tempt men to worship the Creator of such beauty, for here he founded
the great Abbey of St. Croix, long since gone with the monks who
peopled it. Louis XI, that mystic wearing the warrior's helmet, set his
seal of approval on the hill, by sending the famous glass yonder in the
cathedral, when the hill and the St. Lo people beat the Bretons who had
come to capture both.

Like saint, and kings, and monks, and warriors, we in our turn crept
down the hill. For we also were done with the town.




CHAPTER XXV.

A DINNER AT COUTANCES.


The way from St. Lo to Coutances is a pleasant way. There is no map of
the country that will give you even a hint of its true character, any
more than from a photograph you can hope to gain an insight into the
moral qualities of a pretty woman.

Here, at last, was the ideal Normandy landscape. It was a country with
a savage look--a savage that had been trained to follow the plough.
Even in its color it had retained the true barbarians' instinct for a
good primary. Here were no melting-yellow mustard-fields, nor flame-lit
poppied meadows, nor blue-bells lifting their baby-blue eyes out of the
grain. All the land was green. Fields, meadows, forests, plains--all
were green, green, green. The features of the landscape had changed