In and out of Three Normandy Inns Part 26

How pagan was the color! how Greek the sense of beauty that lies in contrasts! how Jewish the splendor of the priestly vestments as the gold and silver tissues gleamed in the sun! How mediaeval this survival of an old miracle play! See this group of children, half-frightened, half-proud, wandering from side to side as children unused to walking soberly ever march. They were following the leaders.h.i.+p of a huge Suisse. This latter was magnificently apparelled. He carried a great mace, and this he swung high in the air. The children, little John the Baptist, Christ, Mary the Mother, and Magdalen, were magnetized by his mighty skill. They were looking at the golden stick; they were thinking only of how high he, this splendid giant who terrified them so, would throw it the next time, and if he would always surely catch it. The small Virgin, in her long brown robes, tripped as she walked. The cherubic John the Baptist, with only his sheepskin and his cross, s.h.i.+vered as he stumbled after her.

"At least they might have covered his arms, _le pauvre pet.i.t_," one stout peasant among the bystanders was Christian enough to mutter, "Poor little John!" Even in summer the sun is none too hot on this hill-top; and a sheepskin is a garment one must be used to, it appears.

Christ, himself, was no better off. He was wearing his crown of thorns, but he had only his night-dress, bound with a girdle, to keep his naked little body warm. An angel, in gossamer wings and a huge rose-wreath, being of the other s.e.x, had her innate woman's love of finery to make her oblivious to the light sting of the wind, as it pa.s.sed through her draperies. As this group in the procession moved slowly along, the city took on a curiously antique aspect. In every lattice window a head was framed. The lines of the townspeople pressed closer and closer; they made a serried ma.s.s of blouses and caps, of s.h.i.+ny coats and bared heads. The very houses seemed to recognize that a part of their own youth was pa.s.sing them by; these were the figures they had looked out upon, time after time, in the old fourteenth and fifteenth century days, when the great miracle plays drew the country around, for miles and miles, to this Coutances square.

Across the square, in the long gray distance of the streets, the archbishop's canopy was motionless. A sweet groaning murmur rippled from lip to lip.

Then a swift and mighty rustling filled the air, for the bones of thousands of knees were striking the stones of the street;--even heretic knees were bent when the Host was lifted. It was the moment of silent prayer. It was also, perhaps, the most beautiful, it was a.s.suredly the most consummately picturesque moment of the day. The bent heads; the long vistas of kneeling figures; the lovely contrasts of the flowing draperies; the trailing splendor of the priests' robes dying into the black note made by the nuns' sombre skirts; the gossamer brilliance of the hundreds of white veils, through which the young rapture of religious awe on lips and brow made even commonplace features beautiful; the choristers' scarlet petticoats; the culminating note of splendor, the Archbishop, throned like some antique scriptural king under the feathers and velvets of his crimson canopy; then the long lines of the townspeople with the groups of peasants beside them, whose well-sunned skins made even their complexion seem pale by the side of cheeks that brought the burn of noon-suns in the valleys to mind; and behind this wall of kneeling figures, those other walls, the long white-hung house facades, with their pendent sprigs and wreaths and garlands above which hung the frieze of human heads beneath the carved cornices; surely this was indeed the culminating moment, both in point of beauty and in impressiveness, of the great day's festival.

Thus was reposoir after reposoir visited. Again and again the mult.i.tude was on its knees. Again and again the Host was lifted. And still we followed. Sometimes all the line was in full light, a long perspective of color and of prismatic radiance. And then the line would be lost; some part of it was still in a side-street; and the rest were singing along the edges of the city's ramparts, under the great branches of the trees. Here, in the gray of the narrow streets, the choristers' gowns were startling in their richness. Yonder, in full sunlight, the brightness on the maidens' robes made the shadows in their white skirts as blue as light caught in a grotto's depth.

Still they sang. In the dim streets or under the trees, where the gay banners were still fluttering, and the white veils, like airy sails, were bulging in the wind, the hymn went on. It was thin and pathetically weak in the mouths of the babes that walked. It was clear, as fresh and pure as a brooklet's ripple, from the mouths of the young communicants. It was of firm contralto strength from the throats of the grave nuns. The notes gained and gained in richness; the hymn was almost a chant with the priests; and in the mouths of the people it was as a ringing chorus. Together with the swelling music swung the incense into high air; and to the Host the rose-leaves were flung.

