The horse and the road were all the while going up the hill. The road was easily one that might have been the path of warriors; the walls, still lofty on the side nearest the town, bristled with a turret or a bastion to remind us Coutances had not been set on a hill for mere purposes of beauty. The ramparts of the old fortifications had been turned into a broad promenade. Even as we jolted past, beneath the great breadth of the trees' verdure we could see how gloriously the prospect widened--the country below reaching out to the horizon like the waters of a sea that end only in indefiniteness.
The city itself seemed to grow out of the walls and the trees. Here and there a few scattered houses grouped themselves as if meaning to start a street; but a maze of foliage made a straight line impossible. Finally a large group of buildings, with severe stone faces, took a more serious plunge away from the vines; they had shaken themselves free and were soon soberly ranging themselves into the parallel lines of narrow city streets.
It was a pleasant surprise to find that, for once, a Norman blouse had told the truth; for here were the people of Coutances coming up from the fields to prove it. In all these narrow streets a great multitude of people were passing us; some were laden with vines, others with young forest trees, and still others with rude garlands of flowers. The peasant women's faces, as the bent figures staggered beneath a young fir-tree, were purple, but their smiles were as gay as the wild flowers with which the stones were thickly strewn. Their words also were as rough:
"_E-ben, e toi, tu n' bougeons point, toi!_"
And the nearest fir-tree carrier to our carriage wheels cracked a swift blow over the head of a vine-bearer, who being but an infant of two, could not make time with the swift foot of its mother.
The smell of the flowers was everywhere. Fir-trees perfumed the air. Every doorstep was a garden. The courtyards were alive with the squat figures of capped maidens, wreathing and twisting greens and garlands. And in the streets there was such a noise as was never before heard in a city on a hill-top.
For Coutances was to hold its great _fête_ on the morrow.
It was a relief to turn in from the noise and hubbub to the bright courtyard of our inn. The brightness thereof, and of the entire establishment, indeed, appeared to find its central source in the brilliant eyes of our hostess. Never was an inn-keeper gifted with a vision at once so omniscient and so effulgent. Those eyes were everywhere; on us, on our bags, our bonnets, our boots; they divined our wants, and answered beforehand our unuttered longings. We had come far? the eyes asked, burning a hole through our gossamer evasions; from Paris, perhaps--a glance at our bonnets proclaimed the eyes knew all; we were here for the _fête_, to see the bishop on the morrow; that was well; we were going on to the Mont; and the eyes scented the shortness of our stay by a swift glance at our luggage.