our ancestors drank hardly anything but beer made from groats. Gradually the blooming land of Normandy was covered by all those pomiterous varieties, pippins, rosy apples, acid summer and winter rambours, calvilles, grey fennel-scented apples, which give it in spring its virginal wreath of white canopies, tinted with rose. The wars having come to an end, as soon as the peasant can, without danger, exercise his right of pasturage, he follows the example of the lord and the abbot, who long ago had founded sheepfolds and studs where they keep stallions. It is an established custom that if the lord in his old age retires into the abbey which he defended for so long, he makes it a gift of his best steed. Saint Louis grants rights of commonage over the estate of Herbe Amére to the monks of Mortemer for their stud. At the time of the invasion by Edward III, Froissart depicts the Cotentin as a country fat and fertile in everything, rich in kine and horses. Kings came to Normandy to find the palfreys needed for their armies. In all the large fiefs a special officer, the marshal, is given charge of the stable. Among the presents which are exchanged, none, according to the records, is more precious than the gift of a white and grey horse, tendered together with a silver mark. "To-day the centre of the breeding district is Merlerault, famous for its grass. ‘They still preserve there the memory of Voltaire. ‘To retell everything good and beautiful that he did,” declares the local author, Charles du Hays, 18THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE ‘“‘would mean filling up several pages with names.” I concur. ‘“‘ Everywhere his sons and daughters can be recognised by the beauty of their form, by their speed and the charm of their elegance and also by the way they are prolific.” I am beginning to feel uneasy. “* Unfortu- nately he died young, having been burnt alive in his stable.” I understand now: this Voltaire was a stallion. One has some difficulty in getting accustomed to this vocabulary. “* Raphael was matchless in steeplechases— Duplaix, son of Pickpocket—Venus, was first-rate as a trotter—what a brood-mare the daughter of Jericho was —you must not omit Homer from the list of famous sires.” But one does not dare even to smile when in the presence of one of these tall peasants, who in the court of some old manor house which he has rebuilt, as did the master of Rouges Terres, organises and directs his stud even as a general his army. The names themselves prove the forest origin of the pasture-lands: Bois-Barbot, Bois-Turpin, Bois-Motté, Bois-Certain, Bois-Geffroy.t Sometimes meadow-land has been established on the bed of a dried-up pond. Certain pasture-lands have taken the places of vineyards or culti- vated fields. Unfortunately, for a long time now indeed, the scarcity of labour has led to the necessity of changing arable land into pasture. Alas, that is the fate of the whole of France! ‘Thus the district of Merlerault itself was formerly a forest, since reclaimed. ‘There was developed the breed of Norman horses, steeds for tournaments and war, renowned for their vigour, their speed and their agility, improved by being crossed with the Arabs which the lords brought back from the Crusades. The English in the Hundred Years’ War establish themselves in this country in order to recruit their cavalry. Colbert under- stands the importance of this new resource and founds the stud of Pin, planted right upon a terrace, amidst scenery of woods and meadows bathed by a light such as Poussin’s brush used to portray. You can still see, woven into the tapestry, the arms of the first director : a saltire, quartered 1 Fr. Bois, a wood.—Translator’s note. a7AMID THE FORESTS OF NORMANDY with four rayed mullets. By degrees, however, the studs of former days are disappearing. Some leagues from Merlerault the Perche district begins, a land of sunny hills and forests. Perche of the good horses, which are able to run fast and draw heavy loads. A peasant breeder explained to me the qualities of his produce. ‘“‘ They have a great deal of precocity, a good appearance, a firm and unwavering character, and an inborn confidence in man. ‘They are,” he added, “honest horses. Look at the beautiful grey coat they have when not crossed with stranger blood. ‘These are healthy horses ; we know nothing here of spavin or farcy or splints. “They have improved us too ; in order to train them, we are obliged to show ourselves gentle and patient.” My breeder becomes enthusiastic. His voice grows louder. ‘“‘ Look,” says he to me, “‘ at the coat of arms of the Counts of Perche. As the emblem of their nobility they have taken the hoof-print of one of their horses. They display three chevrons on their banners (the number three signifying infinity) in order to afhrm the excellence of the results they have obtained. [| know nothing more beautiful than a well-bred Percheron when he has a strong head, open nostrils, with his neck standing out well, prominent withers, sloping shoulders, the body nicely rounded, and back long.” A sceptic begins to argue: “ Your Percheron is an Arab made gross by the climate and debased by the mean employments to which you devote him! And, moreover, the best Percherons are no longer to be met with in Perche. Father Morgan, a century ago, took your recipe for America ; and he knew how to eae use of it.’ My old breeder becomes indignant: “To develop a Percheron an uneven country such as ours is needed ; obliged to go uphill and down the animal acquires strength, pliancy in his shoulders, haunches and hocks. He needs the grasses of Clairefeuille. Even in Cotentin, where however the race has been long established, even in the home-district of the energetic Hague ponies which would rather die than shirk, too rich a pasture is making 20THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE their horses too fat. It is to Merlerault that the countries which wish to ennoble and refine their breeds will always have to come.’’ The peasant of these Woodlands loves nobility, but particularly in horses. VII Abundance came at last to reward so many efforts and somuch patience. A wealthy Normandy came into bloom, surrounded by trees and covered with flowers. Such a house of black stone, as you may see on the out- skirts of Carouges, would be extremely sad without its geraniums and the big asters which weave it a humble but charming crown! The slate roof, on a stormy day, blends its sober colour with the freshly washed green of the wide hedge or the meadows, with the branching palms of the ferns as well as with the violet clouds of the sky. Being surrounded by the forest where, in places, brown sandstone crops through the earth, would make this landscape melancholy enough were it not for those little gardens full of hollyhocks whereon the eye 1s glad to linger, weary of not being able to perceive the horizon, save where a gap suddenly opens on a clearing amid the plantations of trees. A few steps from a spruce sheathed in vy, a rose- tree is climbing over the wall. With the hydrangea, it is the local flower ; it takes possession of the smallest cottage garden. Certain tithes, formerly, were paid in chaplets of roses. Each year, on the Day of Saint John the Baptist, the lady abbess of the Holy Trinity receives this pleasant tribute, sitting in her chair, in the centre of the convent, just before the hour of nones. The flower of Aphrodite, the flower born of the blood of Adonis, the flower which adorned pagan orgies and has become the emblem of Christ, of the Martyrs and of Mary. This is enough to make us have some mental reservations about the durable value of myths! Some houses in Caen are held at the feudal rent of bunches of lavender, but others for one of red roses. In the little Renaissance 21 CAMID THE FORESTS OF NORMANDY garden of Coutances, under the cathedral, I repeated to myself near the bust of Remy de Gourmont * the litantes which he dedicated to the rose. ‘“Rose of copper hue, more deceitful than our joys, rose of copper hue, embalm us in thy untruthfulness, thou hypocritical flower, thou silent one. “ Rose of the painted meretricious face, rose with the harlot’s heart, rose of the painted face, make a semblance of being pitiful, thou hypocritical flower, thou silent one. “ Rose of the youthful cheek, oh virgin full of treacheries to come, rose of the youthful cheek, innocent and red, cast the nets of thy clear eyes, thou hypocritical flower, thou silent one... . “ Rose with the dark eyes, mirror of thy everlasting nothingness, rose with the dark eyes, make us believe in the mystery, thou hypocritical flower, thou silent one. Rose of the sapphic glance, paler than the lily.”’ These are not litanies but invectives. A hypocrite * This rose the colour of the dawn, this cup which is shattered by a sigh, this nosegay of fair petals! I look at a Norman cottage plot. At the end of a pathway, erect on their sturdy stems, the flowers of Duchesse de Morny have burst forth; their strong branches, armed with spines, bear big notched leaves in the shape of a heart ; at their tip rises the globular blossom, of so fresh and tender a hue that a painter might safely be challenged to reproduce the pale facings of the petals, shaded with dull silver. ‘The capucine roses group their russet efflores- cence in little bushes. A Maréchal Niel raises itself upon an olive-coloured stock. A miracle of delicacy, that part of the tree which 1s exposed to the sun is tanned a reddish-brown. Subtle odours perfume the garden. This other bush, which defends itself with hooked spikes, is not so easy to classify. Bend over it: on a ground of flame-colour, a touch of crimson or black of a velvety appearance. I have often seen this variety on graves, and it will retain its white corymbs up to the first frosts; our 1 French man of letters (1858-1915), famous for his literary style — Translator’s note. 22THE LAND AND? Ek BRORGTE village gardeners name it Mere de Famille—the Mother. It belongs to those roses, even as Gloire de Dijon, whose carmine increases as they open. ‘There are some of them which remain green and whose petal is a leaf; some of them are sleek, some rumpled; some of them vary according to the tricks played by the shadows ; some of them are veined like to human flesh ; some of them have down like to that on a cheek, or lashes like to those on eyelids ; there are sociable and solitary kinds. None of them has the questionable appearance of the orchid or, even, the hydrangea ; if the rose must be made a symbol, I say that it is the emblem of France. ‘There are painted flowers, vicious flowers, but this one is not so—not this flower, as old as history, this flower which men have explained by the most antagonistic myths, which they have sometimes made the emblem of love and life, some- times the symbol of death, which, withstanding all these vicissitudes, all these distortions, asks, in order to ensure its vigorous grace, no more than to be regenerated on the wild stock whence it had its birth, in a wayside hedge. Bearing no malice against the man who slandered them, the roses of Coutances enshrine the statue of Gourmont, remembering that in spite of all his artificiality he gave their name to the purest of his heroines. ‘“* She gathered a red rose and raised it to her lips, kissing it as a sacred thing.” For this sentence, more sincere because more natural, may the author have his pardon ! By these flowers the harmony of the Norman landscape is made complete. ‘They find there what they like, even as does their big sister, the forest tree: water and light. Rain here is the ordinary companion of existence. It penetrates the grove, riddles the pond with a thousand stabbings, trickles down the violet-hued stems ; it whips the trembling hedge, and sets diamonds on the drooping crown of the honeysuckle. ‘The sky puts on a skull-cap of clouds of the colour of the sea. ‘The showers make the roofs shine and long tears run down the walls. ‘The impassive cattle go on chewing the cud. ‘The river increases its speed. But just let a break come! ‘The 25AMID THE FORESTS OF NORMANDY white hydrangeas gleam again with the shades of fresh snow. And Normandy grows brighter under the silver light. In order to judge of it better, in order to take leave of this scenery, let us go climbing, after a storm, on the terraces of Falaise. VIII The castle still has a certain interest, though its walls, on the sandstone promontory which they command, have been repaired right often, and perhaps from the early years of the eleventh century have suffered less from sieges than restorations. ‘The rock whereon Robert the Devil built has more colour than these walls, pierced by doors where the royal arms of England and France followed one another, rudely built of schist blocks set in a herring-bone or fern-leaf pattern. Not a trace of art, unless it be in the arched bays of the windows, the tracery in which the capitals are enveloped. And—must it be said ?—it will be as well not to believe the guide too implicitly, when he shows visitors the chamber of Robert the Devil or that of Arlette, the tanner’s daughter, who became the mother of William the Conqueror. It was right that the legend should make a privileged person of Arlette, one of admirable beauty, and that the birth of William should be attended by marvels. History owes these lies to its heroes. A minstrel tells us in his chronicle how Robert, returning from the chase, saw the damsel washing at the fountain. On this indication, archee- ologists have searched in all seriousness for the window through which Robert could have caught sight of the tanner’s daughter. The interest does not lie in that direction. From the fifteenth-century tower which the English built, at the time when their sovereign was called to the throne of France, more than a hundred feet above the moats and the Val d’Ante, the eye sees not only the castle itself, where Talbot, Captain-general of the Norman marches, received the vassals’ dues (the sword, the lance- 24THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE head and the swan), but also the sentinels’ walk around the walls, the glacis where Protestants and Catholics slaughtered one another, the rock by way of which Henri Quatre attacked the Leaguers and that Brissac, one of whose soldiers has left a dated inscription on the wall ; then masses of lindens and elms overshadowing the roads, the whole town of Falaise, the Romanesque tower of Saint-Gervais, the pinnacles of the Trinité and farther away, on the plateau crowning the east, the church of Guibray, the old suburb. On the day when I saw it, Falaise was bathing in the tender clearness of a glorious day of sunshine. In the atmosphere washed by recent rains, on the garden-beds, on the woods variegated with copper beeches, lay a gentle radiancy. I rediscovered the fine light of Vermeer, of Delft, a light without glare, yet so pure that one could see on distant window-sills the purple of the geraniums. And how silent it was! Old chroni- clers have told us what a noise was made, in the thirteenth century, at the fair of Guibray, when, among the movable booths, between the stalls assigned to each merchant by the royal official, the crowds keep thronging through the streets called Paris or Lyons, Rouen or Tours, wherein were sold silken stuffs, woollen cloth, gold and silver embroid- eries. At Guibray they also deal in leather, goldsmiths’ wares, drugs. But the quarter most swarming with life is the horse-market ; they have come from Germany or Holland, England or Spain, in such huge numbers that the market spreads out over the neighbouring fields. A mountebank is exhibiting the eighth wonder of the world ; a dumb woman. A great noise rises from this mob, which is crowding to the doors of the poulterers or coster- mongers. Brawls break out. For an excellent wine is made in the neighbourhood of Guibray, a wine which has been sung by Basselin : Who’s for Guibray ? Come, let us make a start— How that good wine will warm your head and heart! The syndic of the fair himself keeps the Peacock tavern. 25AMID THE FORESTS OF NORMANDY One can drink at the Fair Fountain and the Big Crown and the Image of Saint Fames and the Cross of Straw and the Pit of Cloths and the Royal Sword and the Image of Magdalen and The Green House and The Little Unicorn and, of course, at Paradise. A paradise where one could not drink perry or cider would be, for a Norman, no paradise. Where do they not drink? ‘There are nearly a hundred taverns there, without counting chance tippling places. A Venetian dancing-girl displays her supple agility. A showman is exhibiting a sea-lon ; another has on view an armless man and a dragon basilisk. A pedlar refuses to obey the orders of a constable who drives him away. Carters insist on trying to drive through, despite of orders and barriers. The only one who observes any discretion is the pickpocket. To-day, the silence is adorable. [he town, no matter how full of activity, allows none of its noise to rise to this high terrace. In the streets, formerly filled with noble- men and lawyers, merchants are noiselessly at work. The red tiles of the roofs have taken on hard rosy hues in the sunshine. A light worthy of dawn is weaving garlands on the walls which are assuming the airs of crenellated battlements. One would say, judging from here, that all life had withdrawn itself, for not a living soul is to be seen, the streets and lanes forming trenches between the overhanging houses ; one expects to see in some deserted square a white Augustine monk passing. Life seems to be completely subterranean here. The table-cloth of light is spread from Mont Mirat to that hill crowned with spruce-trees where, of yore, people used to go to capture birds of prey and of passage, tiercelets and falcons, merlins and hawks, and eagles also, every creature as well for wrist as lure. The light bathes the old suburbs, the fountains where linen is washed, what remains of the old fulling and tanning mills. ‘The chroniclers compare Falaise to a long, narrow ship with its castle at the poop. This ship to-day, all sails lowered, seems becalmed in the light. 26THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE IX But this Normandy of the forests and the woods has its boundaries which Nature and history have strongly defined. If you go down to the south in the direction of Mayenne, the country has changed already. Even as Fougeres, Mayenne fought the conqueror coming from the north ; it made a long defence against William as also, in the fifteenth century, against the English army. And during the long tragedy of the Revolution its territory was dis- puted by the soldiers of La Rochejaquelein and those of Hoche or Kellermann. ‘The whole of this region also was a battlefield. The landscape is no longer the same. Climb the hill of Saule and the moors of Hardanges. Nothing but thin plantations of spruce is left there. In the distance, towards the right, the blue mass of the forest of Pail stands out. ‘To the north, the village of Char- chigné conceals its garlanded gardens and walls amid the Woodland. Javron has lost the wild appearance it must have presented in the early days of our history when Clotaire founded a monastery there for hermits. The forest has gradually disappeared before the efforts of man. Only the barren moor remains, with its fields of heather and fern mingled, telling that Brittany is near at hand. Gorse has taken possession of the plateau. Grass is encroaching on the fine wagon-road by which Madame de Sévigné drove towards her woods. ‘Ihe master of the place is the wind, which distorts the trees, fans forest fires when they break out, and, when winter has come, freezes the stunted spruces. Lower, some miles to the north-east of Fougéres, it is still forest, whose soaring groves shelter the huts of the sabot-makers. ‘There are to be seen evidences, mysterious some of them, of the early life of France—dolmens, lines of quartz blocks, which legends associate with memories of the Druids, rude entrench- ments which date from the earliest historical periods or even older times. Here and there, a pond covered with 2/AMID THE FORESTS OF NORMANDY aquatic plants or a marsh breaks the monotony of the scene. We are already in Upper Brittany, on the threshold of the Rennes basin, on an old frontier, reddened with blood in more than one bout of civil war. Gradually the forest has become sparser to yield place to these meadows bordered by chestnut trees, to fields of wheat protected by high hedges, to orchards full of apple and pear trees. It is a Brittany lying towards the east and north where the Breton language is not spoken, where architecture retains the influence of Normandy and Maine. Industrial progress is gradually tending to rob this country of what is left of its ethnic character. Factories are invading Fougeéres, which to-day has more than twenty thousand inhabitants. ‘’he town is becoming over-populated, while the country is becoming uninhabited. ‘The labour- ing masses who fought in former days against a class feudalism are battling to-day against the absolutism of industrialism. A town such as Fougéres has kept its fifteenth-century appearance. We note that fact when, from the terrace of the public gardens, the eye takes in the whole amphi- theatre where the little river Nancon runs along under a luxuriant mass of trees. The castle, or at least its rampart, for the living quarters have disappeared, occupies an isolated spur at the centre of its grass-covered precincts; in the midst of meadows and gardens, which have taken the place of the former marshes, at the meeting-place of roads which connect Maine and Normandy with Brittany, it still displays the platform of its donjon, its fore-court, its bailey, its walls with stone corbels, its crown of machicola- tions. In the immediate neighbourhood of the fortress, the church of Saint-Sulpice raises its tower, surmounted by a needle-like spire, out of plumb somewhat, covered with slates. ‘The grace of the pinnacles and windows, traced in the purest flamboyant style, agrees badly with the brutal rudeness of those buildings which were enlarged and altered on the introduction of artillery, not at Crécy, but several years before at the battles of Brest and Hennebont in Brittany. It is easy to understand the 28-hoio : Levy et Neurdein SAINT-SULPICE, FOUGERES.THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE importance of such a fortress when it defends a frontier before the union of France and Brittany ; when it tries to resist the encroachments of the English king or of Du Guesclin, who claims it in his sovereign’s name. What interests or even moves us, when, from the little public gardens under the walls of the church of Saint Léonard, witness itself of many a fight, we look down upon the amphitheatre of the Nangon, is not the view of these towers or these curtain-walls whose builders were obeying only utilitarian ideas: but it is to remember that here, even in the fourteenth, but above all in the fifteenth century, in the armed skirmishes between a Du Guesclin and the Duke’s troops, between a La Trémoille and his opponent, preparations were made for the linking of Brittany to France. Once again, we are standing on ground where was played one of those local dramas of which our nation is the outcome. ‘Tradition has decked with idealism the story of that good Duchess Anne, small, slim and limping, as rich in spirit and kindness as she was ill-favoured in her person. The reunion of Brittany with France has been presented as a kind of idyll. I recognise very well here that it was nothing of the sort. I perceive the marchings and counter- marchings of armies, the coalitions, the combinations, the underhand dealings, which always ended in an appeal to arms. When the Estates of Vannes are discussing, 1n 1532, the question of definite annexation, the decisive argument invoked before them is that Brittany, if it continues its previous way of life, runs the risk of never knowing peace. The vigour of La Trémoille, diverting the course of the Nancon in order to drain the castle ditches and assault the ramparts, contributes at least as much as the diplomacy of Charles VIII to bring about the union of Brittany and France. So speaks to us this scene in two colours, slate and granite, this modest church of Providence even more touching than the luxurious fane of Saint-Sulpice. The beautiful moist light is steeping the calm rose-filled gardens, cut by streamlets of running water. In the a7AMID THE FORESTS OF NORMANDY damp air the smoke rises slowly to the tops of the poplars, to the terraces of the upper town, to the flower-beds set in the French fashion with their trimmed shrubs. The slate has grown pale ; the stone is turning yellow, even as this field of marigolds under the walls of the promenade. The ivy is spread over the ramparts like to veins. The old quarter, in its amphitheatre of hills and rocks, remains silently isolated from the rest of the industrious town. Fougeéres, the town of hanging gardens, keeps, in spite of the dilapidated interior of the fortress, its appearance of a fortified clearing on the verge of the forest. Politics and war prepared the fusion together into the land of France of these groups between which Nature had placed the broad obstacle of the beech woods. But already we are touching the borders of Brittany ; we are turning our backs on the country where we propose to pitch our camp. x To its right and left the Norman Woodland is bounded by two limits yet more precise: the range of the Perche hills and the sea. Between the forest of Andaine and the hillsides around Mortain extends the wooded wall of the Lande Pourrie. The soil rises to form a little hill, more than 1200 feet high, the Brimballe butte, whence flow the Vére, the Noireau and the Egrenne; it is a mountain as far as Lower Normandy goes ; it is the Norman Switzerland the guides assert once again. Before Mortain the Cance has dug itself a deep valley. Woods, waters, granite, spruce-trees springing from turf, that 1s the setting. ‘The houses with their severe fronts are built of stone fetched from the neighbouring quarries. ‘The church of Saint-Evroult, the little hospice with its pack-saddle roof, the tower with narrow window embrasures, the twelfth-century cloister, which flanks, in the courtyard of the White Abbey, the Cistercian chapel, the sum of all of these would complete a whole so full of gravity as to be almost sad, if the morning light, which is bathing the forest and piercing the oaken 30THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE underwood, did not fasten upon the lancet windows, did not penetrate into the choir of the church, where vergers and beadles, bedizened in bright red and emerald green, seated in the miserere stalls, are watching a congregation of women and children at prayers. It is also the light, a gentle light of the seashore which, below the loitering clouds, breaks up the sea of foliage seen from the summit of the rocky cliffs as a painter does with his landscape ; the first greener, the others of a faded blue up to the junction of wood and sky, over yonder and up there, on the sandy plain. Here we are near the coast. | A district such as Granville was also cut out of the dense forest. Mont Saint-Michel was surrounded, up to the Chausey chain of rocks, with woods which were sometimes termed in church annals the Desert of Scicy. In the spring of the year 709 the forest was destroyed by the terrible equinoctial tide which made an island of Mont Saint-Michel. After that, the sea encroaches more and more, devours the lowlands, drowns the little temple of Mars which rose near the spot where to-day the town of Saint-Pair stands. On its ruins, following the usual local sequence, the oratory is built, then the monastery founded by the saint ; it will be destroyed by barbarous pirates. The district falls under the lordship of the clergy of Mont Saint-Michel ; like to all the great vassals of the Crown, they have the rights of justice, of cheminage ’ and of fornagium, of measuring and gauging, of sea-fishing, of seaweed and treasure-trove, the right of keelage of boats.* The powerful monks nominate their seneschal and their provost, their advocate and their attorney, their ranger ; their manor, enriched with lands and woods, with meadows and fish-ponds, extends over a lordship of twelve 1 « Cheminage,” in the words of an old law book, “is a toll paid for a man’s passage through a forest, to the disquiet of the wild beasts of the forest.” Fornagium, a feudal tax paid by tenants for permission to have an oven of their own, or for the baking of their bread in the lord’s oven.— Translator’s note. 2 Keelage, practically harbour dues.