Anna Bowman Dodd

“ A good Norman is no Norman who has not a lawsuit on hand.
Anything will serve as a pretext for a quarrel No sum of money is so small as not to warrant a breaking of the closest blood ties, if thereby one's rights may be secured. Those beautiful stripes of rye, barley, corn, and wheat up yonder in the fields, that melt into one another like sea-tones—down here on the benches before the juge de paix—what quarrels, what hatreds, what evil passions these few acres of land have brought their owners, facing each other here like so many demons, ready to spring at the others' throats! ”

“ Here in the garden the drowsy air would lift a flower petal, as some dreamer sunk in hasheesh slumber might touch a loved hand, only to let it slip away in nerveless impotence. Never had the charm of this Normandy sea-coast been as compelling; never had the divine softness of this air, this harmonious marriage of earth-scents and sea-smells seemed as perfect; never before had the delicacy of the foliage and color-gradations of the sky as triumphantly proved that nowhere else, save in France, can nature be at once sensuous and poetic. ”

“ A rose, overblown with its fulness of splendor, dropped in a shower at
Fouchet's feet just then.
"Tiens, elle est finie, celle-là" he cried, with an accent of regret, and he stooped over the fallen petals as if they had been the remains of a friend. Then he sighed as he swept the mass into his broad palm.
"Come, let us leave him to the funeral of his roses; he hasn't the sensibilities of an insect;" and Charm grasped my arm to lead me over the turf, across the gravel paths, toward the tea-house. ”

“ All the city, as the coarse blue blouse, flourishing its whip, took pains to explain, was abroad in the fields; the forests, tiens, down yonder through the trees, we could see for ourselves how the young people were making the woods as crowded as a ball-room. The city, as a city, was stripping the land and the trees bare—it would be as bald as a new-born babe by the morrow. But then, of a certainty, we also had come for the fête—or, and here a puzzled look of doubt beclouded the provincial's eyes—might we, perchance, instead, have come for the trial? ”

“ This was the blouse's query. The tassel of the cotton night-cap nodded, interrogatively, toward the object on which the twinkling ex-mariner's eye had fixed itself—on Charm's slender figure, and on the yellow half-moon of hair framing her face. There was but one verdict concerning the blonde beauty; she was a creature made to be stared at. The staring was suspended only when the bargaining went on; for Havre, clearly, was a sailor and merchant first; its knowledge of a woman's good points was rated merely as its second-best talent. ”

“ Yet these artists had deserted the asphalt of the boulevards for the cobbles of a village street, the delights of the café chantant had been exchanged for the miracle of the moon rising over the sea, and for the song of the thrush in the bush.
The Frenchman, more easily and with simpler art than any of his modern brethren, can change the prose of our dull, practical life into poetry; he can turn lyrical at a moment's notice. He possesses the power of transmuting the commonplace into the idyllic, by merely clapping on his cap and turning his back on the haunts of men. ”

“ Were they not living on nothing—on less than nothing, in this dark pocket of a chaumière, while their fine house yonder was paying for itself handsomely, week after week? The heart beats high, in a Norman breast, when the pocket bulges; gold—that is better than bread to feel in one's hand.
The whole village wore this triumphant expression—now that the season was beginning. Paris had come down to them, at last, to be shorn of its strength; angling for pennies in a Parisian pocket was better, far, than casting nets into the sea. ”

“ What a sight!—Dieu! all the monks and priests and nuns, and the archbishop himself were out. What banners and crosses and flags! The cannon was like a great thunder—and the grève was red with soldiers. Ah, those were days! Dieu—why couldn't the republic have continued those glories—ces gloires? Aujourd'hui nous ne sommes que des morts—instead of prisoners to handle—to watch and work, like so many good machines there is only the dike yonder to keep in repair! What changes—mon Dieu! what changes!" And the shape wrung his hands. It was, in truth, a touching spectacle of grief for a good old past. ”

“ How could we hope to make a Frenchman comprehend an instinctive impulse to turn our backs on the Trouville world? What, pray, had we just now to do with fashion—with the purring accents of boudoirs, with all the life we had run away from? Surely the romance—the charm of our present experiences would be put to flight once we exchanged salutations with the beau monde—with that world that is so sceptical of any pleasure save that which blooms in its own hot-houses, and so disdainful of all forms of life save those that are modelled on fashion's types. ”

“ As we crept down into Caen, it was to find it thick with the dust of twilight. The streets were dense with other things besides the thickened light. The Caen world was crowding homeward; all the boulevards and side streets were alive with a moving throng of dusty, noisy, weary holidaymakers. The town was abroad in the streets to hear the news of the horses, and to learn the history of the betting.
Although we had gone to church instead of doing the races, many of those who had peopled the gay race-track came back to us. The table d'hôte, at our inn that night, was as noisy as a Parisian cafe. ”

“ Thus you see, even in the provinces, in a French street, something is quite certain to happen; it all depends on the choice one makes in life of a window—of being rightly placed—whether or not one finds life dull or amusing. This tailor had the talent of knowing where to stand, at life's corner—for him there was a ceaseless procession of excitements.
It may be that our neighbor's talent for seeing was catching. It is certain that no city we had ever before looked out upon had seemed as crowded with sights. The whole history of Caen was writ in stone against the blue of the sky. ”

