THE BEAUTIES OF FRANCE 



395 



LIKE AX ENORMOUS HOTHOUSE' 



It might fairly be said that the' general 



impression France, as a whole, leaves 

 upon the beholder is — green. Perpetually 

 moist of climate — except in the south — 

 endowed with heavy and continuous rain- 

 falls, and having a temperature which is 

 astonishingly even, year in and out, the 

 country is like an enormous hothouse. 

 The result is a study in greens of every 

 conceivable and inconceivable shade. 

 Verdure and foliage range from greens 

 that are gray or black to greens that are 

 hardly more than yellow. From the 

 hardy pastures high upon the sides of the 

 towering Pelvoux range, thousands of 

 feet above the sea, to the cactus and 

 agaves and olives that grow at the water's 

 edge, the verdant nuances are a revela- 

 tion in rural coloring. 



But France is not all green, either. 

 That is only the background, the filler, 

 as it were, for a warm-toned picture full 

 of highlights, touched with the gold of 

 grain, the ruddy tiles of ancient roofs. 

 the fiery spatter of poppies, the tawny 

 flood of a river or the steely thread of a 

 brook; and on the glistening southern 

 shore, with cliffs as red as any soil Xew 

 Jersey boasts, water like melted sapphires, 

 villas covered with majolica tiles that 

 make the beholder rub his eyes and won- 

 der if he is dreaming the amazing ine- 

 brieties of style and color that strive to 

 but cannot shatter the harmony of crea- 

 tion. 



INDIVIDUALITY OF THE PROVINCES 



Just as the visitor to a picture gallery 

 retains a much stronger impression of the 

 merits of different painters by seeing the 

 works of only one at a visit, so I believe 

 the beauty and charm of France are best 

 remembered by considering her provinces 

 one at a time. Almost every one of the 

 older divisions of the country has some 

 feature distinctly its own that fixes it in- 

 delibly in mind (see map, page 471). 



Brittany is always the "Land of Par- 

 dons," a bleak, wind-swept peninsula full 

 of silent, undemonstrative folk who live 

 by the harvest of the sea. Dauphine, 

 whose Alpine sierras saw the horizon 

 with their snowy teeth, burns with glori- 



ous sunsets that fire its savage grandeur ; 

 Burgundy, of the wine; Champagne, of 

 the "liquid sunshine"; Auvergne, of the 

 dead volcanoes, like giant beehives, and 

 Touraine, that was and still is the play- 

 ground of France, are all characteristic 

 and easily remembered. 



Xot less so is Xormandy, with its 

 shimmering streams and its wide-spread 

 orchards of cider apples — acres and 

 clouds of pink and white and green in 

 the tender spring — the air quick with the 

 thin, sweet, subtle fragrance. And spring 

 is not only "apple-blossom time in Nor- 

 mandy." By every farm, about the rail- 

 road stations, along the roads, and in pri- 

 vate estates bristly hedges of scented 

 haws vie with the purple and the white 

 clusters of great chestnuts, the long fes- 

 toons of the towering acacias (locusts), 

 and other flowers innumerable. 



RURAL EXGLAXD IX XORMAXDY 



Coming down from Cherbourg toward 

 Paris many of the vistas are strongly sug- 

 gestive of England — trim little farms, 

 whose quaint old houses hide behind tree 

 and hedge : moss-grown open byres, where 

 sleek cattle chew their reflective cuds, and 

 splendid, towering old trees, among the 

 finest in France. And the roads — royal 

 highways, smooth as floors, bordered by 

 endless processions of trees, as carefully 

 tended and trimmed as if they were in a 

 park. Like gaunt sentinels, they point 

 out the road and its direction as far as 

 the eye can reach, and rival in their erect 

 precision the troops for whom the roads 

 were originally built. 



What an air the many mud-houses 

 have, with their great thatched roofs ! 

 The walls are built of a sticky, clayey 

 soil* that dries rock-hard in the sun. The 

 roofs are a joy, simply thick rolls of 

 straw laid close by the farmer and ce- 

 mented together by Xature in a few 

 months with moss and flowers. They 

 overhang the sunny wall and shelter the 

 vines — sometimes they are trees, trained 

 like vines — that border door and window, 

 and the whole place radiates a spirit of 

 solid prosperity and comfort, as well as 

 beauty and charm. The beauties of X"or- 

 mandy are as varied as they are striking, 

 and a single day among them brings a 



