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 hope to gain an insight into the moral qualities of a pretty woman.

Here, at last, was the ideal Normandy landscape. It was a country with a savage look—a savage that had been trained to follow the plough. Even in its color it had retained the true barbarians\' instinct for a good primary. Here were no melting-yellow mustard-fields, nor flame-lit poppied meadows, nor blue-bells lifting their baby-blue eyes out of the grain. All the land was green. Fields, meadows, forests, plains—all were green, green, green. The features of the landscape had changed with this change in coloring. The slim, fragile grace of slim trees and fragile cliffs had been replaced by trees of heroic proportions, and by outlines nobly rounded and full—like the breasts of a mother. The whole country had an astonishing look of vigor—of the vigor which comes with rude strength; and it had that charm which goes with all untamed beauty—the power to sting one into a sense of agitated enjoyment.

Even the farm-houses had been suddenly transformed into fortresses. Each one of the groups of the farm enclosures had its outer walls, its miniature turrets, and here and there its rounded bastions. Each farm, apparently, in the olden days had been a citadel unto itself. The Breton had been a very troublesome neighbor for many a long century; every ploughman, until a few hundred years ago, was quite likely to turn soldier at a second\'s notice—every true Norman must look to his own sword to defend his hearth-stone. Such is the story those stone turrets that cap the farm walls tell you—each one of these turrets was an open lid through which the farmer could keep his eye on Brittany.

Meanwhile, along the roads as we rushed swiftly by, a quieter life was passing. The farm wagons were jogging peacefully along on a high-road as smooth as a fine lady\'s palm—and as white. The horses were harnessed one before the other, in interminable length of line. Sometimes six, sometimes eight, even so many as ten, marched with great gravity, and with that majestic dignity only possible to full-blooded Percherons, one after the other. They each wore a saddle-cloth of blue sheepskin. On their mottled haunches this bit of color made their polished coats to gleam like unto a lizards\' skin.

Meanwhile, also, we were nearing Coutances. The farm-houses were fortresses no longer; the thatched roofs were one once more with the green of the high roads; for even in the old days there was a great walled city set up on a hill, to which refuge all the people about for miles could turn for protection.

A city that is set on a hill! That for me is commonly recommendation enough. Such a city, so set, promises at the very least the dual distinction of looking up as well as looking down; it is the nearer heaven, and just so much the farther removed from earth.

Coutances, for a city with its head in the air, was surprisingly friendly. It went out of its way to make us at home. At the very station, down below in the plain, it had sent the most loquacious of coach-drivers to put us in immediate touch with its present interests. All the city, as the coarse blue blouse, flourishing its whip, took pains to explain, was abroad in the fields; the forests, tiens, down yonder through the trees, we could see for ourselves how the young people were making the woods as crowded as a ball-room. The city, as a city, was stripping the land and the trees bare—it would be as bald as a new-born babe by the morrow. But then, of a certainty, we also had come for the fête—or, and here a puzzled look of doubt beclouded the provincial\'s eyes—might we, perchance, instead, have come for the trial? Mais non, pas ?à, these ladies had never come for that, since they did not even know the court was sitting, now, this very instant, at Coutances. And—sapristi! but there was a trial going on—one to make the blood curdle; he himself had not slept, the rustic coachman added, as he shivered beneath his blouse, all the night before—the blood had run so cold in his veins.

The horse and the road were all the while going up the hill. The road was easily one that might have been the path of warriors; the walls, still lofty on the side nearest the town, bristled with a turret or a bastion to remind us Coutances had not been set on a hill for mere purposes of beauty. The ramparts of the old fortifications had been turned into a broad promenade. Even as we jolted past, beneath the great breadth of the trees\' verdure we could see how gloriously the prospect widened—the country below reaching out to the horizon like the waters of a sea that end only in indefiniteness.

The city itself seemed to grow out of the walls and the trees. Here and there a few scattered houses grouped themselves as if meaning to start a street; but a maze of foliage made a straight line impossible. Finally a large group of buildings, with severe stone faces, took a more serious plunge away from the vines; they had shaken themselves free and were soon soberly ranging themselves into the parallel lines of narrow city streets.

It was a pleasant surprise to find that, for once, a Norman blouse had told the truth; for here were the people of Coutances coming up from the fields to prove it. In all these narrow streets a great multitude of people were passing us; some were laden with vines, others with young forest trees, and still others with rude garlands of flowers. The peasant women\'s faces, as the bent figures staggered beneath a young fir-tree, were purple, but their smiles were as gay as the wild flowers with which the stones were thickly strewn. Their words also were as rough:

"Diantre—mais c\'e lourd!"

"E-ben, e toi, tu n\' bougeons point, toi!"

And the nearest fir-tree carrier to our carriage wheels cracked a swift blow over the head of a vine-bearer, who being but an infant of two, could not make time with the swift foot of its mother.

