Rouen is so admirably supplied with tramways and steamboats, that a week might well be spent in exploring its suburbs by any one who has the time and inclination.

Ossel, practically a suburb of Rouen, as one goes Paris-ward, has the look of an important manufacturing town; and so it really is, although it has one architectural treasure in the manor-house of Chapelle, dating from the sixteenth century. In its enclosure is a curious Renaissance work in the form of a pyramid held aloft by four columns, beneath which is sheltered an ancient well.

Just above Rouen are innumerable riverside villages, many of which have their chief source of income from catering to those who like to dine al fresco in the country, in a garden overlooking the Seine.

These resorts are more or less of the country-fair or rural holiday order, to be sure; but hidden away here and there in snug little nooks are innumerable delightful gardens and many hundreds of arbours and groves where one may eat a meal in the open air, or while away a sleepy afternoon. And this is precisely just what does take place, not only throughout the length of the winding Seine, but on every other waterway in France.

There is no limit to the self-respecting capacity for enjoyment of those who fill these riverside resorts on Sundays and holidays. There is no drunkenness, no maudlin riot, no blasphemy, and apparently no satiety.

In contrast to this are the more luxurious, if less moral, resorts of the wealthy class; or, at least, of that class which keeps more money in circulation.

The dwellers in the Seine valley, like those along the countless other streams of France, are great fishermen; not so much for the sport or the quarry it may provide, nor for sociability, since the fisherman’s art is the least sociable of sports, as, it would seem, for the purpose of meditation. There is good fishing in the Seine, as all who partake thereof well know. From the Paris bridges and quays down the river to Rouen are many famous fishing-grounds.

Here it is that you see the true fisherman in all his glory. He sits beneath his big hat, or under an umbrella if the sun shines strongly, in a low-backed chair in a punt, and patiently holds his rod or line from early morn to late at night.

One has heard of chapels in rocks before now. Indeed, if memory serves truly, there are several in various parts of Europe that are remarkable not only for the manner of building, but often for local tradition and legend as well. There is nothing remarkable about the rock-hewn, cliff-cut Chapel of St. Adrien, near Rouen, to give it any great distinction, except its manner of building; and in this respect it is far more interesting than many already more famous. There is no pretence at architectural splendour, and the size of the edifice precludes the possibility of any vast utility. Still there is something more than a mere curio-value to this little chapel cut in the limestone cliff above the Seine, and as an ecclesiastical monument of note it is far more worthy than the pilgrim shrine at Bon Secours.

All manner of cloths are made here, especially those finer qualities used in the make-up of officers’ uniforms, carriage cloths, and the coverings of billiard-tables. There are at least twenty-five thousand men and women employed here, and all the shops of the town are supported by them. The combined industries turn out a product to the value of ninety millions of francs per year.

It was at an inn here that Arthur Young, that astute observer of matters agricultural, learned at table d’hôte—a matter of common knowledge among the guests there assembled—that the wine provinces of France were actually the poorest in all France. With some exceptions this is true to-day, and is plausibly explained elsewhere. Times have truly changed since Young wrote that he had not found one decent inn in all France.

The genuine traveller will have none of this, however, with its ever recurring mutton served under the name of agneau de Pauillac, and the eternal rag-time music of an alleged Hungarian band whose only claim to the title is the more or less incorrect copy of a Magyar uniform in which the players are dressed. The hotels de luxe have their place in the scheme of things as ordained to-day, no doubt, but they offer absolutely nothing to the lover of travel for its own sake, and are accordingly dreaded by most.

The inns of France which one meets in touring the country are so much better than similar establishments in England that the comparison is odious.

The roadside inns are not becoming spoiled, either. On the beaten track where tourists throng they still possess the sentiment of good cheer in a more substantial manner than is implied by a few churchwardens and Brummagem pewter plates stuck up over the mantel; and if they lack “visitors’ books,” with sorry verses and weak platitudes about being “home from home,” they make up for it in good food and clean beds; and for what else does one go to a hotel?

Once and again, in the larger towns where there is an English quarter, and tea-and-bun-shops exist, there also may be found a “Hôtel des Iles Brittaniques” which caters, apparently, solely to milords and millionaires; and, is quite different from the Hôtel du Pays, around the corner on the market-place, where you may drink your bock, or dine, or play dominoes with a smock-frocked peasant from the country-side.