—Translator’s note. 31AMID THE FORESTS OF NORMANDY hundred square roods to the outskirts of the commons of paint-Planchez. Scarcely any clergy in France are richer. The soil of Granville belongs to them, and it is for them that these poor fishermen toil, who draw up their boats in the dangerous harbour, under the rock covered with heather-bells, at the mouth of the muddy torrent which winds along between narrow cliffs. Moreover, the whole of this coast is under the rule of the Mount. You can see it long before arriving at the village of Ducey which, on the banks of the Sélune, proudly displays its gardens filled with geraniums, hydrangeas and mag- nolias in full bloom. The forest grows more scattered as you approach the immense expanse of sand. Across the fields where numerous cattle are grazing the Mount appears and disappears, masked by a group of hills or a chestnut grove. ‘Then, on the outskirts of the village of Beauvoir, nestling amid flowering clover and apple orchards, it rises up, lilac-tinted under the swollen screen of clouds. Unfortunately, an architect had the very questionable idea of crowning the church with a slender spire, which is shabbily finished off with a gilded statue of Saint Michael. It was already more than enough that, in order to exploit the Mount, that row of houses was allowed to be built which are situated under the old sentinels’ walks. As a result of alterations decided on by architects, the Mount has lost, in part, its primitive outline, when the church scarcely rose above the famous “ stairway of lace,” and when the terraces, the walls of the nave and choir seemed prolongations of the buttresses of the bare rock. ‘Then, that is towards the end of the fifteenth century, the old religious fortress, its only addition being the hamlet where the fishers had come to huddle up together under its protection, presented the appearance that history had intended for it ; a place of prayer assuredly, set upon this islet less because of miraculous apparitions vouchsafed to its founders than for the silent majesty of the site; an oratory and a convent ; but also a fortress whose import- 32THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE ance increased from century to century. The Mount defended itself first of all against the Norman invasion ; in the thirteenth, and, above all, in the fifteenth century it fought against the stranger, against the English. On the northern terrace of the abbey church, which overlooks the mill tower, before the porch whose facade 1s too modern, the historic importance of the position can be perceived. The coast stands out like to the two arms of a pair of pincers, one of which hides Granville by the point of Carolles, while the other contains Cancale. Once again, we are at a point where Normandy meets Brittany. Farther inland Mont Dol, stretching up its darker crest, sustains with its steep granite that plain of alluvial soil which has gradually been extended by human labour. The sea, in early times, came right up to the forest of oaks and chestnuts, up to the hermits’ cells, up to the marge of those fountains to which tradition attaches all manner of legends. The forest and the sea have fought against one another in this bay of Saint-Michel. but having become the stronger by alliance with the hurricane, the sea won the day. In the shore, under the mud, the dead remains of trees are still to be found. ‘The waters only respected those Chausey islands whose sinuous out- lines can be traced in the far distance, when the weather 1s going to be wet. Then, in the place where the forest had been over- thrown, man, as everywhere else in Normandy, renewed the battle. He disputed the lagoons with the ocean, with the flood-tide ; he took under his protection those quicksands which assume, when veiled by the clouds, all the shades of a dove’s breast. He defended the salt flats and created the polders. ‘The Norman and the Breton who meet on this shore, which is still unstable and treacherous, have gone to as much trouble as the Dutch- man elsewhere. "They have created ditches and water- ways, improved and canalised the course of the Couesnon, created a little harbour at Pontorson. ‘They have pro- moted the growth of grass over morasses of slimy sand. And, gradually, the old Mount itself, the Tomb Mount 33AMID THE FORESTS OF NORMANDY round which, so legend says, there sail invisible vessels carrying the souls of the dead, sees itself shut in and menaced by the life human effort is creating. It seems that a dyke stretched between the point of Cancale and the bay of Carolles (they say Colbert had the idea of carrying out such a scheme) would have allowed the Mount to be surrounded with meadows and fields of wheat and have enclosed it, even as Mont Dol, nowadays a useless disarmed sentinel, in the rising tide of fat alluvial soil. To the East, in the direction of Ile de France, set on a terrace in the plains of Thimerais and Ouche—old French words under which glimmer Latin names—the Normandy of the grass and woods leans against the stout buttress of Perche, the hard nucleus whereto are attached the little provincial capitals: Mortagne, Belléme, Nogent-le- Rotrou. Belléme above all, in the heart of its beech forest, mistress of the roads leading to the Seine or the Loire, set half-way between the two rivers, has played a great part in history whereof scarcely any memory lingers in her semi-deserted streets. She curbed the pride of Alengon, her neighbour. ‘The fierce name of her Counts is Written in havoc; they built and destroyed, erected strong castles and pillaged monasteries. Even more securely than behind their walls did they entrench them- selves beneath the tall groves—the permanent forest—of Perseigne. From crest to crest, war against foreign enemies and civil war devastated this region. ‘The truth is that the district, despite historically established con- vention, despite compromises embodied in treaties, marks a frontier anda barrier. It separates the two main valleys of the Orne and the Eure. Whoever conquers it can, when he pleases, descend upon the pastures of Lower Normandy or the harvest-fields of Beauce. ‘Thick-set, crouching even as a wrestler ever prepared for the fray, rich in horses and men, this jutting-out promontory of Perche rules and protects everything. It gives Normandy a vista of the gilded splendours of Ile-de-France, even as the rock of Granville gives it a view over the infinite distances of the sea. 34‘¥ $ « 3 a “ q ws Photo : Levy ct Neturdein MONT SAINT-MICHEL, FROM THE EAST.aE LAND AND GE PEOrREE These are the boundaries of an exquisite district, sharply defined by Nature, bitterly contested throughout history. A narrow dominion, where, however, so many varied themes ring in your ears that it is impossible to take them all in. For the man who has been a great struggler, perhaps a great sufferer, what a secret pleasure to get close to a soil which has become so truly French and to interchange with it words that men do not overhear !{ i ; eeeTHE HEROIC PERIODi . ri | 5 : 5 )CHAPTER: II THE AE ROIS EE RIOD On this soil, in this Normandy of the forests and woods, it would be interesting and quite possible to rediscover traces of even the most ancient deeds, which combined to dower with its originality this province, rich with life well before the Roman invasion, steeped for several centuries in Latin influences, then submerged by the Franks and Saxons, and at last, for this date wich seems so remote really marks for it the conclusion of a long past, delivered over to the Normans of Rollo, who will create, on the threshold of the tenth century, the famous Duchy. The tourist will be content to note a few impressions. II Here is a footprint left by Rome. To the south of the line which is landmarked by the forests of Lande-Pourrie, Andaine, Ecouves and Perseigne, at the extreme border of Brittany, she founded a town, lying in ruins to-day, with its baths, temple to Fortune and theatre, at a place where some of those roads crossed which were such a marvellous instrument of civilisation and power for the Empire. Monsieur Camille Jullian—who is an incomparable and indispensable guide for those who wish to travel by sure paths the tract that hes between Gaul and France—waxes indignant about that “ mentality of the conquered,” which makes us grow enthusiastic, even to-day, after so many centuries, at the very name of Rome, and extol as a marvel of unity, order and harmony, this Empire, into 39AMID THE FORESTS OF NORMANDY whose bosom nations and mother-countries became, as it were, absorbed. These very roads, says he, these roads which you admire, Rome certainly metalled them ; she gave them their solid foundations, similar to the courses of a wall; she made them into “ sentinels’ beats on the rampart between two bastions,’ but, even while Gaul was still independent, wide tracks ran across the open country, crossing the marshes, climbing the hills. M. Julhan corrects what used to be one of our articles of faith: he will not have it that Rome improvised a civilisation upon our territory ; behind the Roman villa, enriched with flowers and fruit, he persists in seeing the old farms of the Gaul. ‘“* Don’t talk to me any more of Latin genius,” he tersely declares ; “‘ and do not make out France to be the pupil and heiress of that genius. She is something else, and she has a greater worth.” So, apparently, we do not owe Rome for either our laws or our language. The Gauls only obtained three centuries of peace by sacrificing a great part of their institutions and manners. Rome failed in her essential mission which was, in exchange for so many sacrifices, at least to protect Gaul; towards the end of the third century, the curtain of troops which she stretched along the Rhine 1s torn, and