We must not quite forget the younger men (with
coats, not blouses), who plumed themselves in a rough way, and wore
wonderful felt hats; nor, above all, a peep through the trees behind the
group, far away down the valley, at the gables and turrets of Pont
Audemer, glistening through a cloud of haze. This is all we need
describe, a word more would spoil the picture; like one of Edouard
Frere's paintings of "Cottage Life in Brittany," the charm and pathos of
the scene lie in its simplicity and harmony with Nature.
If we choose to stay until the day advances, we may see more
market-people come crowding in, and white caps will crop up in the
distance through the trees, till the green meadows blossom with them,
and sparkle like a lawn of daisies; we may hear the ringing laughter of
the girls to whom market day seems an occasion of great rejoicing, and
we may be somewhat distracted with the steady droning patois of the old
women; but we come to see rather than to hear, and, returning to the
town for the last time, we take our station at the corner of the
market-place, and make a sketch of a group of Norman maidens who are
well worth coming out to see.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER III.
_LISIEUX._
'Oh! the pleasant days, when men built houses after their own
minds, and wrote their own devices on the walls, and none laughed
at them; when little wooden knights and saints peeped out from the
angles of gable-ended houses, and every street displayed a store of
imaginative wealth.
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