The smell of the flowers was everywhere. Fir-trees perfumed the air. Every doorstep was a garden. The courtyards were alive with the squat figures of capped maidens, wreathing and twisting greens and garlands. And in the streets there was such a noise as was never before heard in a city on a hill-top.

For Coutances was to hold its great fête on the morrow.

It was a relief to turn in from the noise and hubbub to the bright courtyard of our inn. The brightness thereof, and of the entire establishment, indeed, appeared to find its central source in the brilliant eyes of our hostess. Never was an inn-keeper gifted with a vision at once so omniscient and so effulgent. Those eyes were everywhere; on us, on our bags, our bonnets, our boots; they divined our wants, and answered beforehand our unuttered longings. We had come far? the eyes asked, burning a hole through our gossamer evasions; from Paris, perhaps—a glance at our bonnets proclaimed the eyes knew all; we were here for the fête, to see the bishop on the morrow; that was well; we were going on to the Mont; and the eyes scented the shortness of our stay by a swift glance at our luggage.

"Numéro quatre, au troisième!"

There was no appeal possible. The eyes had penetrated the disguise of our courtesy; we were but travellers of a night; the top story was built for such as we.

But such a top story, and such a chamber therein! A great, wide, low room; beams deep and black, with here and there a brass bit hanging; waxed floors, polished to mirrory perfection; a great bed clad in snowy draperies, with a snow-white duvet of gigantic proportions. The walls were gray with lovely bunches of faded rosebuds flung abroad on the soft surface; and to give a quaint and antique note to the whole, over the chimney was a bit of worn tapestry with formidable dungeon, a Norman keep in the background, and well up in front, a stalwart young master of the hounds, with dogs in leash, of the heavy Norman type of bulging muscle and high cheekbones.

Altogether, there were worse fates in the world than to be travellers of a night, with the destiny of such a room as part of the fate.

When we descended the steep, narrow spiral of steps to the dining-room, it was to find the eyes of our hostess brighter than ever. The noise in the streets had subsided. It was long after dusk, and Coutances was evidently a good provincial. But in the gay little dining-room there was an astonishing bustle and excitement.

The fête and the court had brought a crowd of diners to the inn-table; when we were all seated we made quite a company at the long, narrow board. The candles and lamps lit up any number of Vandyke pointed beards, of bald heads, of loosely-tied cravats, and a few matronly bosoms straining at the buttons of silk holiday gowns. For the Fête-Dieu had brought visitors besides ourselves from all the country round; and then "a first communion is like a marriage, all the relatives must come, as doubtless we knew," was a baldhead\'s friendly beginning of his soup and his talk, as we took our seats beside him.

With the appearance of the potage conversation, like a battle between foes eager for contest, had immediately engaged itself. The setting of the table and the air of companionship pervading the establishment were aiders and abettors to immediate intercourse. Nothing could be prettier than the Caen bowls with their bunches of purple phlox and spiked blossoms. Even a metropolitan table might have taken a lesson from the perfection of the lighting of the long board. In order that her guests should feel the more entirely at home, our brilliant-eyed hostess came in with the soup; she took her place behind it at the head of the table.

It was evident the merchants from Cherbourg who had come as witnesses to the trial, had had many a conversational bout before now with madame\'s ready wit. So had two of the town lawyers. Even the commercial gentlemen, for once, were experiencing a brief moment of armed suspense, before they flung themselves into the arena of talk. At first, or it would never have been in the provinces, this talk at the long table, everyone broke into speech at once. There was a flood of words; one\'s sense of hearing was stunned by the noise. Gradually, as the cider and the thin red wine were passed, our neighbors gave digestion a chance; the din became less thick with words; each listened when the other talked. But, as the volume of speech lessened, the interest thickened. It finally became concentrated, this interest, into true French fervor when the question of the trial was touched on.

"They say D\'Alen?on is very clever. He pleads for Filon, the culprit, to-night, does he not?"

"Yes, poor Filon—it will go hard with him. His crime is a black one."

"I should think it was—implicating le petit!"

"Dame! the judge doesn\'t seem to be of your mind."

"Ah—h!" cried a florid Vandyke-bearded man, the dynamite bomb of the table, exploding with a roar of rage. "Ah—h, cré nom de Dieu!—Messieurs les presidents are all like that; they are always on the side of the innocent—"

"Till they prove them guilty."

"Guilty! guilty!" the bomb exploded in earnest now. "How many times in the annals of crime is a man guilty—really guilty? They should search for the cause—and punish that. That is true justice. The instigator, the instigator—he is the true culprit. Inheritances—voilà les vrais coupables. But when are such things investigated? It is ever the innocent who are punished. I know something of that—I do."

"Allons—allons!" cried the table, laughing at the beard\'s vehemence. "When were you ever under sentence?"

"When I was doing my duty," the beard hurled back with both arms in the air; "when I was doing my three years—I and my comrade; we were convicted—punished—for an act of insubordination we never committed. Without a trial, without a chance of defending ourselves, we were put on two crumbs of bread and a glass of water for two months. And we were innocent—as innocent as babes, I tell you."

