THE BEAUTIES OF FRANCE 



407 



and the long tows of river barges glide 

 slowly past them like so many swollen 

 sea-serpents. 



But perhaps the loveliest spot in all the 

 winding miles of beauty along the river 

 between Rouen and Paris is Petit Andely. 

 Ragged and shattered-looking, the stony 

 hill rears proudly up above placid river 

 and sleepy town, and squarely upon its 

 crest looms the ruin of Richard the Lion 

 Heart's Castle Gallant — a great, bursted 

 keep and a few bits of massive wall. 

 Once the castle flaunted its menacing 

 leopard standards against the blue and 

 white and gold of the Frankish skies ; 

 but that was before Philippe-Auguste 

 stormed and smashed it, and smashed 

 the townsfolk while he was doing it. 



Now, ghostly and wan, the stark ruin 

 shimmers upon its hill, with never a sin- 

 gle spear to glint from keep or barbican. 

 The spears are still growing far below — 

 the stout young poplars on river bank 

 and island sentineling through golden 

 days when the river is gleaming jade; in 

 the fiery sunsets, when it mirrors back 

 every sturdy limb and feathery frond, 

 and all the silent blue nights, when the 

 stars bend crackling down to whisper and 

 coquette and the ripples chuckle softly 

 against the rich brown banks. 



Nature was in no gentle mood when she 

 retched up along the Breton coasts great 

 blocks of granite. Greatest of them all, 

 Mont St. Michel towers above the flat 

 country side and the treacherous quick- 

 sands of the shallow bay, whose inrush- 

 ing tides come white-lipped and ruthless 

 to foam at its feet, raging but impotent. 



THE FORTRESS-ABBEY OF ST. MICHEE 



In those creative days that we call the 

 Middle Ages, man could not see such a 

 magnificent site go unoccupied — and lo ! 

 the upper half of the rock came to life in 

 one of the most wondrous and inspiring 

 religious edifices the world has ever seen, 

 the beautiful, militant fortress-abbey of 

 St. Michel, thrusting its slender spire 

 skyward in an effort to pierce to heaven 

 itself. No written word can image the 

 daring, the grace, the consummate ar- 

 tistry of the massive pile, at once a part 

 of the rock and yet perfectly apart from 



it — a work of man that has all the maj- 

 esty of the work of Nature herself. 



Beneath the great, spreading wings of 

 the abbey nestle the narrow, high-walled, 

 tenement-like houses — so many chicks 

 about their mother; and hidden away 

 among the rocky terraces, here in an 

 angle of the abbey walls, there behind 

 houses or hotels, the most amazing little 

 gardens gladden eye and heart. They 

 burn with multicolored flowers and they 

 fruit in season. Their cherries and figs 

 are famous and their shade trees give 

 grateful shelter; but it is the beauty of 

 the gardens most of all and the strange- 

 ness of finding them here, springing from 

 the barren rock, that makes them quite 

 as wonderful and inspiring as the tower- 

 ing abbey itself (see page 452). 



Another great rock at the water's 

 edge — but this time low and flat — bears 

 up the old walled city of St. Malo, quaint, 

 unspeakably dirty, and picturesqueness 

 itself. Clear to the third story of the 

 houses rise the walls, from which the 

 slippery streets appear as dim, wet, 

 haunted canyons, unusually curious, es- 

 pecially when at the end the huge and 

 ornate spires of the cathedral dwarf 

 everything else with their imperious 

 bearing. But somehow St. Malo never 

 seems Breton, perhaps, because so many 

 English vacationists make it their rendez- 

 vous. 



BRITTANY, THE PURITAN PROVINCE 



The real Brittany is an open, wind- 

 threshed, compelling country of gray and 

 green, a hardy province able to withstand 

 the buffeting of the sea and its gales, in- 

 habited by a race who fear only God and 

 the sea, but man not at all. They live in 

 and by the sea — and the sea by them. 

 Their clouds of blue nets hang high in 

 the sun from gleaming brown mast and 

 yard in the harbor of Douarnenez, the 

 symbol of their victories. And in the 

 nave of many a little country church 

 throughout Brittany the Sea has her sym- 

 bol — a waiting catafalque. 



The Breton takes his religion with the 

 seriousness of a Puritan. All over France 

 crosses rise by the waysides, where the 

 peasant may pour out his simple soul in 

 prayer and forget for one refreshing mo- 



