In and out of Three Normandy Inns

Crowd this hill with houses plastered to the sides of rocks, with great walls girdling it, with tiny gardens lodged in crevices, and with a forest tumbling seaward. Let this hil...

The three ladies grouped themselves about the fire, which they found already lighted. The duchesse chose a Henry II. carved aim chair, one, she laughingly remarked, quite large...

The very next morning, after the rain, and the vision I had had of Madame de Sévigné, conjured up by my surroundings and the reading of her letters, Monsieur Paul paid us an ear...

I have always found the act of going away contagious. Who really enjoys being left behind, to mope in a corner of the world others have abandoned? The gay company atop of the co...

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 someth...

When we stepped forth into the streets, it was to find a flower strewn city. The paving stones were covered with the needles of pines, with fir boughs, with rose leaves, lily st...

We were being tossed in the air like so many balls. A Normandy _char a banc_ was proving itself no respecter of nice distinctions in conditions in life. It phlipped, dashed, and...

The priest's massive frame filled the narrow door; the tones of his mellow voice seemed also suddenly to fill the air, drowning all other sounds. The grace of his manner, a grac...

On our return to Villerville we found that the charm of the place, for us, was a broken one. We had seen the world; the effect of that experience was to produce the common resul...

Two hours later the usual collection of forces was assembled in our inn courtyard; for a question of importance was to be decided. Madame was there--chief of the council; her hu...

The way from St. Lo to Coutances is a pleasant way. There is no map of the country that will give you even a hint of its true character, any more than from a photograph you can...

Quite a number of changes came about with our annexation of an artist and his garden. Chief among these changes was the surprising discovery of finding ourselves, at the end of...

The court-room was brightly lighted; the yellow radiance on the white walls made the eyes blink. We had turned, following our guide, from the gloom of the dim streets into the r...

At dusk that evening the same subject, with variations, was the universal topic of the conversational groups. Still Auguste had not come; half the village was out watching for h...

The Trouville beach was as empty as a desert. No other footfall, save our own, echoed along the broad board walks; this Boulevard des Italiens of the Normandy coast, under the s...

The tide was at its lowest. Before us, for an acre or more, there lay a wide, wet, stretch of brown mud. Near the beach was a strip of yellow sand; here and there it had contrac...

One travels a long distance, sometimes, to make the astonishing discovery that pleasure comes with the doing of very simple things. We had come from over the seas to find the ac...

Caen seated in its plain, wearing its crown of steeples--this was our last glimpse of the beautiful city. Our way to Bayeux was strewn thick with these Normandy jewels; with tow...

Our visit to the mussel-bed, as we soon found, had been our formal introduction to the village. Henceforth every door step held a friend; not a coif or a blouse passed without a...

Narrow streets with sinuous curves; dwarfed houses with minute shops protruding on inch-wide sidewalks; a tiny casino perched like a bird-cage on a tiny scaffolding; bath-houses...

"Will _ces dames_ join me in a marauding expedition? Like the poet Villon, I am about to turn marauder, house breaker, thief. I shall hope to end the excursion by one act, at le...

There were two paths in the village that were well worn. One was that which led the village up into the fields. The other was the one that led the tillers of the soil down into...

In the course of the first few days we learned what all Dives had known for the past fifty years or so--that the focal point of interest in the inn was centred in Madame Le Mois...

"Ah, mesdames, what will you have? The French peasant is like that. When he is in a rage nothing stops him--he beats anything, everything; whatever his hand encounters must suff...

The wedding party was lost in a thicket. Pierre gave his whip so resounding a snap, it was no surprise to find ourselves rolling over the cobbles of a village street.

"It is the winters, mesdames, that are hard to bear. They are long--they are dull. No one passes along the high-road. It is then, when sometimes the snow is piled knee-deep in t...

Outside the inn, some two hundred years ago, there was a great noise and confusion; the cries of outriders, of mounted guardsmen and halberdiers, made the quiet village as noisy...

It was a world of many mixtures, of various ranks and habits of life that found its way under the old archway, and sat down at the table d'hôte breakfasts and dinners. Madame an...

The world that found its way to the mayor's table at this early period of the summer season was largely composed of the class that travels chiefly to amuse others. The commercia...

The beach, one morning, we found suddenly peopled with artists. It was a little city of tents. Beneath striped awnings and white umbrellas a multitude of flat-capped heads sat i...