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Cabourg is about a mile and a half from Houlgate in a straight line along the shore; but the Dives rivulet stops the way, and sends the road round to seek an inland bridge, and so doubles the direct distance. Cabourg is the last village accessible from Trouville (two hours' drive); all the hamlets further onwards are got at from Caen or Bayeux. It is almost a pity that Cabourg can be reached at all, for a more unworthy hole it is difficult to imagine. It stands on a lonely sand-spit without a tree. Its houses seem all to be afflicted with a frightful malady of the skin, something between erysipelas and leprosy, for their surface swells and cracks and peels most loathsomely. The disease is not, however, contagious, to human beings at all events; and as its cause is known (too much salt in the sea-sand which made the bricks and mortar,) its extension may be prevented if ever a new house is built. These mangy tenements are all bran-new, and threaten to go on exposing their wounds, as Spanish beggars do, for indefinite years to come. They stand alone, with nothing green about them. The vegetation in the old church of Dives is a primeval forest compared to the nakedness of Cabourg. The heat in July is as great as at Palermo on a sirocco day, and the north-easters cut your eyes out. Well, despite these natural advantages, speculators have spent £300,000 at Cabourg. Its Casino is the smartest on the Channel coast. A gentleman in a white cravat, with knee-breeches, black silk stockings, and a vast silver chain on his shoulders (like the one Mario used to wear in Lucrezia Borgia, only that was gold), stands with a wand in his hand on the terrace, inspiring awe into the bare-legged children who gape at him from below. The absurdity of that poor man exceeds

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all hitherto attempted folly, there he is, as calm as if he were not ridiculous: what must the seagulls think of him? There is a good deal of play in that Casino, for Cabourg, with all its ugliness, is a somewhat riotous place. People sit up late there under the gaslamps (dear little Houlgate has no gas) and tell stories; and there is a supply of Paris young ladies of more than doubtful aspect and character. On the whole, the goings-on there may be described as loose; and if there were not an esplanade-the only one in the department except that at Deauville-Cabourg would not possess one single merit. It has two moderately good hotels, one of which bears the superb denomination of "Hotel des Ducs de Normandie;" and the beach is raked and rolled like gravel-paths in an English garden, apparently for the benefit of the delicate feet of the young ladies in question. It is difficult to conceive that any one should go to Cabourg twice, but there are people who commit the act, incomprehensible as it is. Four or five well-known Parisians actually possess houses there; they don't confess that they are sorry for it, but at the bottom of their hearts they must surely be so.

Four miles beyond Cabourg the river Orne reaches the sea, and there begins another land. The change is universal and complete; it applies to every detail and every object. The country is dead level everywhere, not an undulation can be seen, but grass has vanished with the hills, and we get into ploughed fields and varied crops: it is no longer the thorough Normandy of the Villers and Beuzeval road. Cows and appletrees are replaced by beetroot and second growths of colza; one might as well be in Seine-et-Oise. But the modification in agriculture is nothing compared to the bewilder

ing alteration in the seaside villages. In them there is an end of everything that is or might be pleasant; the wretched hamlets seem to go in resolutely for misery and woe. Nothing on British shores can give a notion of such places as Lion, Luc, Langrune, and St Aubin, which follow each other at short distances along the low flat sea-bank: Robinson Crusoe himself would have called them dull, and have preferred his island and his goats. Yet there are creatures looking like men and women who inhabit them, and breathe and eat there; it is true they all come from Caen and suchlike homes, which is a partial explanation. It is superfluous to add that no Parisian ever stayed an hour in such sorrow. At Lion there is literally not one tree; no shade is possible; the eager sunlight is everywhere; and unless you are small enough to hide behind the leaves of the carrots and the turnips, huge fields of which stand in between the old tottering houses, no chance is there for you to escape its rays. A few new châlets-three or four perhaps-have been recently put up by insane enthusiasts; but with these exceptions, the whole place seems to date from Louis XI. Still drearier is Luc, drearier still is Langrune; and the triple essence of ennui and solitude is reached at that incredible place St Aubin. Out of the Amour territory and off the shores of the Okhotsk Sea the universe can exhibit nothing so formidably lonely. Those gloomy groups of slate - grey cottages are both ancient and elementary: one is face to face with the beginning of things, with something between the lacustrine period and one's Welsh greataunt. There stand the square naked huts on the wild dune, clover behind, wire grass on the doorway, sand in front, and five days a-week a howling hot wind sweeping over

all. The bathing is excellent, that is true; but, excepting for the inhabitants of Caen, life has other needs than bathing. At St Aubin the very hotel is "to be let or sold." This fact is doubtless painful to the proprietor, but to the passing wayfarer it simply indicates the eternal fitness of things, and proves that no hotel ought ever to have been there.