if, during another couple of centuries, she continues to govern our country, it is by keeping it under rigorous martial law. J think there cannot be many more suitable places to reflect on such doctrines than the camp, or rather the Roman camps of Jublains. You will scarcely have walked through these remains, which are carpeted to-day with a sward wherein thrive the wild parsnip, the azure- blossomed borage, the yellow discs of the St. John’s wort, the scented clusters of the marjoram, than you will become aware that there are two successive constructions in the fortress. ‘hese gates with lintels of massive stone, these blocks of roughly hewn granite set dry, with no labour of tooling, without any mortar whatsoever, this 1s indeed, it would seem, the semi-cyclopean construction of the Republic. The rubble set in cement forming the 40THE HEROIC PERIOD first circumvallation has acquired the hardness of rock ; it has worn out the crowbars of the destroyer. Even in the succinct rudeness of its plan the military genius of Rome is apparent. It seems that the main gates were set up in such a manner that the enemy was forced to offer his flank when attacking. ‘The little garrison has made certain of an abundant water supply, for drinking and for the bath ; it opened these springs at the bottom of which has been found Gaulish oak squared by a Roman hand ; it has designed the camp to face the south, according to the prescription of Vitruvius, to assure to these men who came from Italy as much heat and light as possible; the camp was stored with provisions ; under the floor of the store-rooms remains of blackened wheat have been found. The Roman order is manifested by the purity of the lines and the sureness of the plans ; even to-day the walls have lost nothing of their plumb uprightness. “The wooden portion of the structure alone has disappeared ; you have to reconstruct in imagination to-day the pent-houses under which the Roman sentries kept watch. Our guide, moreover, does not fail to recognise, in spite of his desire to limit the part played by Latin genius, the importance of this formidable stone vegetation wherewith Rome covered all Gaul, and especially—tfor three other ruined camps have been found in the forest of Belléme—this region from which she could keep a watch on the whole of Armorica. At the cross-roads, where the most important ways meet, she builds a tower, whereon are kindled, at the least danger, signal fires. The first camp of Jublains must needs be coeval with the first epoch of the Roman peace. The exterior circumvallation, with its walls built of small stones alternately with bricks, its massive towers half fallen into ruin, calls up memories of another age. The town of Jublains has developed. ‘The soil, “ this charter- room of the centuries,’ to borrow the fine phrase of a Norman author, would reveal, no doubt, if it were explored on a large scale with care, not a few mementoes. But up to the present we have been very neglectful of 41AMID THE FORESTS OF NORMANDY such researches, which, however, would give us what a valuable knowledge of our early history! We know that beneath the farm-lands of Vienne, along the Rhone, there exist hidden treasures which we leave imprisoned in the earth. A few workmen are slowly proceeding with the excavations at Alesia,* on a plateau where the destinies of our country were once decided. In this spot, a few vases of red or black glazed earthenware, tombs in reddish sandstone, fragments of paving tiles, are the best of what has been dug up from this ancient town, which spread over 50 hectares and was charged with guarding the roads leading from the river valley to the sea. At all events, some pieces of bronze allow us to date these relics. ‘This one shows the features of the feeble Gallienus, who had to struggle against the Franks; this other shows us Aurelian, the peasant of Pannonia, who sternly brought the Gauls back under his authority; here is his rival Tetricus. “hese worn coins are enough to remind us of the immense historic dramas, all memory of which has completely vanished. Yes, I understand better. This second camp of Jublains which encloses the first, it played its part in the slow decomposition of the Empire. Is nothing but the dead past there? ‘There is no past which is completely dead, which does not present a lesson to us. While treading this sward where the solid stones of the Republic still stand, even as they were set in their places, | am obsessed by the idea that the invasion of the Barbarians only becomes possible on that day when Rome began to entrust foreign auxiliaries with the care of protecting her frontier, when the army charged with the defence of Gaul ceased to be truly national. “ One day,” writes Jullian, “‘ one day, in the year 276 of our era, the army of the Rhine being occupied with civil war, and, moreover, having become very mediocre, let the Bar- barians pass. And then, no one having foreseen anything within the actual frontier, nothing being made ready to stop them, they were the masters of Gaul like to those 1 Alesia, near the modern Alise-Sainte-Reine, an important city in the times of the Roman occupation of Gaul.—Tvranslator’s note. 42THE HEROIC PERIOD who break into an empty house.”’ Rome will occupy the country during two more centuries ; she will govern it no longer. Diocletian will reduce the city of Jublains to the rank of vicus; he can no longer guard this immense Empire which stretches from the Danube to Britain. While contemplating this second circumvallation, by an association wherein I think imagination does not play too great a part, I am making a comparison with the debris of the ruins I saw down there, on the shore of the Adriatic, at Spalato, ruins which formerly were the Imperial Palace, and are nothing to-day but a poverty-stricken quarter, guarded by a broken sphinx, set in its centre. And amid this setting I reinsert some thought-evoking sentences from Les Martyrs. ‘¢ What one admires everywhere in the land of Gaul, what forms the chief characteristic of this country, are the forests. Here and there in their vast enclosures, are to be found some deserted Roman camps. . . . Even to-day I remember having once met a man among the ruins of one of these Roman camps; he was a Barbarian swineherd. While his famished pigs were completing the task of overturning the handiwork of the masters of the world, by digging up the roots which grew under the walls, he, calmly seated on the ruins of a decumana gate,” was squeezing under his arm a skin filled with wind ; he thus inspired a kind of flute whose sounds had a sweetness worthy of his taste.” iil One stone, in a Museum, makes an impression upon me which is not less strong. The little sleepy town of Saint-L6 preserves the pedestal in red marble erected by Vieux, the ancient capital of the Viducasses,” to the 1 By Chateaubriand (1809).—-Tramslator’s note. 2 The main gate of a Roman fortress, placed on the side opposite to the enemy.—Trans/ator’s note. 3 A tribe of the Armorici, whose lands lay south of the modern Caen. —Translator’s note. 43AMID THE FORESTS OF NORMANDY citizen who represented the region at the annual assembly of the deputies of Gaul. Simple archzological curiosity ? No, of a truth. Once more, I am in touch with the very early history of our country. The federal city which arose at Lyons, on the flank of the existing hill of Croix- Rouge, and was joined to the Roman quarters by a ferry or bridge, was, for the Gauls, a sanctuary similar to what Olympia was for the Greek community. A temple con- cealed itself there in a sacred grove. A hemicycle assembled the statues of sixty Gallic cities. Near an amphitheatre the principal monument rose, the altar of white marble, flanked by two columns Egyptian of granite and surmounted by two winged Victories, which the Gauls had raised to Rome and to Augustus. The sanctuary, silent and deserted as a rule, became alive when, from all the districts, the delegates arrived to fulfil their national duty, amid a concourse of merchants, travellers and, no doubt, as at Ephesus, courtesans. The altar was raised by Drusus and consecrated by him to the Emperor, that is to say, te the State religion; but it had become, for the deputies of Gaul, a centre for reunion and deliberation ; it symbolises the Roman unity, but also the Gallic unity ; to the administrative capital it opposes a capital which is religious and moral. ‘There it is that the deputies discuss the general affairs of the country, weigh the acts of office-holders, bestow censures on or vote statues to them. ‘There it is indeed that Gallic nationality is being born, the idea of the Gallic fatherland. The two columns of the altar to-day support the cupola of the church of Ainay in Lyons. I have seen on some coins, in the small Museum of Alise, the image of colossal victories. ‘lhe marble of Saint-L6 proves to me that in the mid-third century, at a time when the Empire is crumbling, the unity imposed by the Lyons sanctuary is holding firm. Glory to Titus Semnius Solemnis for his long journey, which won him the gratitude of the magis- tracy of his city! ‘These delegates are priests, but they are also political leaders ; and, even if Rome limits their influence, reduces it to a mere verification, efficacious 44THE HEROIC PERIOD withal more than once, it is valuable to see, at the very moment when the Roman Empire is beginning to melt away, the bond which unites the Gauls together holding firm. IV Thus the ruins of a camp, a pedestal without its statue furnish us with landmarks for tracing out our national history and, within this living framework, the