Before breakfast I leave the city by the Porte Daumesiul, and wheel
through the environments toward Vincennes and Jonville, pedalling, to
the sound of martial music, for miles beyond the Porte. The roads for
thirty miles east of Paris are not Normandy roads, but the country for
most of the distance is fairly level, and for mile after mile, and league
beyond league, the road is beneath avenues of plane and poplar, which,
crossing the plain in every direction like emerald walls of nature's own
building, here embellish and beautify an otherwise rather monotonous
stretch of country. The villages are little different from the villages
of Normandy, but the churches have not the architectural beauty of the
Normandy churches, being for the most part massive structures without
any pretence to artistic embellishment in their construction. Monkish-looking
priests are a characteristic feature of these villages, and when, on
passing down the narrow, crooked streets of Fontenay, I wheel beneath a
massive stone archway, and looking around, observe cowled priests and
everything about the place seemingly in keeping with it, one can readily
imagine himself transported back to medieval times. One of these little
interior French villages is the most unpromising looking place imaginable
for a hungry person to ride into; often one may ride the whole length
of the village expectantly looking around for some visible evidence of
wherewith to cheer the inner man, and all that greets the hungry vision
is a couple of four-foot sticks of bread in one dust-begrimed window,
and a few mournful-looking crucifixes and Roman Catholic paraphernalia
in another. Neither are the peasants hereabouts to be compared with the
Normandy peasantry in personal appearance. True, they have as many patches
on their pantaloons, but they don't seem to have acquired the art of
attaching them in a manner to produce the same picturesque effect as
does the peasant of Normandy; the original garment is almost invariably
a shapeless corduroy, of a bagginess and an o'er-ampleness most unbeautiful
to behold.