He was touring in an automobile of modest size, not loaded down with luggage, four people in the tonneau, a mechanic, and the driver. The hotel clientèle, for the time at any rate, was composed of what the French call “Milliardairs Americains.” This is the universal name given those who make a vulgar show of money, others are merely “Les Anglais.”

Upon applying at the desk for a room, our Frenchman was met with an astonished stare and a curt reply that they had none such; and that the house was full except for a “chambre à mécanicien” over the scullery. Our friend bowed his apologies and regrets, and departed, but with true Gallic ingenuity brought up within an hour at a small town twenty kilometres away, and telephoned the before mentioned hotel in this wise:

“Allô! allô! je souis lord Whisky, oune cliente anglèse, auriez-vous cinq chambres confortébles pour môa et mon souite et garage pour mes deux automobiles?”

The reply came back over the wire satisfactorily enough:

Then our friend had his turn.

“Non, cher monsieur, je me contenterai de la chambre à mécanicien que vous avez offerte il y a quelques heures à un français!”

In the main the inns of the Seine valley are no better or no worse than in other parts of France. They may not rival the Hôtel de Metz at St. Menehould, the fame of which was in part made by Victor Hugo’s charming description in “Le Rhin”; and in Normandy they have not the same splendid abundance of good things of the table as in Burgundy, where the wine and the blood is rich; but they are amply endowed with creature comforts, and since the Touring Club of France and the Automobile Club have taken it upon themselves to counsel more care in sanitation, the inns of all France are infinitely to be preferred to those of any other country.

This is Pont de l’Arche. Its church and its few hundred houses lie mostly hidden from the railway by the screen of poplars on the long avenue leading from the station. Incidentally this adds additional attraction; and to-day there is nothing save the distant shriek of a locomotive to remind one its inhabitants are not living in another age. The river glides by as in olden times, and there is much boat and barge traffic. The town is not so especially decrepit, nor dirty, nor unwholesome; but it has a certain lackaday air of aversion to modernity which a town of its size seldom lacks in this part of France.

Though contracted, the interior likewise displays that profusion of ornament which characterizes the flamboyant style, notably in the keys of the vaulting, which show a remarkable strength. Its fenestration is good, as well as the glass, and such auxiliary features and furnishings as the retable and the organ buffet, which are acceptable, if somewhat debased from Gothic forms. Indeed, these features are seldom seen in anything but the more or less heavy Renaissance treatment of large masses.

The name Notre Dame des Arts is singularly appropriate to a finely planned church. One defines art as “the realization of a conception,” which in most cases is God-given, so far as the individual effort is concerned. Art is truth, therefore art is elevating, and it is chosen as the instrument that shall echo the grand truths which ennoble and purify mankind.

An eloquent plea is made to the artists of France to contribute their aid in glorifying the fabric of Notre Dame des Arts by the Abbé Philippe, vicar-dean of Pont de l’Arche.

The plea of the devoted dean of the church ends with the intimation that it is proposed to erect mural tablets which shall emblazon in letters of gold the names of all who may contribute to the preservation and enrichment of the fabric. Future generations will then see that in the early years of the twentieth century the friends of art were not oblivious to its higher expression, and were devoted enough to further it in this noble monument.

The dean’s garden, just before the westerly end of the church, is charming in its unworldliness. From it one enters the sanctuary in a roundabout way along gravelled walks, box-covered hedges, bright-flowered beds and small garden trees loaded with plums, apricots, and pears. Nothing here is suggestive of the onrush of time; there is no hum of the electric-car to be heard; no rush of the automobile, no smell of gasoline, and no grime of the workaday world. The church itself towers above to the eastward, and opposite is the modest house of the dean, all suggestive of peacefulness and content.

It belonged originally to the monks of the order of Citeaux, and was founded by the Lion-hearted Richard in 1190 as the outcome of a vow made while pursuing a cerf across the river, to the effect that if his horse ever reached the other bank—“un bon port”—he would erect a monastery on the spot.

To-day the ruins belong to a M. Lenoble, who has spent much care and expense in preserving what is left of this interesting relic. Of the abbatial church nothing remains but the foundations. The refectory is in a fine state of preservation, with an admirably designed series of windows.