Still we followed. Still the long line moved on from altar to altar.

Then, when the noon was long past, wearily we climbed upward to our inn.

In the high streets there was much going to and fro. The shop-keepers already were taking down their linen. Pouffe! Pouffe! there was much blowing through mouths and a great standing on tiptoes to reach the tall tapers on the reposoirs.

Coutances was pious. Coutances was proud of its fete. But Coutances was also a thrifty city. Once the cortege had pa.s.sed, it was high time to snuff out the tapers. Who could stand by and see good candles blowing uselessly in the wind, and one's money going along with the dripping?

CHAPTER XXVIII.

BY LAND TO MONT ST. MICHEL.

Two hours later the usual collection of forces was a.s.sembled in our inn courtyard; for a question of importance was to be decided. Madame was there--chief of the council; her husband was also present, because he might be useful in case any dispute as to madame's word came up; Auguste, the one inn waiter, was an important figure of the group; for he, of them all, was the really travelled one; he had seen the world--he was to be counted on as to distances and routes; and above, from the upper windows, the two ladies of the bed-chamber looked down, to act as chorus to the brisk dialogue going on between madame and the owner of a certain victoria for which we were in treaty.

"_Ces dames,_" madame said, with a shrug which was meant for the coachman, and a smile which was her gift to us--"these ladies wish to go to Mont St. Michel, to drive there. Have you your little victoria and Poulette?"

Now, by the shrug madame had conveyed to the man and the a.s.sembled household generally, her own great scorn of us, and of our plans. What a whim this, of driving, forsooth, to the Mont! _Dieu sait_--French people were not given to any such follies; they were serious-minded, _always_, in matters of travel. To travel at all, was no light thing; one made one's will and took an honest and tearful farewell of one's family, when one went on a journey. But these English, these Americans, there's no foretelling to what point their folly will make them tempt fate! However, madame was one who knew on which side her bread was b.u.t.tered, if ever a woman did, and the continuance of these mad follies helped to b.u.t.ter her own French roll. And so her shrug and wink conveyed to the tall Norman just how much these particular lunatics before them would be willing to pay for this their whim.

"Have you Poulette?"

"Yes--yes--Poulette is at home. I have made her repose herself all day--hearing these ladies had spoken of driving to the Mont--"

Chorus from the upper window-sills. "The poor beast! it is _joliment longue--la distance_."

"As these ladies observe," continued the owner of the doomed animal, not raising his head, but quickly acting on the hint, "it is long, the distance--one does not go for nothing." And though the man kept his mouth from betraying him, his keen eyes glittered with avarice.

"And then--_ces dames_ must descend at Genets, to cross the _greve, tu sais_" interpolated the waiter, excitedly changing his napkin, his wand of office, from one armpit to the other. The thought of travel stirred his blood. It was fine--to start off thus, without having to make the necessary arrangements for a winter's service or a summer's season. And to drive, that would be new--yes that would be a change indeed from the stuffy third-cla.s.s compartments. For Auguste, you see, approved of us and of the foolishness of our plans. His sympathy being gratis, was allied to the protective instinct--he would see the cheating was at least as honestly done as was compatible with French methods.

"Another carriage--and why?" we meekly queried, warned by this friendly hint. A chorus now arose from the entire audience.

"_Mais, madame!_--it is as much as five or six kilos over the sands to the Mont from Genets!" was cried out in a tone of universal reproach.

"Through rivers, madame, through rivers as high as that!" and Auguste, striking in after the chorus, measured himself off at the breast.

"Yes--the water comes to there, on the horse," added the driver, sweeping an imaginary horse's head, with a fine gesture, in the air.

"Dame, that must be fine to see," cried down Leontine and Marie, gasping with little sighs of envy.

"And so it is!" cried back Auguste, nodding upward with dramatic gesture. "One can get as wet as a duck splas.h.i.+ng through those rivers.

