This was the perfume and these the dim pictures that were our company
along the narrow Coutances streets.




CHAPTER XXVI.

A SCENE IN A NORMAN COURT.


The court-room was brightly lighted; the yellow radiance on the white
walls made the eyes blink. We had turned, following our guide, from the
gloom of the dim streets into the roomy corridors of the Prefecture.
Even the gardens about the building were swarming with townspeople and
peasants waiting for the court to open. When we entered it was to find
the hallways and stairs blocked with a struggling mass of people, all
eager to get seats. A voice that was softened to a purring note, the
voice that goes with the pursuit of the five franc piece, spoke to our
landlady. "The seats to be reserved in the tribune were for these
ladies?"

No time had been lost, you perceive. We were strangers; the courtesies
of the town were to be extended to us. We were to have of their best,
here in Coutances; and their best, just now, was this _mise en scene_
in their court room.

The stage was well set. The Frenchman's instinctive sense of fitness
was obvious in the arrangements. Long lines of blue drapery from the