“ It was a pleasant surprise to find that, for once, a Norman blouse had told the truth; for here were the people of Coutances coming up from the fields to prove it. In all these narrow streets a great multitude of people were passing us; some were laden with vines, others with young forest trees, and still others with rude garlands of flowers. The peasant women's faces, as the bent figures staggered beneath a young fir-tree, were purple, but their smiles were as gay as the wild flowers with which the stones were thickly strewn. ”

“ And Charm, with an air of serene confidence in the village, adjusted her restored shoulder-cape.
Down below, in our neighbor's garden—the one adjoining our own and facing the sea—a new and old world of fashion in capes and other garments were a-flutter in the breeze, morning after morning. Who and what was this neighbor, that he should have so curious and eccentric a taste in clothes? No woman was to be seen in the garden-paths; a man, in a butler's apron and a silk skullcap, came and went, his arms piled high with gowns and scarves, and all manner of strange odds and ends. ”

“ Let this hill yield you a town in which to walk, with a street of many-storied houses; with other promenades along ramparts as broad as church aisles; with dungeons, cloisters, halls, guard-rooms, abbatial gateways, and a cathedral whose flying buttresses seemed to spring from mid-air and to end in a cloud—such was the world into which we awoke on the heights of Mont St. Michel.
The verdict of the shore on the hill had been a just one; this world on a rock was a world apart. ”

“ The last male guest had touched his cap to madame, exchanging the "bonne nuit" a man only gives to a pretty woman, and that which a woman returns who feels that her beauty has received its just meed of homage; madame's figure stood, still smiling, a radiant benedictory presence, in the doorway, with the great glow of the firelight behind her; the last laugh echoed down the street—and behold, darkness was upon us! The street was as black as a cavern. The strip of sky and the stars above seemed almost day, by contrast. ”

“ You should hear her, she shouts and claps her hands! All the beach assembles to see her land. When she is wet she cries for joy. It is so difficult to amuse one's self, it appears, in the great world."
"But, tiens, here we are, I feel the dry sands." I was dropped as lightly on them as if it had been indeed a bunch of feathers my fisherman had been carrying.
And meanwhile, out yonder, across the billows, with airy gesture dramatically executed, our treacherous captain was waving us a theatrical salute. ”

“ It was a good five years since he had looked upon its dungeons and its lace-work. But after all, in his secret soul of souls, he had longed to eat of the omelette. Dieu! how often during those slow, quiet years in the little hamlet yonder on the plain, had its sweetness and lightness mocked his tongue with illusive tasting! Little wonder, therefore, that the good curé's praises were sweet in madame's ear, for they had the ring of truth—and of envy! And madame herself was only mortal, for what woman lives but feels herself uplifted by the sense of having found favor in the eyes of her priest? ”

“ The gayly painted coach was now deserted. It stood, a chariot of state, as it were, awaiting royalty; its yellow sides gleamed like topaz in the sun. The grooms were unharnessing the leaders, that were still bathed in the white of their sweat. The count's dove-colored flannels were a soft mass against the snow of the chef's apron and cap; the two were in deep consultation at the kitchen door. Monsieur Paul was showing, with all the absorption of the artist, his latest Jumièges carvings to the taller, more awkward of the gentlemen, to the one driven in by the mannish beauty. ”

“ CHAPTER XIII. HONFLEUR—NEW AND OLD. The stillness of the park trees, as we passed beneath them, was like the silence that comes after a blessing. The sun, flooding the landscape with a deluge of light, lost something of its effulgence, by contrast with the fulness of the priest's rich nature. This fair world of beauty that lay the other side of the terrace wall, beneath which our luncheon was spread, was fair and lovely still—but how unimportant the landscape seemed compared to the varied scenery of the curé's soul-lit character! Of all kinds of nature, human nature is assuredly the best ”

“ Charm stopped him then, with a gesture. She stopped the horse also; she brought the whole establishment to a standstill; and then she nodded her head briskly forward. We were in the midst of the Honfleur streets—streets that were running away from a wide open space, in all possible directions. In the centre of the square rose a curious, an altogether astonishing structure. It was a tower, a belfry doubtless, a house, a shop, and a warehouse, all in one; such a picturesque medley, in fact, as only modern irreverence, in its lawless disregard of original purpose and design, can produce. ”

“ The impartial historian, given to a just weighing of evidence, would have been startled to find how invariably the scales tipped; how lightly an historical Mont, born of a miracle, crowned by the noblest buildings, a pious Mecca for saints and kings innumerable, shot up like feathers in lightness when over-weighted by the modern realities of a perfectly appointed inn, the cooking and eating of an omelette of omelettes, and the all-conquering charms of Madame Poulard. ”

“ Nothing could be more exquisite, for depth of green swimming in a bath of shadow, than the meadows curled beneath the cliffs; nothing more tempting, to the painter's brush, than the arabesque of blossoms netted across the sky; and would you have the living eye of nature, bristling with animation, alive with winged sails, and steeped in the very soul of yellow sunshine, look out over the great sheet of the waters, and steep the senses in such a breadth of aqueous splendor as one sees only in one or two of the rare shows of earth. ”

“ All day little processions were going up and down the steep stone steps that lead from fortified rock to parish church, and from the town to the abbatial gateway. The banners and the choir-boys, the priests in their embroideries and lace, the peasants in cap and blouse, were incessantly mounting and descending, standing on rock edges, caught for an instant between a medley of perpendicular roofs, of giant gateways, and a long perspective of fortified walls, only to be lost in the curve of a bastion, or a flying buttress, that, in their turn, would be found melting into a distant sea-view. ”