_Dieu! que c'est beau!_" And he clasped his hands as his eye, rolling heavenward, caught the blue and the velvet of the four feminine orbs on its upward way. Seeing which ecstasy, the courtyard visibly relented; Auguste's rapture and his envy had worked the common human miracle of turning contempt for a folly into belief in it.

This quick firing of French people to a pleasurable elation in others'

adventure is, I think we must all agree, one of the great charms of this excitable race: anything will serve as a pretext for setting this sympathetic vibration in motion. What they all crave as a nation is a daily, hourly diet of the unusual, the unforeseen.

It is this pa.s.sion for incident which makes a Frenchman's life not unlike his soups, since in the case of both, how often does he make something out of nothing!

An hour later we were picking our way through the city's streets.

Sweeter than the crushed flowers was the free air of the valley.

There is no way of looking back so agreeable, on the whole, I think, as to look back upon a city.

From the near distance of the first turn in the road, Coutances and its cathedral were at their very best. The hill on which both stood was only one of the many hills we now saw growing out of the green valley; among the dozen hill tops, this one we were leaving was only more crowded than the others, and more gloriously crowned. In giant height uprose, above the city's roofs and the lesser towers, the spires and the lovely lantern tower. This vast ma.s.s of stone, p.r.i.c.ked into lacy apertures and with its mighty lines of grace-for how many a long century has it been in the eye of the valley? Tancrede de Hauteville saw it before William was born--before he, the Conqueror, rode in his turn through the green lanes to consecrate the church to One greater than he. From Tancrede to Boileau, what a succession of bishops, each in their turn, have had their eye on the great cathedral. There was a sort of viking bishop, one Geoffrey de Montbray, of the Conqueror's day, who, having a greater taste for men's blood than their purification, found Coutances a dull city; there was more war of the kind his stout arm rejoiced in across the Channel; and so he travelled a bit to do a little pleasant killing. From Geoffrey to Boileau and the latter's lacy ruffles--how many a rude Norman epic was acted out, here in the valley, beneath the soaring spires, before the Homeric combat was turned into the verse of a _chanso de geste_, a _Roman de Rou_, or a _Latrin!_

As Poulette rolled the wheels along, instead of visored bishop, or mail rustling on strong b.r.e.a.s.t.s, there was the open face of the landscape, and the tremble of the gra.s.ses beneath the touch of the wind. Coming down the hill was a very peaceable company; doubtless, between wars in those hot fighting centuries, just such travellers went up and down the hill-road as unconcernedly as did these peasants. There was quite a variety among the present groups: some were strictly family parties; these talked little, giving their mind to stiff walking--the smell of the soup in the farmyard kitchen was in their nostrils. The women's ages were more legibly read in their caps than in their faces--the older the women the prettier the caps. Among these groups, queens of the party, were some first communicants. Their white kid slippers were brown now, from the long walk in the city streets and the dust of the highway. They held their veils with a maiden's awkwardness; with bent heads they leaned gravely on their fathers' arms. In this, their first supreme experience of self-consciousness, they had the self-absorption of young brides. The trail of their muslin gowns and the light cloud of their veils made dazzling spots of brightness in the delicate frame of the June landscape. Each of these white-clad figures was followed by a long train of friends and relatives. "_C'est joli a voir_--it's a pretty sight, _hein_, my ladies? these young girls are beautiful like that!" Our coachman took his eye off Poulette to turn in his seat, looking backward at the groups as they followed in our wake. "Ah--it was hard to leave my own--I had two like that, myself, in the procession to-day." And the full Norman eye filled with a sudden moisture. This was a more attractive glitter than the avarice of a moment before.

"You see, mesdames," he went on, as if wis.h.i.+ng to excuse the moistened eyelids, "you see--it's a great day in the family when our children take their first communion. It is the day the child dies and the man, the woman is born. When our children kneel at our feet, before the priest, before their comrades, and beg us to forgive them all the sin they have done since they were born--it is too much--the heart grows so big it is near to bursting. Ah--it is then we all weep!"

Charm settled herself in her seat with a satisfied smile. "We are in luck--an emotional coachman who weeps and talks! The five hours will fly," she murmured. Then aloud, to Jacques--as we learned the now sniffling father was called--she presently asked, with the oil of encouragement in her tone:

"You say your two were in the procession?"

