We left this gentleman in a condition of ostentatious languor, and Marie
deposited me in a pretty room overlooking an exquisite little garden set
round with beds of verbena and scarlet geranium, with a fountain
sparkling in the midst. This garden was planted in what had once been
the courtyard, of the building. The trees nodded and whispered, and the
windows at the opposite side of the quadrangle glittered like burnished
gold in the sunlight. I threw open the jalousies, plucked one of the
white roses that clustered outside, and drank in with delight the sunny
perfumed air that played among the leaves, and scattered the waters of
the fountain. I could not long rest thus, however. I longed to be out
and about; so, as it was now no more than half-past three o'clock, and
two good hours of the glorious midsummer afternoon yet remained to me
before the hotel dinner-hour, I took my hat, and went out along the
quays and streets of this beautiful and ancient Norman city.

Under the crumbling archways; through narrow alleys where the upper
stories nearly met overhead, leaving only a bright strip of dazzling sky
between; past quaint old mansions, and sculptured fountains, and stately
churches hidden away in all kinds of strange forgotten nooks and
corners, I wandered, wondering and unwearied. I saw the statue of Jeanne
d'Arc; the château of Diane de Poitiers; the archway carved in oak where
the founder of the city still, in rude effigy, presides; the museum
rich in mediæval relics; the market-place crowded with fruit-sellers and
flower-girls in their high Norman caps. Above all, I saw the rare old
Gothic Cathedral, with its wondrous wealth of antique sculpture; its
iron spire, destined, despite its traceried beauty, to everlasting
incompleteness; its grass-grown buttresses, and crumbling pinnacles, and
portals crowded with images of saints and kings. I went in. All was
gray, shadowy, vast; dusk with the rich gloom of painted windows; and so