The table was as still as death. The beard had proved himself worthy of this compliment; his voice was the voice of drama, and his gestures such as every Frenchman delights in beholding and executing. Every ear was his, now.

"I have no rancor. I am, by nature, what God made me, a peaceable man, but"—here the voice made a wild crescendo—"if I ever meet my colonel—gare à lui! I told him so. I waited two years, two long years, till I was released; then I walked up to him" (the beard rose here, putting his hand to his forehead), "I saluted" (the hand made the salute), "and I said to him, \'Mon colonel, you convicted me, on false evidence, of a crime I never committed. You punished me. It is two years since then. But I have never forgotten. Pray to God we may never meet in civil life, for then yours would end!"

"Allons, allons! A man after all must do his duty. A colonel—he can\'t go into details!" remonstrated the hostess, with her knife in the air.

"I would stick him, I tell you, as I would a pig—or a Prussian! I live but for that!"

"Monstre!" cried the table in chorus, with a laugh, as it took its wine. And each turned to his neighbor to prove the beard in the wrong.

"Of what crime is the defendant guilty—he who is to be tried to-night?" Charm asked of a silent man, with sweet serious eyes and a rough gray beard, seated next her. Of all the beards at the table, this one alone had been content with listening.

"Of fraud—mademoiselle—of fraud and forgery." The man had a voice as sweet as a church bell, and as deep. Every word he said rang out slowly, sonorously. The attention of the table was fixed in an instant. "It is the case of a Monsieur Filon, of Cherbourg. He is a cider merchant. He has cheated the state, making false entries, etc. But his worst crime is that he has used as his accomplice un tout petit jeune homme—a lad of barely fifteen—"

"It is that that will make it go hard for him with the jury—"

"Hard!" cried the ex-soldier, getting red at once with the passion of his protest—"hard—it ought to condemn him, to guillotine him. What are juries for if they don\'t kill such rascals as he?"

"Doucement, doucement, monsieur," interrupted the bell-note of the merchant. "One doesn\'t condemn people without hearing both sides. There may be extenuating circumstances!"

"Yes—there are. He is a merchant. All merchants are thieves. He does as all others do—only he was found out."

A protesting murmur now rose from the table, above which rang once more, in clear vibrations, the deep notes of the merchant.

"Ah—h, mais—tous voleurs—non, not all are thieves. Commerce conducted on such principles as that could not exist. Credit is not founded on fraud, but on trust."

"Très bien, très bien," assented the table. Some knives were thumped to emphasize the assent.

"As for stealing"—the rich voice continued, with calm judicial slowness—"I can understand a man\'s cheating the state once, perhaps—yielding to an impulse of cupidity. But to do as ce Monsieur Filon has done—he must be a consummate master of his art—for his processes are organized robbery."

"Ah—h, but robbery against the state isn\'t the same thing as robbing an individual," cried the explosive, driven into a corner.

"It is quite the same—morally, only worse. For a man who robs the state robs everyone—including himself."

"That\'s true—perfectly true—and very well put." All the heads about the table nodded admiringly; their hostess had expressed the views of them all. The company was looking now at the gray beard with glistening eyes; he had proved himself master of the argument, and all were desirous of proving their homage. Not one of the nice ethical points touched on had been missed; even the women had been eagerly listening, following, criticising. Here was a little company of people gathered together from rustic France, meeting, perhaps, for the first time at this board. And the conversation had, from the very beginning, been such as one commonly expects to hear only among the upper ranks of metropolitan circles. Who would have looked to see a company of Norman provincials talking morality, and handling ethics with the skill of rhetoricians?

Most of our fellow-diners, meanwhile, were taking their coffee in the street. Little tables were ranged close to the house-wall. There was just room for a bench beside the table, and then the sidewalk ended.

"Shall you be going to the trial to-night?" courteously asked the merchant who had proven himself a master in debate, of Charm. He had lifted his hat before he sat down, bowing to her as if he had been in a ball-room.

"It will be fine to-night—it is the opening of the defence," he added, as he placed carefully two lumps of sugar in his cup.

"It\'s always finer at night—what with the lights and the people," interpolated the landlady, from her perch on the door-sill. "If ces dames wish to go, I can show them the way to the galleries. Only," she added, with a warning tone, her growing excitement obvious at the sense of the coming pleasure, "it is like the theatre. The earlier we get there the better the seat. I go to get my hat." And the door swallowed her up.

"She is right—it is like a theatre," soliloquized the merchant—"and so is life. Poor Filon!"

We should have been very content to remain where we were. The night had fallen; the streets, as they lost themselves in dim turnings, in mysterious alleyways, and arches that seemed grotesquely high in the vague blur of things, were filled for us with the charm of a new and lovely beauty. At one end the street ended in a towering mass of stone; that doubtless was the cathedral. At the right, the narrow houses dipped suddenly; their roof-lines were lost in vagueness. Between the slit m............