The sea is vastly more attractive than the land along this weary waste. Firstly, it provides sea-weed in prodigious quantities,-sea-weed for manure, for stuffing mattresses, and, some people say, for manufacturing cigars. This last insinuation is worth going to St Aubin to fetch: it has the merit of being new, the only novelty which France has engendered since the Commune; but is it true? Is it a reality that the French Government, being temporarily out of honest tobacco, is craftily vending sea weed in its stead? That the fragrant leaf itself should have become scarce will readily be believed by those who saw the depots of it emptied by Prussian soldiers and Paris insurgents; but that France should be smoking fucus without knowing it, would be an enormous sign of the progress of civilisation and of the adaptability of substances. Thus far, proof is limited to the evidence of those people at St Aubin, whose reason may, not unnaturally, be affected by the lives they lead, and whose testimony should therefore be received with suspicion and reserve. Secondly, The sea produces rocks, a real fringing reef outside the coast, just like the flounce round a coral island, a reef fifteen miles long, the "Rochers du Calvados," which lent their name to the Department when Departments replaced Provinces in France. These rocks swarm with oysters, lobsters, crabs, and fish, and it is easy to understand that their vicinity should have

necessitated the formation of enormous oyster-parks on shore. The parks are at Courseulles, five miles beyond St Aubin, a fishy little port, inhabited by 2000 people who live by crustaceous industry. They tell you in their languid drawl that there are a hundred and five parks there, and that they send away forty-five millions of oysters every year. As it is difficult to verify these figures they may be accepted as approximately exact; not that anybody cares whether they are exact or not; only it does seem odd that forty-five millions of anything whatever can be produced within five miles of St Aubin. Looking at oyster-parks is even less diverting than looking at fat pigs to the ordinary mind, that is; but there are brave fellows at Courseulles who contemplate their ponds with love, as painters gaze at their pictures. Oysters and art are supposed to be widely distinct, and yet they may produce identical results, as is here triumphantly proved.

A mile inland from Langrune, amidst the turnips, lies Douvres, a town. In Douvres there is a church, and in that church a statue. The church was once a chapel, which is said to have been founded about the year 100 by Saint Regnobert, second Bishop of Bayeux, under the invocation of Nôtre Dame de la Délivrande, and to have been burnt in 830 by the ravaging Normans. Two hundred years passed by; long grass had grown over the almost forgotten ruins; when one day a strange event occurred. Here is the narrative of it, published in 1642, by the Franciscan Fossard :

"En ce tems ici vivoit un seigneur nommé Baudouin, comte du Bessin, qui

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se tenoit en sa baronnie de Douvre, de l'évêché de Bayeux le berger du quel seigneur appercoit que l'un de ses moutons par plusieurs fois se retiroit du troupeau et couroit en un lieu auprès de la pâture; là, de pied et de cornes frappoit et foüil

loit la terre, puis étant las, il se couchoit à la place même où de présent est la niche de l'image de la Vierge, en la Chapelle de la Délivrande. Ce mouton ne prenoit aucune nourriture et étoit néanmois le

plus gras de la bergerie. Le comte croyant que ce lui étoit avertissement envoyé du Ciel, se transporta sur le lieu, accompagné de sa noblesse et d'un saint hermite, avec le peuple qui y courut des lieux circonvoisins: il commanda de parachever la fosse que le mouton avoit commencée. On y trouva l'image de Nôtre Dame; il y a à présent plus de six cents ans. Cette image fut portée en procession solennelle, avec une commune allégresse de tout le peuple, dans l'église de Douvre; mais tôt après elle fut rapportée, par le ministère d'un ange, au lieu même où elle fut trouvée. Dieu montra par ce transport et invention miraculeuse, qu'il avoit choisi ce lieu plus particulièrement pour son service et pour celui de la glorieuse Vierge Marie, sa mère. Alors le comte connoissant la volonté divine, il fit édifier et fonder la Chapelle qui est encore à présent, et la donna à Messieurs du Chapitre de Bayeux."

The wonderful statue, after supporting all kinds of accidents, is still in its place, and is an object of pilgrimage from all the country round. It is very ugly. What

ever be the reverence which it may deserve, no one can anyhow urge that it is physically attractive, or that it realises any of our ideas of the Madonna. But it has a legend, and all Calvados is proud of it; so it cannot be left out here.

