WE left Rouen by a “quick” train, that is, one which occupied itself in stopping at every wayside station that caught its fancy. However, this mattered little, as the road to Evreux runs through the most enchanting country, and we had plenty of time to admire it. Wonderful woods stretch over the slope of the hills and widen out into valleys scattered with old timbered farm-houses, and here and there a chÂteau, seen amongst the trees of its propriÉtÉ; little poplar-shaded rivers run through the fields, decked in holiday garlands of loosestrife and meadowsweet and unmolested by any eager pÊcheur, whether boy with string and bent pin, or more “compleat angler” with rod and line. The Seine, divested of barge and steam tug, greets one by glimpses now and then; and after leaving the tunnel before Elboeuf, it bursts suddenly into view—a wide sweep of river, with the busy little town by its side. Then the valley closes in all at once, and we run under the shadow of chalk cliffs with steep scarped faces and deep caverns, into whose blackness we may almost peer from the carriage window. Lastly comes a run up on to high ground again; and there below, shut in by hills, with three towers rising from its low roofs, is Evreux. The railway takes a great curve from one side of the town to the other before running into the station, so that the place passes in review before one; and it is an impressive review, seen as we first saw it, in the light of a summer sundown, a purple haze, “mystic, wonderful,” hanging like a veil over the little town.

Besides the Cathedral and the bishop’s palace, Evreux possesses little that strikes one as being either very old or very new; a cheerful, clean mediocrity prevails all through the town, which, nevertheless, dates back to very early times. Remains of a Roman settlement have been discovered some little distance away, at Vieil Evreux, then known as Mediolanum Aulercolum, and afterwards as Eburovices, whence is derived the modern name of Evreux. A bishopric was founded at Evreux by St. Taurin, during the great movement towards Christianity in the fourth century; later, Clovis destroyed the Roman encampment and founded a town of his own, which in its turn was burnt and pillaged by the Northmen in the ninth century. After this it probably shared the bounty of its former scourge, Duke Rolf, and became part of the Norman duchy and a Naboth’s vineyard to Count Thibaut of Chartres, who did actually take possession of it in 962, though Richard the Fearless must have reclaimed the town, as he presented the “ComtÉ d’Evreux,” which was to pass later into the family of Montfort l’Amaury, to one of his younger sons. Henry I. set fire to Evreux for some mysterious reason, but with the full consent of the bishop, who must have had peculiar ideas on the subject of his pastoral duties; and in the reign of Coeur-de-Lion John Lackland gave it up to the French Crown, and afterwards, filled with remorse, or more probably with alarm, at the news that his brother was returning from Palestine and might demand what had become of Evreux, ordered a general massacre of the French garrison quartered there and ran away himself, leaving his wretched English subjects to bear the brunt of the French king’s wrath when the story should come to his knowledge.

EVREUX
EVREUX

After several vicissitudes of this kind, Evreux was in 1404 finally joined to the Crown of France, though it still seems to have been tossed about in the most confusing way, and we hear of it as belonging now to France, now to Navarre, then sold to the Darnley Stuarts and back again to France; and so on until Napoleon, having divorced Josephine, presented her out of his imperial bounty with a part of the ComtÉ d’Evreux as a compensation for her trials. The modern town, however, has not at all the air of having been the plaything of kings and states. The only noticeable traces of its ancient warfare are the machicolated walls of the bishop’s palace, and the moat below, running between the palace and the Boulevard Chambaudin. The moat is now filled up by a kitchen-garden—a striking example of how peace has succeeded war in Evreux—but it is easy to imagine how it must have looked in the old days; the dark, still water, the steep walls rising up to their turrets, the treacherous machicolations, apparently ornamental but in reality only too useful, and above it all the grey towers of Notre Dame.

The interior of the Cathedral extends in date from the Romanesque to the Renaissance period. The nave bays offer examples of what is known as “skeleton construction”; they consist of a Romanesque pier arch (said to be the remaining work of Lanfranc) surmounted by a large clerestory and small glazed triforium; the clerestory wall, as Mr. Bond points out, is so shallow that it “ceases to exist qu wall.” It is in some way analogous to the choir of Gloucester in its “attenuated construction.” The lights are filled in with glass, apparently of the late fifteenth century. As Whewell says, the transepts and part of the choir are most remarkable and most ancient examples of the Flamboyant style. The choir, burnt down in 1346, was restored in the second half of the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries; the transept was finished about 1450. The English took possession of the town in 1418, but this did not in any way hinder the work from being carried on. In 1422 Tchan le Boy was made maÎtre de l’oeuvre, and to him is attributed the Lantern Tower, springing from a beautiful vaulted base. The vitrail of the Saintes Maries and its mouldings, probably designed by Le Boy, follows the English type.

Evreux is, according to Whewell, “a mixture of Flamboyant and Renaissance. The Flamboyant dies down gradually into Italian, especially in the series of wooden screens to the chapels round the choir, where every sort of mixture is noticeable.” In some of the glass and on the outside panels of the west doors the artists have attempted to show their knowledge of the newly-discovered science of perspective, but they pay little regard to the vanishing point. On the north side, the windows of the aisle, with high pediments cutting the balustrades, are very beautiful examples of the prevailing style. The western towers “are to be considered as Gothic conceptions expressed in classical phrases.”