The cloistral buildings still exist in something more than mere ruins. The capitulary hall has been reëstablished after its original lines, and its library, with its high wood ceiling of the time of Louis XVI., is admirable.

The remains of the old abbey are reflected in the Seine, which winds about its feet and forms cool, shadowy pools now frequented by fishermen from Rouen, as they doubtless were by monkish anglers in days gone past.

UP the river from Pont de l’Arche the beauties of the Seine are truly irresistible to the true traveller of artistic proclivities. At every kilometre stone along its banks the view has that charm of majestic simplicity that might be expected of a great inland waterway.

Not that it has no variety at all. It is an ever-changing panorama of a silvery sheet, reflecting the sky and clouds and the green and white of the chalk and tree clad river banks, in truly mystical fashion.

Forges-les-Eaux, near which the Andelle rises, first became celebrated for its chalybeate springs in the time of Anne of Austria, mother of Louis XIV., who, with many other celebrities of royal and noble birth, went there to take the waters.

To-day its fame has not wholly departed; but those who go to such places usually find that they are the more beneficial, the more fashionable they are, and the more alluring its amusements. Forges-les-Eaux is not one of the most fashionable, hence the virtues of its waters are now somewhat negatived. This is a pity, for it is in the midst of a charming country, and the sylvan attractions round about are doubtless as good an antidote to the excessive imbibing of water as “Petits Chevaux” or “Trente et Quarante.”

Southwesterly until one reaches the forest of Lyons, nearly four hundred square miles in extent, there is naught in this beautiful river valley but a succession of typical French villages, with high stone walls enclosing farms, red-roofed cottages, and outbuildings; and an occasional pigeonnier, and wayside cross.

At Lyons-le-Forêt, the little forest town of perhaps half a thousand inhabitants, one comes immediately into touch with a civilization strangely out of keeping with its idyllic setting. There is a hotel there with all the improvements of our own time: enamelled baths, running water, an automobile omnibus to the station, seven kilometres distant, ice for cold drinks, Scotch whisky, and many other luxuries which discount one’s enjoyment of real country travel.

It is pleasant enough, however, on a hot summer’s day; and the town itself is delightfully unspoiled, with its crooked, winding streets, its picturesque though not beautiful market-house, its pretty little church, and the tiny river Lieure, a tributary of the Andelle, where one may take fish if he likes.

Menesqueville is the station for Lyons-le-Forêt, and from here to the Seine the banks of the Andelle are settled with little cloth-manufacturing villages and towns which form a curious contrast to their more peaceful wooded backgrounds.

Near by are Rosy, with its Renaissance château; Charleval, with its towering chimney-stacks; Fleury-sur-Andelle, with its steep hill, so dreaded by automobilists; Radepont, with its eighteenth-century ruined château, abbey, and tower; Pont St. Pierre, which is simply a picturesque, paintable, and lovable little town; and, finally, as one draws even nearer the Seine, Pitres, known formerly as Pistes, where archæologists have told us was an ancient Gallo-Romain city which came to great prosperity under the first and second races of kings.

It is a curious, and contradicting history that is to be evolved from the topography of the river Andelle. Throughout the valley one receives emotions varying from those of sylvan and idyllic surroundings on the upper river, to those aroused by the busy little towns peopled with yarn-spinners and cloth-weavers of both sexes, who are supremely happy at their work, which lasts for a dozen hours each day.

The middle ages covered this contented valley of to-day with numberless fortresses, which are now scarcely recognizable even as ruins. The tower of Jean-Sans-Terre which remains at Radepont, together with the earlier work of Richard Cœur de Lion, is the exception. These sit on the side of a profound and luxuriant gorge environed with the remains of the Abbey of Fontaine-Guerard, and should be searched out if one has the time.

At Ecouis, not far from the banks of the Andelle, is a magnificent church built at the highest point of Vexin, amid a country wholly given over to wheat-fields. The church was founded by Enguerrand de Marigny and consecrated in 1313. In the interior is a magnificent mausoleum of Jean de Marigny, a former Archbishop of Rouen, the brother of the founder. It is a wayside shrine of quite the first rank, though seldom visited or seen except by travellers through Normandy by road.