Beyond Courseulles the low coast stretches on to Carentan, where the Cherbourg peninsula begins; but no one was ever known to go there, excepting in search of shrimps. The region visited by Paris ends at Cabourg; and there ends life, in the modern acceptation of the word. Existence along the twenty miles of shore from Trouville to the Orne is certainly less stupid than in many other places where people go in crowds. The district is easy to get at, and not dear, as times go. But, after all, the choice of a seaside summer station depends on so many wants and

fancies-head, heart, and pocket are often so interested in it-that no arguments in favour of any special spot are likely to influence more than two persons at the outside, one of whom is sure to be an old maid. The advantage of that is, that one can say all the good one thinks of anywhere without fearing the accusation of being bribed by the innkeeper. Houlgate is certainly the best place on the coast for people who are content with quiet, and who don't depend on others for their amusement. It won't do at all for men who want to look at women, or for women who want to be made love to; but for weary bodies which need refreshment-for natures which can put up with green grass behind, white sand before, and no emotions, except fishing for équilles-Houlgate is quite perfect. Go there, mothers of large families, who want to economise the cost of bathing - machines; go there, sad hearts which want to fly from everything but memory; go there, young husbands and young wives who think that joy is eternal, and when

you meet the sad face of your neighbour wandering alone on the clifftop, take a lesson from it, and hug your happiness while you have it— it won't last: Tout casse, tout lasse, tout passe.

You who live for other people, go to Trouville; only let Englishwomen remember that even now, in 1871, the Parisiennes will teach them how to dress. This caution is unhappily too necessary, for the representatives of female Britain who come over in yachts, or drop down from Paris, do look most appalling by the side of their Gallic sisters. When will England learn that a pretty face does not suffice to make an attractive woman?

Deauville is just the place for the high and mighty people of whom the United Kingdom produces so many, who think that they are above the universe, that they do it honour when they condescend to look at it, and who object to contact. At Deauville they will be sure of solitary grandeur. The Calvados shore offers refuge for you all.

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VOL. CX.-NO. DCLXXII.

THE MAID OF SKER.-PART III.

CHAPTER XV.-A VERDICT ON THE JURY.

As to the second inquest, I promised (as you may remember) to tell something also. But in serious truth, if I saw a chance to escape it, without skulking watch, I would liefer be anywhere else almost—except in a French prison.

After recording with much satisfaction our verdict upon Bardie's brother which nearly all of us were certain that the little boy must be the Coroner bade his second jury to view the bodies of the five young men. These were in the great dark hall, set as in a place of honour, and poor young Watkin left to mind them; and very pale and ill he looked.

"If you please, sir, they are all stretched out, and I am not afraid of them;" he said to me, as I went to console him: "father cannot look at them; but mother and I are not afraid. They are placed according to their ages, face after face, and foot after foot. And I am sure they never meant it, sir, when they used to kick me out of bed: and oftentimes I deserved it."

I thought much less of those five great corpses than of the gentle and loving boy who had girt up his heart to conquer fear, and who tried to think evil of himself for the comforting of his brethren's souls.

But he nearly broke down when the jurymen came; and I begged them to spare him the pain and trial of going before the Coroner to identify the bodies, which I could do, as well as any one; and to this they all agreed.

When we returned to the long oak parlour, we found that the dignity of the house was maintained in a way which astonished us. There

had been some little refreshment before, especially for his Honour; but now all these things were cleared away, and the table was spread with a noble sight of glasses, and bottles, and silver implements, fit for the mess of an admiral. Neither were these meant for show alone, inasmuch as to make them useful, there was water cold and water hot, also lemons, and sugar, and nutmeg, and a great black George of ale, a row of pipes, and a jar of tobacco, also a middling keg of Hollands, and an anker of old rum. At first we could hardly believe our eyes, knowing how poor and desolate, both of food and furniture, that old grange had always been. But presently one of us happened to guess, and Hezekiah confirmed it, that the lord of the manor had taken compassion upon his afflicted tenant, and had furnished these things in a handsome manner, from his own great house some five miles distant. But in spite of the custom of the country, I was for keeping away from it all, upon so sad an occasion. And one or two more were for holding aloof, although they cast sheep's-eyes at it.

However, the Crowner rubbed his hands, and sate down at the top of the table, and then the foreman sate down also, and said that, being so much upset, he was half inclined to take a glass of something weak. He was recommended, if he felt like that, whatever he did, not to take it weak, but to think of his wife and family; for who could say what such a turn might lead to, if neglected? And this reflection had such weight, that instead of

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