annals of Normandy. When the Roman Empire was disintegrating (Jullian has in some very vigorous pages shown us how hollow and inert all imperialism is), when the rigidity of its solemn formule was beginning to war with the creative turbulence of actual life; when this tradition was be- coming fixed in routine, that is to say, was moribund ; when the military wall was being breached and the unity of Gaul was itself fading away in the ruin of the imperial unity, what was the fate of Normandy in these five tumultuous centuries or, as has been said, in this violent tempest which brought waves of invaders from every point of the compass to surge over what was to become France? ‘To answer this question precisely researches would be needed with which a mere tourist need not meddle. It will be enough if he borrows from historians what is needed to understand what still to-day exists of that past. Come from the German Ocean, the Saxons swept over the coasts of the Channel. More active and having a more lasting influence, the Scandinavian pirates invaded a province whose distance from the Rhenish frontier had preserved it from a similar invasion coming overland. They will settle down there in the tenth century, under Rollo, will adapt themselves to the country and even bring it peace; they will become good Frenchmen, learning how to till the soil and enrich it ; they will restore to the province its ancient wealth and its agricultural potency, while at the same time, faithful to their origin, they will show it the vast horizons that lie seaward. ‘The foundation of the Duchy of Normandy,” writes Jullian, ‘‘ helped France to rebuild itself.” 45AMID THE FORESTS OF NORMANDY The history of the Norman power is a succession of tides, floods and ebbs, with alternations of activity and stagnation in the waters. At first, it is merely an incident, caused by the dispersal over the shores of the ocean of pirates who had left Scandinavia in formidable masses : the arrival of a packet-boat from sea or, if you prefer the expression, the invasion of a pack of wolves. It is then, after a century of high tide, the ebb, the flowing of William and his comrades towards England. For more than a hundred years Philippe Auguste extends his authority over the province. ‘Then, once more, in the fourteenth century, we have flood-tide again, but coming this time from across the Channel. Thus it goes on, until the day has come, somewhat late, for its definite union with the Crown. A belated day, for it will be only after 1450 that Normandy becomes welded into the unity of France. Before this date, the life of the province is rather like to that of a large island, not well protected towards the east, for no natural barrier secures it against the development of France which, gradually, is becoming concentrated, taking shape, passing from the formula of overlordship to the idea of a kingdom, freeing itself from the neighbourhood or guardianship of the Fleming and Englishman—better protected towards the west and north, although the Channel, with its shallow seas and the sand- banks on its coasts, is hardly more difficult to cross than a ditch, giving passage to armies more than once, and being continually used for commerce or smuggling. What a road the sea is! There is no adventure novel more thrilling than this history. In the eighth and ninth centuries the first flood sweeping from the north broke upon Cotentin. Whence come these pirates? They arrive from Scandinavia, and are the bearers of myths and legends wherein no trace is discoverable of the pleasing imagery propagated by the civilisation of the Mediterranean. ‘Their own real origin seems to be a complete mystery to us. It is related that their ancestors came from Asia, led by a chief whom they turned into a god, and who, as he walked along, was 46THE HEROIC PERIOD followed by two wolves and bore two ravens on his shoulders, which were his counsellors. We know that their country was colonised at a period prior to all traditions, that some of their tribes formed themselves into peasant communities but that the most warlike departed, perhaps being expelled by revolutions at home, to pursue high adventure at sea. In the middle of the ninth century, they discover the Land of Ice, Iceland, that mysterious country which offers the contrasts of fountains of fire and eternal snows, the land whose lakes are befogged with mist and smoke ; they establish there a little free state, a republic. The old Norse poets, the skalds, whose lives remind us in some respects of those of the German Minnesingers or our own minstrels and troubadours, have left us in the Eddas and the Sagas a memento of those days of heroism and confusion. ‘These are tales told by their grandmothers, full of terror and darkness, tales wherein narrative has not yet freed itselt from legend. ‘They teach a curt, rude wisdom. “ Do not praise the day before the evening, the woman before she has been burnt, the sword before having tried it, the maid except after marriage, the ice before having crossed it, the beer but after having drunk it.”” A wisdom that is already very Norman, in the sense we attach now to the word. Certain of the Sagas, the most popular of them, give us some knowledge of the favourite tastes of this nation which was continually on the move. It imagined or, at any rate, adopted a Hercules, but a sailor Hercules, Beowulf, who spends his existence on the ocean defending kings and peoples from demons and dragons. A long poem tells of his labours. ‘The dwarf Régin, Sigurd’s teacher, sings: “‘ We are here, with Sigurd, on the trees of the ocean. ‘The winds which drive us bring us to death. The billow surges up higher than the masts. The coursers of the sea are about to perish.”’ ‘‘ Courage in the heart,” replies Sigurd, ‘‘is worth more than iron when brave men meet one another. The valiant man is able to bear off the victory even with a blunted weapon.” The Norse lyric poetry exercised a profound influence upon the 47AMID THE FORESTS OF NORMANDY literature of Northern Europe. What the skalds sang, above all, were the Viking princes, the sea-kings, whom Odin protects. The modern works of Sophus Bugge, verified by our Bréal,* have altered the opinions that used to be taught about the Eddas; but they have only confirmed the originality and interest of the Scandinavian mythology, of the Viking art. It is a poetry invigorated by the snow, a near neighbour of the earth and the forest, a poetry which makes the first human couple spring from the alder-tree and ash, embraced by the mistletoe; a poetry mainly lyrical in its characteristic poems, one which constructs a complete cosmogony and adorns it with expressive symbolism, going so far as to imagine a being at once human and supernatural, Odin’s son, Balder, who will be made a victim and resurrected for the welfare of the world. And, as there is a Nordic poetry, of which one may say that with the poem of the Voluspa,? the prophecy of the wise Vola, it has produced the most remarkable conception of the Middle Ages before Dante, so there is a Viking art too. Some of its interesting productions can be seen in the National Museum at Copenhagen, in the hall where are exhibited the rich Norse ornaments of silver and gold, horns adorned with scenes from mythology, goblets, vases of painted earthenware, iron swords, armour, bronze weapons. Rings were used as money ; thence perhaps the explanation of the legend according to which Rollo, to test the fidelity of his Norman subjects, is said to have hung a bracelet on a tree in the forest. "The most remark- able and, for us, the most living memento of this epoch, during which the Scandinavian emigrant is taking possession of the sea, is, such as you can see it in a shed in the city of Oslo, the Viking ship, which the funeral mound of Gogstad yielded up, perfectly intact and just the same * Michel Bréal, famous French philologist (1832-1915).—Tvrans- lator’s note. * The Voluspa, or Prophecy of Vola, is one of the most ancient fragments of the Scandinavian Edda.—Trans/ator’s note. 4.8THE HEROIC PERIOD as when it went cruising in the days of Harald the Stern. The clay has preserved the stout ship which the chief demanded as his last resting-place. Sixteen feet wide, and over sixty in length, the mast is still stepped in it to which the square sail was hoisted. In the upper planking sixteen openings gave passage to the oars; the helm 1s placed on the starboard side. In all likelihood, they were borne in such vessels as this when they swooped in the eighth and tenth centuries upon the peninsula of Cotentin, which was barring the road of the sea to their valour. Do not let us exaggerate their barbarousness. Norway in this eleventh century, which it loves to call a great century, 1n spite of its internal discords that are being aggravated by battles for or against the White Christ, seems to be the home of an active commerce and of a civilisation, at any rate of a rudimentary kind. But, whether they are in search of lands, or refusing to pay taxes, the Vikings are continually in a state of unrest. Iceland is not enough for them; they must have the meadows of England, the coasts of Germany. ‘They must have more yet. A king of Norway leaves his country to voyage towards the land which will become Russia. The Varangians, under Scandinavian chiefs, seize Novgorod in order to defend it better; the monument erected in this city at the millenary, in 1862, bears witness to the belief of the Russians that the foundation of their state goes back to this deed, and depends upon it. They travel down as far as Kiev, more than five hundred miles from the coast. And, indeed, controversies on the matter of the true origin of the Varangians are not yet exhausted. We know, at least, that the Greeks gave the name of Varan- gians to the Normans serving in their armies. ‘he learned Ernest Denis, whose memory we have just cele- brated in such a fitting way, declares that the name of Rous, destined by history to such a brilliant fortune, meant, in Finnish, immigrant Scandinavian. At least this much is certain, that they were not only tolerated but called in by people who were tired of being pillaged ; they re- ! French historian (1849-1921).