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 _fete_--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 ca_, 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.

The horse and the road were all the while going up the hill. The road