Near the juncture of the Andelle is St. Etienne du Vauvray, the chief and only attraction of which is its curiously outré church, with a conventional central tower, slated, and capped with a singularly light and graceful iron cross, which in turn is surmounted by a representation of a cock, dear to the French as a symbol of the ancient Gauls.

The easterly portion of this curious church—the more ancient part—extending from this flanking round tower is a wonderfully massive structure considering its size. Its portal is bare and gaunt and devoid of ornament; but it is typically Norman, with that strength of proportion which even in the best of Gothic often fell short of the earlier style. The western end is modern, shockingly so, with pepper-box exaggerated apse and no transepts.

There is elaborate glass throughout, though apparently of no great value. It is a charming ensemble of reds, greens, and browns that composes the view of this tiny church which one gets from before the astonishingly ample mairie, on the road to St. Pierre-du-Vauvray, the railway junction for Louviers and Les Andelys.

An artist will fall in love with the ancient mill, picturesquely planted on the river’s bank; and, if it were not that the proudly set Château Gaillard, to be seen in the distance, draws one to it in a magnetic and inexpressible fashion, many pages of his sketch-book would undoubtedly reproduce some of the charm of the environment of this otherwise unattractive village, which it may be said possesses no accommodation for the traveller save the roadside tavern.

The road to Les Andelys runs from St. Pierre, by the left bank of the Seine, for nearly a dozen kilometres.

The twin towns of Les Andelys are famed—if famed they are in the minds of the casual travellers—for the “Saucy Castle” of Richard Cœur de Lion,—the Château Gaillard, his “daughter of a year,” as he himself called it.

The great Continental strength of the Kings of England—the Angevin kings, not English kings, mark well—who were the Ducs de Normandie, gave to the France of Philippe-Auguste no little concern. They held nearly, if not quite all, the coast of ancient Gaul, from the northernmost limits of Normandy to the Pyrenees; and were virtually masters of Bretagne, Anjou, Maine, and Aquitaine, which encircled the France of Philippe-Auguste like a vast belt and struck to the heart the new empire.

The great Philippe-Auguste, who hoped to do so much toward welding new France, had professed a great fondness for Richard Cœur de Lion, and had even undertaken the Third Crusade in company with him. This did not prevent him, however, from assailing the English possessions in France, ultimately occupying Normandy, Maine, and Poitou.

Richard was not as great a political power as Philippe-Auguste; but he was more than his equal in military skill. He cared not so much to possess the sceptre of his brother king as his sword. Accordingly he erected the redoubtable fortress at Les Andelys, which to-day, ruin though it is, charms the thousands that have appreciated its majesty and its all dominant situation high above the cobble-paved main street of Petit Andelys; so distant from the surface of the river which washes its very haunches that the river boats and barges look like crawling, creeping things endowed with crude animal forces rather than steam or manpower.

When the historian writes of Château Gaillard and the siege which it withstood against Philippe-Auguste he writes of one of the most decisive and memorable events in the annals of French history; and for this reason it is not recounted here. All histories give it in full.

Whoever wishes to know what a mediæval château—in this case a fortified castle of great size, and as near as possible, perhaps, to invulnerability—was really like, should study the Château Gaillard of Richard Cœur de Lion in detail.

Cotman, Turner, and, in more recent times, Alfred East, R. A., have all painted it and its proud position; and scores of lesser artists have tried their hand. Certainly no mediæval monument existing in modern times has a more commanding or magnificently picturesque situation.

The Seine at Petit Andelys amplifies itself at the bend across which the lion-hearted Richard spread his chains in defence of his château. Above, scarce five hundred yards, the river is narrower than at any other part along its length between Paris and the sea.

The tiny islands just below the bridge dot the stream quite in the manner of the wooded islets elsewhere, but the background, the château-crowned height, the winding river road to Vernon, flanked by forest-clad hills, the woods above Vacherie, and the chalky stratified formation off toward Muids,—all combine to make an ensemble which can only be seen in Normandy, along the valley of the Seine.

Petit Andelys, on the river bank, is a sort of watering-place suburb for the larger town, which lies “un bon kilometre” away, the native tells you, up a long, straight, tree-shaded boulevard, which would add glory to a much greater city.

Each of the towns possess a magnificent and delightful mediæval church. That of Grand Andelys is the more elaborate and is truly a grand affair, with very good late Gothic, some good fifteenth-century glass, curious aisle vaultings and arches in its interior; and, finally, a north façade in the ugliest of Renaissance workmanship which ever disgraced an otherwise beautiful Gothic fabric.

