Bayeux was already old. She was far more Norse then than Norman; she
was Scandinavian to the core; even her nobles spoke in harsh Norse
syllables; they were as little French as it was possible to be, and yet
govern a people.

Mathilde, when she toiled over her frame, like all great writers, was
doubtless quite unconscious she was producing a masterpiece. She was,
however, in point of fact, the very first among the great French
realists. No other French writer has written as graphically as she did
with her needle, of the life and customs of their day. That long scroll
of tapestry, for truth and a naive perfection of sincerity--where will
you find it equalled or even approached? It is a rude Homeric epic; and
I am not quite certain that it ought not to rank higher than even some
of the more famous epics of the world--since Mathilde had to create
the mould of art into which she poured her story. For who had thought
before her of making women's stitches write or paint a great historical
event, crowded with homely details which now are dubbed archaeological
veracities?

Bayeux and its tapestry; its grave company of antique houses; its
glorious cathedral dominating the whole--what a lovely old background
against which poses the eternal modernness of the young noon sun! The
history of Bayeux is commonly given in a paragraph. Our morning's walk
had proved to us it was the kind of town that does more to re-create
the historic past than all the pages of a Guizot or a Challamel.

The bells that were ringing out the hour of high-noon from the
cathedral towers at Bayeux were making the heights of St. Lo, two hours
later, as noisy as a village fair. The bells, for rivals, had the
clatter of women's tongues. I think I never, before or since, have