In and Out of Three Normandy Inns

d the village up into the fields. The other was the one that led the tillers o

Norman who has not

here on the benches before the juge de paix-what quarrels, what hatreds, what evil passions these few acres of land have brought their owners, facing each other here like so many demons, ready to spring at the others' throats! Brothers on these benches forget they are brothers, and sisters that t

despair kept at a white heat because half the village owned, up in the fields, what the other half coveted. Many, also, and fierce were

e broad open, the farms lay scattered like fortifications over a pl

lerville streets, and the

storal scenes that began as soon as the town ended. Women carrying sails and nets toiled through the green aisles of the roads and lanes. Fishing-tackle hung in company with tattered jerseys outside of huts hidden in grasses and honeysuckle. The shepherdesses, as they followed the sheep inland into the heart of the pasture land, were bu

f men and women were thickest. The long scythes were swung mightily by both; the voices, a gay treble

es, over plains of red clover, over the backs of spotted cattle, mixing, mingling, blending a thousand twists and turns into one exquisite, harmonious whole. There was no discordant note, not

ne sees only in Devonshire and in Normandy. There are lanes and lanes, as, to quote our friend the cobbler, there are cures and cures. But only in these above-named countries can one count on walking straight into the heart of an emerald, if one turns from the high-road into a lane

ainfully crawling; and on his face there was the vacuous, sensuous deformity of the smile idiocy wears. Again I ask, why did he not disfigure this fair scene, and put out something of the beauty of the day? Is it because the French peasant seems now to be an inseparable adjunct of the Frenchman's landscape? That even deformity has been so handled by the realists as to make us see beauty in ugliness? Or is it that,

Why should we not go," she asked, "across the next field,

ached it, together with its out-buildings, assumed a more imposing aspect than it had from the road. Its long, low facade, broken here and there by a mi

as ominous-it w

field; he was raking the ploughed ground. He wa

ment is in the fields," said

ession of blows

ttress within, we shall

t no one answe

as if machine-impelled. Then a cry rose up; it was the cry of a

ith passion-bending over the crouching form of a girl, whose slender body was quivering, shrinking, a

nt on as ea

apping her hands. Her eyes were starting from her head; she clapped as the blo

la! T

oice of a tr

e turned upon us; they had not se

rm, and then my own hand was grasped as in a grip of iron. Before we had time for resistance he had pushed us out before him into the entry, behind the outer door. This latt

chance! Je v'avions vue, I saw

ck!" But Charm might as well have

good-humored face br

s. Not' maitre e encoléré; e' son

e heard crossing and recrossing the wooden floor. A creaking sound succeeded to the beating-it was the creaking and groaning of a wooden staircase bending beneath t

eyes and an insolent smile, stood looking out at us t

e peasant well-nigh fell into his master's arms. The farmer's face was still terrible to look upon, but the purple stain of passion

our long walk?" On the man's hard face there was still the shadow

nd his stupid, cow-like eyes, by contrast, w

the open road. The head kept nodding approval as we van

d shadow. Above, the birds were swirling in sweeping circles, raining down the ecstasy of their night-song; still above, far beyond them, across a zenith pure, transparent, ineffably pink, illumined wisps of clouds were

than the bird-notes and the tumult of the voluptuous insect whirr, th

life of the peasant-farme