Even the farm-houses had been suddenly transformed into fortresses. Each one of the groups of the farm enclosures had its outer walls, its miniature turrets, and here and there its rounded bastions. Each farm, apparently, in the olden days had been a citadel unto itself. The Breton had been a very troublesome neighbor for many a long century; every ploughman, until a few hundred years ago, was quite likely to turn soldier at a second's notice--every true Norman must look to his own sword to defend his hearth-stone. Such is the story those stone turrets that cap the farm walls tell you--each one of these turrets was an open lid through which the farmer could keep his eye on Brittany.
Meanwhile, along the roads as we rushed swiftly by, a quieter life was passing. The farm wagons were jogging peacefully along on a high-road as smooth as a fine lady's palm--and as white. The horses were harnessed one before the other, in interminable length of line. Sometimes six, sometimes eight, even so many as ten, marched with great gravity, and with that majestic dignity only possible to full-blooded Percherons, one after the other. They each wore a saddle-cloth of blue sheepskin. On their mottled haunches this bit of color made their polished coats to gleam like unto a lizards' skin.
Meanwhile, also, we were nearing Coutances. The farm-houses were fortresses no longer; the thatched roofs were one once more with the green of the high roads; for even in the old days there was a great walled city set up on a hill, to which refuge all the people about for miles could turn for protection.
A city that is set on a hill! That for me is commonly recommendation enough. Such a city, so set, promises at the very least the dual distinction of looking up as well as looking down; it is the nearer heaven, and just so much the farther removed from earth.
Coutances, for a city with its head in the air, was surprisingly friendly. It went out of its way to make us at home. At the very station, down below in the plain, it had sent the most loquacious of coach-drivers to put us in immediate touch with its present interests. All the city, as the coarse blue blouse, flourishing its whip, took pains to explain, was abroad in the fields; the forests, _tiens_, down yonder through the trees, we could see for ourselves how the young people were making the woods as crowded as a ball-room. The city, as a city, was stripping the land and the trees bare--it would be as bald as a new-born babe by the morrow. But then, of a certainty, we also had come for the _fête_--or, and here a puzzled look of doubt beclouded the provincial's eyes--might we, perchance, instead, have come for the trial? _Mais non, pas çà_, these ladies had never come for that, since they did not even know the court was sitting, now, this very instant, at Coutances. And--_sapristi!_ but there was a trial going on--one to make the blood curdle; he himself had not slept, the rustic coachman added, as he shivered beneath his blouse, all the night before--the blood had run so cold in his veins.