The Hotel du Grand Cerf, a sixteenth-century tavern, which has come down to the present day still possessed of some of its ancient furnishings of old oak, stone, and plaster, is another great attraction in Grand Andelys.

St. Sauveur’s at Petit Andelys is in quite a different class from its sister church at Grand Andelys. It is smaller, and a thoroughly consistent twelfth-century fabric, wholly delightful in its plan and execution. In short, it is one of the most perfectly designed and preserved edifices of its kind in all France.

The fêtes of the patron saints of Les Andelys, Ste. Clotilde at Grand Andelys (June) and St. Sauveur at Petit Andelys (August), are events which draw great crowds from round about, and are the cause of much gaiety of a truly local nature.

Grand Andelys has, moreover, a miraculous fountain dedicated to Ste. Clotilde. It is the centre for a pilgrimage on the second of June of each year, the date on which the saint, who was the wife of Clovis, caused the water to be turned to wine. The same thing has not happened since; but the fountain is still a venerated shrine.

The Anglo-Saxon tourist will not want for company here at Petit Andelys, though it is not a very popular tourist resort. But if he drifts into the garden courtyard of the Hôtel Bellevue, in mid-July or August, or indeed at most any time between May and November, he will find a joyous crowd of artists gathered about a long table set beneath the trees. At night the electric lights—the one worldly note of it all—twinkle out from among the trees, and the talk on art, literature, and automobiles which goes from mouth to mouth, would fill any one with interest, and hold his attention no matter how blasé he may think himself.

As one draws near to Gisors one passes the ruined donjon of Neufles-St.-Martin (1182), built by Henry II. of England, and the ancient Château de Vaux, built also on the plans of Mansard, but now forming the manor-house of a great farm.

Gisors is not often visited by casual travellers in Normandy. They usually make for Evreux, when they leave the Seine valley, in order to visit its cathedral, they will tell you; certainly not for anything else, for Evreux does not possess many tourist attractions.

As a matter of fact, they would do better to leave Evreux out of their itinerary and visit Gisors, which has a great mediæval Gothic and Renaissance church, quite as grand and bizarre as Evreux Cathedral. The Church of St. Gervais at Gisors dates from the year 1240, and is called by the native, with unwarranted pride, “la cathédrale.”

Gisors itself is rather a smug town with a characteristically good hotel (l’Ecu de France) and the usual collection of country shops.

The history of Gisors has been most vivid, and there are many remains of its past activities and glories in warfare and strategy. Before the tenth century, Gisors was but the site of a small château held as a fief from the Church of Rouen. Ultimately it was acquired by Guillaume-le-Roux, who made Gisors the key of the eastern frontier between Normandy and the royal domain of the Kings of France.

The remains of the fortress-chateau, built by Guillaume-le-Roux in 1097, show plainly that it was one of the wonders of the military architecture of its time. Additions and reinforcements were made in turn by Henri I. and II.; and, from the conquest of Normandy by Philippe-Auguste until to-day, its ruins, though fragmentary and widely separated, form one of the greatest collections of details of a mediæval fortress to be seen in the north of France. It does not form a unit as does the château at Les Andelys, nor is it a mere tower or donjon, as at Arques, Falaise, or Conches, but it presents a convincing indication of its former strength and magnitude.

Rollon at this time embraced Christianity, and the Archbishop Françon, who baptized him, obtained from his new convert large donations in favour of many monasteries and churches; among others the cathedrals of Rouen, Bayeux, and Evreux, and the abbeys of St. Ouen, Jumièges, and Mont St. Michel.

From this time on the fierce pirates, the former companions of Rollon’s dangers and glories, were so tractable under his will and the new laws which were promulgated, that they soon became rich and opulent. Thieving and brigandage disappeared, and in their place law and order reigned in these parts for the first time.

The “Echiquier” was only permanently established at Rouen in 1499, however, and took the name of the Parliament of Normandy.

Down the river valley, below St. Clair, are Berthenouville, with the remains of a mediæval château; Dampsmesnil, to be classed in the same category; and Bray, the nearest railway station to Ecos, which has a fine Renaissance château of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.