"Two! there were five in all. Even the babies walked. Did you see Jesu and the Magdalen? They were mine--_C'etait a moi, ca!_ For the priests will have them--as many as they can get."

"They are right. If the children didn't walk, how could the procession be so fine?" "Fine--_beau--ca?_" And there was a deep scorn in Jacques's voice. "You should have seen the _fete_ twenty years ago!

Now, its glory is as nothing. It's the priests themselves who are to blame. They've spoiled it all. Years ago, the whole town walked.

_Dieu_--what a spectacle! The mayor, the mairie, all the firemen, munic.i.p.al officers--yes, even the soldiers walked. And as for the singing--_dame_, all the young men were choristers then--we were trained for months. When we walked and sang in the open streets the singing filled all the town. It was like a great thunder."

"And the change--why has it come?" persisted Charm.

"Oh," Jacques replied, caressing Poulette's haunches with his whip-lash. "It's the priests; they were too grasping. They are avaricious, that's what they are. They want everything for themselves.

And a _fete--ca coule, vous savez_. Besides, the spirit of the times has changed. People aren't so devout now. _Libres penseurs_--that's the fas.h.i.+on now. _Hola_, Poulette!"

Poulette responded. She dashed into the valley, below us now, as if this rolling along of a heavy victoria, a lot of luggage, and three travellers, was an agreeable episode in her career of toil. But on the mind of her owner, the spectre of the free-thinkers was still hovering like an evil spirit. During the next hour he gave us a long and exhaustive exposition of the changes wrought by _ces messieurs qui nient le bon Dieu._ Among their crimes was to be numbered that of having disintegrated the morale of the peasantry. They--the peasants--no longer believed in miracles, and as for sorcery, for the good old superst.i.tions, bah: they were looked upon as old wives' tales.

Even here, in the heart of this rural country, you would have to walk far before you could find _vne vraie sorciere_, one who, by looking into a gla.s.s of water, for instance, could read the future as in a book, or one who, if your cow dried up, could name the evil spirit, the demon, who, among the peasants was exercising the curse. All this science was lost. A peasant would now be ashamed to bring his cow to a fortune-teller; all the village would laugh. Even the shepherds had lost the power of communing with the planets at night; and all the valley read the _Pet.i.t Journal_ instead of consulting the _vieilles meres_. One must go as far as Brittany to see a real peasant with the superst.i.tions of a peasant. As for Normandy, it went in step with the rest of the world, _que diable!_ And again the whip lash descended.

Poulette must suffer for Jacques's disgust.

If the Norman peasant was a modern, his country, at least, had retained the charm of its ancient beauty. The road was as Norman a highway as one could wish to see. It had the most capricious of natures, turning and perversely twisting among the farms and uplands. The land was ribboned with growing grain, and the June gra.s.s was being cut. The farms stood close upon the roadway, as if longing for its companions.h.i.+p; and then, having done so much toward the establishment of neighborly gossip, promptly turned their backs upon it--true Normans, all of them, with this their appearance of frankness and their real reserves of secrecy.

For a last time we caught a distant glimpse of the great cathedral. As we looked back across the bright-roofed villages, we saw the stately pile, gray, glorious, superb, dominating the scene, the hills, river, and fields, as in the old days the great city walls and the cathedral towers had dominated all the human life that played helplessly about them.

We were out once more among the green and yellow broadlands; between our carriage-wheels and the horizon there was now spread a wide amphitheatre of wooded hills. The windings of the poplar-lined road serpentined in sinuous grace in and out of forests, meadows, hills, and islands. The afternoon lights were deepening; the shadows on the grain-fields cast by the oaks and beeches were a part of our company.

The blue bloom of the distant hills was strengthening into purple. As the light was intensifying in color, the human life in the fields was relaxing its tension; the bent backs were straightening, the ploughmen were whipping their steeds toward the open road; for although it was Sunday, and a _fete_ day, the farmer must work. The women were gathering up some of the gra.s.ses, tying them into bundles, and tossing them on their heads as they moved slowly across the blackening earth.