In the far west of the town, at the end of the Rue Josephine, lies Saint Taurin, the second church of Evreux, in its quiet little square, screened by magnificent elm-trees, a square and solid-looking building, with a good deal of work that is very interesting and undoubtedly ancient. Originally the church formed part of a Benedictine Abbey founded in 1026; an ancient crypt remains, built, as purports to be the case with so many churches, round the tomb of the patron, Saint Taurin, who in the fourth century brought Christianity into the town, and whose story may be read in the fifteenth-century glass of the choir. His relics are preserved in a wonderful carved casket of the thirteenth century, which may be seen by the curious in the church treasury. In three bays of the south nave the vaulting ends in some curious stone carving in the form of grotesque heads, which belong to the sixteenth century.

“Once a cathedral, always a cathedral” was the theory which led us to Lisieux en route for Bayeux. It seemed almost as absurd that the great church of St. Pierre should not be counted a cathedral as that St. Etienne and the other churches of Caen should be churches and nothing more. In this respect, indeed, Lisieux takes precedence of Caen, for until the days of the Empire she had a bishopstool of her own, while Caen never actually possessed the dignity of an episcopal see.

Lisieux is one stage further on the high road between French Normandy and Norman Normandy, and is some way over the Norman border; at Rouen, at Evreux even, we were in France, but here all around us, as at Bayeux, are signs and tokens of a land more closely akin to our own, and we feel that we have at last reached Normandy proper. Lisieux, both for its Cathedral and for itself, is full of interest. The general impression is that of a bright little place with a great deal of life—the life of shop and market—to be seen on all sides, but none of the modern commercial spirit, such as dominates a place like Rouen. There is a very mediÆval air about Lisieux, and the old houses, of which there are plenty, are to be found not in out-of-the-way alleys, but in the chief streets. The Grande Rue has one magnificent specimen, now a boot-maker’s shop, opposite the Rue du Paradis; down at the bottom of the hill, in the Rue de Caen, is a house where Charlotte Corday spent the night on the way to Paris to fulfil her terrible mission, and the Rue aux FÈvres, where one seems to have walked straight into the Middle Ages, contains the “Manoir de FranÇois I^er,” a beautiful sixteenth-century house, from whose name one would at least suppose that FranÇois once spent a night there, whereas he probably never went near the place, and its chief claim to the title lies in the abundance of carved salamanders on the splendid house-front, and even these are mixed up with apes and other grotesque creatures.

THE TOWER OF EVREUX
THE TOWER OF EVREUX

The Church of St. Jacques stands almost at the top of the hill, between the Rue St. Jacques and the MarchÉ au Beurre, where most of the straggling streets converge. It was built in the last years of the fifteenth century, and is a fairly complete specimen of the French style of that period, standing upon a long, wide flight of steps, with a balustrade running completely round the building. The floor inside follows the slope of the hill, and slants upwards from west to east.

The church contains some half-effaced frescoes on the nave pillars, and a very curious old painting on wood, representing the miraculous translation of St. Ursin’s relics to Lisieux in 1055. This picture hangs in a chapel in the south aisle, dedicated to St. Antony of Padua, not in St. Ursin’s own chapel, which is on the other side of the nave.

Lisieux looks like a town with a history, and, like most French towns, goes back to Roman times, when it was known as Noviomagus or as Lexovii, from the Gallic tribe which had settled there. Rolf obtained it as part of his Norman duchy; Geoffrey Plantagenet and Stephen of Blois fought over it and between them reduced the town to a terrible state of famine, for which Henry II. of England tried to make amends by causing his own marriage with Eleanor of Poitou to take place in the Cathedral. Thomas À Becket took refuge at Lisieux on one occasion and left behind him some vestments, which are proudly displayed in the chapel of the Hospice.

During the Hundred Years’ War and the religious quarrels two centuries later, Lisieux shared the fate of other towns as regards sieges and conflagrations; but after this we hear little of its history, and may assume that it emerged from its trials much as we see it now—busy and peaceful once more, with leisure to turn again to the old-world town routine which makes the Lisieux of to-day.

The interior of St. Pierre, according to Whewell, “bears a great resemblance to Early English work, although the French square abacus is still to be found here. The round abacus is noticeable in the arcades under the windows of the choir, giving quite an English look to this portion of the church.” There is at the west end a large interior porch, which is referred to by most writers on architecture. The two towers vary in their openings, one having lancet lights and the other small round-headed windows. The nave is large, consisting of eight bays, and built, it is said, about 1160. The tympana of the choir triforium arches are filled with plate tracery, quatrefoil and cusped. The most beautiful interior elevation, however, is that of the north wall of the transept. Here the three large upper lights remind one of the well-known “Five Sisters” at York. The lower double-light window is deeply recessed, with elegant clusters of engaged shafts supporting the graceful mouldings round the opening. The transept also possesses an eastern aisle, which is said to be a rarity in France.

ST. JACQUES LISIEUX
ST. JACQUES LISIEUX

The church itself is unfortunately situated in a corner of the Place, and a large building which abuts on its north-west tower detracts considerably from its beauty and importance. The south transept door opens into the Rue du Paradis—a name which one is glad to see preserved in the neighbourhood of French cathedrals. It may refer to a garden or close which has been absorbed by surrounding buildings, or to a closed-in porch, the upper stories of which have been used either as libraries, or as lodgings for chantry-priests.