[Illustration: _The Seine at Petit Andelys_]
The twin towns of Les Andelys are quite the most delightful and charming towns in all the Seine valley. None are so beautifully situated, so characteristically unworldly, and yet so gay with local life and colour on a national holiday.
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.
The present café shows most of these: a great Renaissance fireplace with its accessories, an overhanging mantel, and a couple of corner cupboards which are delightful. The entrance from the courtyard is also elaborately carved. Walter Scott and Victor Hugo have both sung the praises of the house and graced its board, and it should be seen by travellers.
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.
