a sun about to drop and end his reign could be at once so brilliant and
so tender--the diffused light had the sparkle of gold made soft by
usage. Wherever the eye roved, it was fed as on a banquet of light and
color. Nothing could be more exquisite, for depth of green swimming in
a bath of shadow, than the meadows curled beneath the cliffs; nothing
more tempting, to the painter's brush, than the arabesque of blossoms
netted across the sky; and would you have the living eye of nature,
bristling with animation, alive with winged sails, and steeped in the
very soul of yellow sunshine, look out over the great sheet of the
waters, and steep the senses in such a breadth of aqueous splendor as
one sees only in one or two of the rare shows of earth.

Then, all at once, all too soon, the great picture seemed to shrink;
the quivering pulsation of light and color gave way to staid,
commonplace gardens. Instead of hawthorn hedges there was the stench of
river smells--we were driving over cobble-paved streets and beneath
rows of crooked, crumbling houses. A group of noisy street urchins
greeted us in derision. And then we had no doubt whatsoever that we
were already in Honfleur town.

"Honfleur is an evil-smelling place," I remarked.

"Oh, well, after all, the smells of antiquity are a part of the show;
we should refuse to believe in ancientness, all of us, I fancy, if
mustiness wasn't served along with it."

"How can any town have such a stench with all this river and water and
verdure to sweeten it?" I asked, with a woman's belief in the morality
of environment--a belief much cherished by wives and mothers, I have
noticed.