398 



THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



fidelity to the facts and such dash that 

 they move us even yet as no mere written 

 account can. 



WILLIAM THL CONQUEROR'S FAVORITE 



TOWN 



Duke William's favorite town was 

 Caen, where he and his Duchess, Matilda, 

 who defied the canon law by marrying 

 within the forbidden degrees of consan- 

 guinity, did royal penance by building 

 two' great abbeys, whose churches of St. 

 Etienne (St. Stephen) and La Trinite 

 contribute so greatly to Caen's beauty to- 

 day. William's church of St. Etienne, 

 stark and bold and lofty, most wonder- 

 fully represents his indomitable spirit and 

 ideas. 



The smaller, richer, and more delicate 

 Trinite is no less characteristically fem- 

 inine a monument to Duchess Matilda. 



Another memorial, an insignificant sin- 

 gle stone in a pretty, forgotten, flower- 

 starred byway of the old Protestant cem- 

 etery, marks the spot where Beau Brum- 

 mel, the man who for all time made 

 "exquisite propriety" in dress the stand- 

 ard, lies in oblivion beneath the waving 

 grasses of this Norman hillside. 



Caen boasts many splendid palaces of 

 the merchant princes who flourished so 

 magnificently during the Renaissance, and 

 just below the old castle their antitheses 

 in a twisty labyrinth of wandering streets 

 full of quaint old lesser houses. Right in 

 the heart of the town, where the two 

 busiest streets cross, the flower market 

 splashes a great dab of brilliant color on 

 the gray old stones — flowers in pots, in 

 frames, in huge untied bunches cover the 

 sidewalk and the curb in the grateful 

 shadow of the trees. 



Below the town idles the lovely little 

 Orne, a sleepy stream, at sunset a dream- 

 river, running noiselessly by broad, 

 grassy, tree-hedged promenades and lush 

 meadows, where gray and brown nets 

 overhang the walls and the multi-colored 

 rowboats glow like strange jewels upon 

 the river's placid breast. Queer little 

 rickety bridges bar its shining length as 

 it slips northward out of the city, and 

 away through the lovely Norman coun- 

 try of great, rolling fields, golden with 

 grain and dotted with farm-houses and 



apple orchards, toward the gleaming 

 white sand-dunes that fringe the bay of 

 the Seine with iridescence. 



Big and little steamers ply slowly up 

 and down the canalized waters of the 

 Orne, and make one think of the Suez 

 Canal. You can almost shake hands from 

 deck to deck as the vessels pass between 

 the endless lines of serried poplars. The 

 Normans themselves, blond and tall and 

 handsome, contribute in no small degree 

 to the beauty of the scene with their de- 

 cidedly English coloring and appearance. 



THE SEINE EROM LE HAVRE TO ROUEN 



Across the bay from the mouth of the 

 Orne are the mouth of the Seine and the 

 great ship-building and commercial port 

 of Le Havre. The glorious river that 

 leads from Havre to Rouen and on to 

 Paris is a stream of delights, winding 

 tortuously among little towns, farms, the 

 ghostly ruins of former grandeur like 

 Jumieges, and between chalky cliffs now 

 and again, that rise hundreds of feet 

 above the river, or, low and beetling, 

 shelter astonishing cave communities, 

 whose homes are bored right into the 

 solid rock. 



Splendid wooded peninsulas jut out 

 into the stream, that widens below Rouen 

 into as majestic a flood as the Hudson; 

 and then the ancient pirate stronghold 

 itself comes into view, shrouded with the 

 smoke of its factories and busy with the 

 activities which have taken the place of 

 the industries of a thousand years ago. 



How can we describe this city of the 

 pirates ; how give a picture of the long 

 quays beside the river, shining in the 

 brilliant sunshine after a summer's rain; 

 the broad thoroughfares plowed right 

 through the old town and lined with dull 

 modern houses ; the occasional bits of the 

 Middle Ages that still linger here and 

 there in some old street whose houses 

 peep and mutter at one another across 

 the way ? Such is the dark, crooked, vil- 

 lainously paved Rue de St. Romain, be- 

 side the cathedral, one of whose houses, 

 the Rouennais, is called the "House of 

 the Bishops" because, forsooth, its corbels 

 are decorated with bishops' heads. 



On the other side of the street drowses 

 its neighbor, the "House of Joan of Arc." 