—Tvanslator’s note. 49AMID THE FORESTS OF NORMANDY quested these chiefs, come from the north to rule them, to impart to them the rudiments of civilisation, which were already established in their homeland. ‘The Varan- gians adapt themselves to this country, as will the subjects of Rollo in Normandy ; but their destiny impels them farther still. From the Dnieper, they will advance towards Constantinople. ‘Thus, in the very century when the Normans begin to spread over our land, their racial brothers are colonising the east of Europe. Were we wrong in saying that such a history is worth all the adventure novels that ever were written ? There is more still. It can hardly be called in question that Normans of the same stock have, in the same period of history, discovered America. Iceland had become for them a base of operations. A certain Eric, towards the end of the tenth century, explores the coasts of Greenland in the heart of the Arctic regions ; the colony which he establishes there will not be able to maintain itself; to reintroduce some life into it, the world will have to await, despite the efforts of a few missionaries, the skilful explorations of a Nordenskjéld, a Peary ora Nansen. The boldest of these wanderers let themselves be carried by the sea-currents to the bay of Boston. One of Nor- mandy’s recent historians, M. Albert Petit, gives a list of the various finds which warrant this statement: the discovery, on the outskirts of Boston, of a tomb containing a skeleton and weapons; the discovery on a rock at Dighton, in Massachusetts, of a runic inscription cut to perpetuate the memory of a battle described in one of the Sagas; the discovery of a runic stone near Kensington, in Minnesota, at the extremity of the great lakes. A slab with a runic inscription and an image of Thor are said to have been found in Brazil, not far from Bahia. Icelandic manuscripts give us surer information. The newspapers have recently mentioned the name of an officer of the Norwegian navy, Captain Folgero, who was said to be planning to renew the exploit of Leif, son of Eric the Red, in a craft similar to the Oslo ship. What- ever may come of this plan, whatever we may think of the 50THE HEROIC PERIOD hypotheses which appear to have brought it into being, the salt-water Odyssey of the Norse race will remain, in the history of humanity, a considerable, almost a prodigious event. V After the Germanic invasions in mass, the Normans follow in successive irruptions in search of lands, of gold, or simply of the vine. ‘The chances of the sea, the whims of the wind, more than once must have decided their place of landing. Creating connexions, commercial or even political, introducing merchandise into countries they touched at and receiving in payment and bringing home those coins of such varied types as are found there in great numbers, the Norse sailors aided in the work of civilisation. It seems as if we ought to speak less of conquest than of interchange of services, even between Christianity and the worship of Odin. Is not the runic alphabet descended from the Latin ? In any case, recent discoveries threaten ruin to the popular legend which makes Christopher Columbus the discoverer of America. At the very least, the yarns of sailors from the north may have helped in forming his plans. Perhaps he even visited, accompanied by an English mariner, the Faroe Islands and Iceland, where he might have gathered the tradition ? In any case, if we search in the history of humanity for efforts at expansion comparable to those of the Normans, we shall scarcely find them anywhere save in the activity of the Greeks after the wars of Alexander, reaching, for the needs of their commerce, India, the golden Chersonese, and, in all probability, the south of China, putting in at Ceylon, sending Pytheas, the native of Marseilles, as far as the gates of the land of ‘Thule, that is to say, perhaps as far as Norway, following in Asia the old silk route—or we may find another parallel in the terrific enterprise of the Arabs, landing in the ninth century on certain Malay islands, trading, in their turn, with China as with the Baltic States, risking themselves as far as Madagascar. 51AMID THE FORESTS OF NORMANDY It is self-evident, that a discovery belongs above all to him who makes use of it. From this point of view, Columbus is at once reinvested with all his rights. The Greek navigators collect in Alexandria, for the use of learned men, the results of their wonderful researches : thanks to them, science, which may be defined as universal and eternal, is enriched with admirable treasures. ‘The compilations of Ptolemy will have more effect upon Columbus, even to inspiring several fruitful errors in him, than the expedition of the son of Eric the Red. From their observations the Arabs draw up sailing directions which, later, will serve the Portuguese in good stead. The intelligence alone is a creator. The Norman scarcely seems to raise himself above the empiricism by which he lives. Cunning, practical, a good reckoner, a good soldier, superstitious rather than religious, insatiable of adventure, conquering easily enough, owing to the anarchy of countries which he invades, prompt to conclude treaties which in his eyes are but truces, for long enough he maintains his roving ways. The invasions which ravage the whole of France, attacked in different quarters, roughly handled even as far inland as Burgundy and Lorraine, Paris being several times in peril, do not seem to have been conducted on a fixed plan ; they are rather inundations. It was the cleverness of a king to congregate these nomads, to condense them, to force them to fence themselves in by giving over to them a part of the country which will become Normandy, lands either rich already or easy to make rich, which continue to-day to be known by a name which they owe to their Scandinavian invaders. ‘The commencement of a labour of adaptation, whose story has often been attempted, although legend seems to engraft itself on history, it was, at any rate, the beginning of an era of relative order and prosperity, of regular increase, of growing population ; a calm that was often cut through by storms, by fits of brutality, but which was leading towards unity and gave France herself a useful example of it. Gradually, the Norman branch breaks away from the Scandinavian stem. 52THE HEROIC PERIOD The dukes have become protectors and members of this Christian church which the first invaders had treated so harshly. The moral contract which unites the two forces is displayed as being firm and lasting when the dukes send their sons to school in the abbey of Fécamp, where one of them has himself carried when on the point of death, and where Richard II, the friend of the clergy, whose company he affects, causes beautiful churches to be built. ‘he Norman has not lost his hereditary taste for adventure ; but this he gratifies outside the Duchy, on the high-roads of Europe, on the paths which lead to the Holy Land, the adventurer turning pilgrim—sometimes a rather aggressive pilgrim. Their dukes themselves find expression for what violence is in them in the repression of peasant insur- rections, revolts of nobles, or Breton raids. But they loyally serve, that is to say when loyally remunerated, the line of Capet and, in the two main events where they will display national aptitudes (we may use this phrase now), in the conquest of the two Sicilies and the conquest of England, the Normans will prove how much their race has been a gainer by coming in contact with our country. Vi A tourist cannot but observe the outward signs of these national characteristics. I remember visiting, while travelling in Sicily, that cathedral of Monreale which passes for being more magnificent than Saint Mark’s at Venice. I see again a certain convent of San-Martino which is reached by slopes bordered with olive, Indian fig and aloe trees. A memory of spring, when the Golden Conch decks itself with a bright forest of round-topped orange trees, with blue-leaved carobs and lemon trees, when, between its rocky mountain and cape, Palermo is laying herself open to the sun, which already is scorching her pagan architecture of porticoes, statues, and fountains. It is Africa much more than Europe; it is a capital for an Emir. However, everything here speaks to us of the 53 EAMID THE FORESTS OF NORMANDY Normans, of ‘Tancred and Roger, mighty slayers of Greeks and Arabs. Here, as in French Normandy, amazing adventurers knew how to anchor themselves in order to do work that was sensible and full of political wisdom, im- posing upon the conquered people the feudal code, but showing marks, much less from conviction than a practical mind, of tolerance, joining on their coinage the symbols of Islam and Christianity, encouraging the use of different languages, respecting the differing customs and arts. In the Palatine chapel, resplendent with marble and enamel, the severity of the setting recalls the north; but with the Norman style are mingled some Byzantine