We cannot leave this pastoral scene, at least until the evening; when
the sun goes down behind the sea--leaving a glow upon the hill-side and
upon the crowd of gleaners who have just come up, and casts long shadows
across the stubble and on the sheaves of corn; when the harvest moon
shines out, and the picture is completed--the corn--sheaves lighted on
one side by the western glow, on the other by the moon; like the famous
shield over which knights did battle,--one side silver, the other gold.

All this time we are within sight, and nearly within sound, of the
'happy hunting grounds' of Trouville and Deauville, but the country
people are singularly unaffected by the proximity of those pretty
towns, invented by Dumas and peopled by his following.[52] It is true
that on the walls of a little village inn, there is something paraded
about a 'Trouville Association, Limited,' and a company for 'the passage
of the Simplon,' with twenty-franc shares; but these things do not seem
to find much favour amongst the thrifty peasantry. They have, in their
time, been tempted to unearth their treasures, and to invest in bubble
companies like the rest of the world; but there is a reaction here, the
Normans evidently thinking, like the old Colonnæ, that a hole in the
bottom of the garden is about the safest place after all. And they have,
it is true, some other temptations which come to them with a cheap
press, such as '_la sureté financière_,' '_le moniteur des tirages
financiers_,' '_le petit moniteur financier_,' &c., newspapers whose
special business it is, to teach the people how to get rid of their
savings, we are speaking, of course, of the comparatively uneducated
agricultural population--the farmers, all through the district we have
come, especially near Vire and Falaise, being rich _propriétaires_ and
investing largely; and there are many other things in these half-penny
French newspapers which find their way into these remote corners of
France, which must make the curé sometimes regret that he had taught his