ornamenta- tion, rich Saracenic decoration, Arabic inscriptions. The same sort of alliance 1s displayed with more splendour in the arrangements of the duomo of Monreale. At the apse, the Norman arcading is decorated with mosaics. A Pisan master executed the bas-reliefs of the bronze gate decked with arabesques. Bases of white marble support pillars with antique capitals. The figures have kept the Greek costume. Gold was used lavishly everywhere. Such a church, in its eclecticism, offers itself as a witness to the cunning cleverness which allows these adventurers, when by main force they set themselves up as rulers, to unbend in order to retain. And, with the help of a poet’s imagination, a Tancred, a descendant of these pirates so savage of yore, will become the hero of Ferusalem Delivered. It will be better worth while to watch them at this work on our Norman soil. ‘The understanding is now complete with the new force which, amid the confusion of facts and minds, amid opposed interests, in spite of the division of the kingdom of the Franks into Neustria and Austrasia, has the tendency—we must do it that justice—to dower Gaul with a moral cohesion which is stronger than in the days when the priestly deputies gathered, at Lyons, around the altar of Rome and of Augustus. ‘The touching word, the magic word, Patria, shines out in some ecclesi- astical manuscripts. What matter though it still has a restricted and dependent meaning? ‘The idea, once 54CHRO ROI LERLOD launched, will grow of itself and, one day, pervade all civil society, which is for the time being full of decay or, at the very least, fermentation. A troubadour’s tale, once it becomes national, prepares the work which later will be embodied in a royal edict. A heart that is truly French bestows its gratitude upon everything which contributes, according to the period, to the unity of the country: at the beginning, education through Christianity ; later, the labours of the kings ; later still, the admirable revolu- tionary impulse. Martin, hermit, then Bishop of Tours, wandering in the fourth century over the north and west of Gaul, works in favour of national concentration ; among many other tributes, the windows of a church in Argentan, ten centuries later, will tell him how enduring 1s the love of the people. Set near the feudal lord, the bishop too becomes a leader. Anxious for unity as a support to their own power, the dukes of Normandy understand the resources which the co-operation of Christianity may put at their service. We have travelled a long way from the times when the Norman, fresh from his landing, attacked rich monasteries, burnt the sanctuaries, massacred the monks, ravished trembling nuns, profaned the relics, to such an extent that the Scandinavian invasions appeared to ecclesiastical writers under the aspect of an affliction sent by God. A furore Normannorum libera nos, Domine, so ran the chant of the ritual litany. At the time of the long siege of Paris the churches were despoiled of their treasures. From the time of the grant accorded by Charles the Simple and the consequent baptism of Rollo, the Church in Normandy has had its peace restored and has regained courage ; the monasteries have been rebuilt. William Longsword, that giant Norseman, even dreams of being admitted as a monk in the important abbey of Jumiéges, around which hovers the tragic legend of the Cripples.’ 1 The two sons of Clovis II having rebelled, by his orders they were hamstrung, then bound and set adrift in a boat on the Seine. ‘They are said to have been succoured by the hermit, Saint Philibert, at Jumieges, whither the boat had drifted —Trans/ator’s note. 55AMID THE FORESTS OF NORMANDY Richard, styled the Fearless, is attached to church works and church men; he assures for himself the useful goodwill of the annalist, Dudon de Saint-Quentin. The Normans and their dukes become as good Christians as they are good Frenchmen ; Charles the Simple’s action has borne fruit. King Olaf, who will become the propa- gator of the Christian religion in Norway, shall he not come, according to tradition, to be baptised at Rouen by an archbishop, son of a duke? And behold Normandy swarms towards the Holy Land; Robert the Devil in person betakes himself to the Sepulchre, and pilgrims prepare the way for the kingdom of the Two Sicilies. When, in or about the year 1000, an art develops, the Romanesque art, in order to provide safe homes for a creed henceforth firmly established, when Christian com- munities are vying with one another in creating new churches, Normandy takes its very large part in this movement. We can now visit its Romanesque churches ; we have some chance of appreciating them, if the best way to appreciate is, as we believe, to understand. VII There still exist some traces of the first hermitages. In the eleventh century Saint Ortaire withdraws into the forest of Andaine, by the banks of a spring. At a prior period, Séneri—Serenicus, doubtless—comes, with his brother, from Spoleto, in Umbria, to settle down on the crest of the wooded peninsula round which wind the curves of the Sarthe. Around his tomb will stand the town ruled by the powerful Norman family of Giroie ; over his hermitage will be erected the little Romanesque church, with the pack-saddle roof so common throughout Normandy, where some decorator of the thirteenth century will paint in fresco, with dabs of yellow ochre and red, the legend of the Saint, accompanied by symbols of the Creed and processions, which the Virgin is protecting with her blue mantle. ‘There is no more favourable spot 56THE HEROIC PERIOD for summoning up the early times of Christianity than this landscape, lively and gay here on the river-banks, where the stones designed to serve as stepping-stones stand out in the form of rosaries, but austere and waste elsewhere, as in the valley of Mistre, sedately begirt with heather and broom. In this region the anchorites must indeed have felt unable to tear themselves away ; with péneri legends associate Saint Leonard, patron of prisoners. Farther to the north, the Romanesque work has been more widely preserved. At Lonlay, near Domfront, there remains of the old Benedictine abbey the complete transept, with carvings and chapiters, the result of a some- what mysterious inspiration. At ‘Tinchebray, Saint- Rémy, a fortified church, has kept its Romanesque vaulting. Bathed by the gentle Varenne, formerly the centre of a priory of Benedictines, supposed to be the work of one of those Bellémes, terrific builders who made the whole province of Normandy bristle with abbeys and fortresses, the church of Notre-Dame-sur-l’Eau speaks to us with more precision. She displays herself to us in the form of a Latin cross, without aisles, with a transept, a central square tower, ‘the apse and apsidal chapels circular. This is a first rough sketch of that Norman Romanesque style which, as we shall see, is going to become strictly definite, but it is a sketch wherein no essential feature is lacking. The nave has preserved its arches, its recessed porches, its square pillars with denticular ornamentation, its rude abacuses. ‘The choir is roofed partly by barrel and cross- ribbed vaulting, partly by Romanesque groined vaulting. The tower, on the other hand, has nothing old about it except its base ; it was reconstructed later on, as were sO many Norman towers. This fragment of a church, hemmed in by modern life and wherein we can appre- clate nothing to-day but its antiquity, must have seemed to contemporaries a masterpiece of boldness and skilful unity ; the first builder who dared to place an arched vault on the resuscitated basilica, to assure it of the support of the walls, to run the risk of those failures, aAMID THE FORESTS OF NORMANDY recitals of which fill the annals, performed a human miracle, so startling that for long enough imagination sought for the secret of it in the most remote and mysterious influences. Notre-Dame-sur-’Eau was an object of ardent devotion. The English kings, Henry | and Henry II, used to frequent this priory and chapel, all encompassed by greenery and waters. We can imagine the festivities that will take place here, when the Legate from the Holy See comes to baptise the daughter of Henry II. But to these glimpses of splendour we prefer the primitive simplicity of the sanctuary, the altar reduced to a stone table upheld by a granite column or some almost effaced fragments of rosy-tinted frescoes around the windows. ‘This is indeed a symbolic church, built also to perpetuate the memory of a hermit, to encourage folk to remember that Front,! that Dominus Frons, who buried himself in the forest of Passais, even as did Séneri in the forest of Multonne; it is, at the foot of the hill, the counterpoise to the chateau which Belléme made into a fortress ; it is the refuge where, following the example of the Norman dukes, the lord reserves a grave for himself after a fiery life spent in war. Vill The eleventh century sees Romanesque art blossom- ing throughout all France. But, despite a few formule which are somewhat too compressed, this art is not uniform. It varies, it has shades of difference according to district. For example, Auvergne, during this century and the succeeding one, builds its modest church of Notre-Dame- du-Port quite close to the overshadowing bulk of the mountains, clad in black in the local fashion, but bright- ened by some fine tessellation, and thus it dedicates to the faith its choir, which for this early date is sufficiently 1 A local hermit, in whose honour the church was built.—7Z7ezs- lator’s note. 58Neurdein Levy Photos ~ x O re [Ly = O Q Y <— [7] Z. 5)