The ants and the
coffee-cups certainly give one a sense of being in a foreign land, but when
one wanders through the fertile country among the thatched villages and
farms that so forcibly remind one of Devonshire, one feels a friendliness
in the landscapes that scarcely requires the stimulus of the kindly
attitude of the peasants towards _les anglais_.
If one were to change the dark blue smock and the peculiar peaked hat of
the country folk of Normandy for the less distinctive clothes of the
English peasant, in a very large number of cases the Frenchmen would pass
as English. The Norman farmer so often has features strongly typical of the
southern counties of England, that it is surprising that with his wife and
his daughters there should be so little resemblance. Perhaps this is
because the French women dress their hair in such a different manner to
those on the northern side of the Channel, and they certainly, taken as a
whole, dress with better effect than their English neighbours; or it may be
that the similar ideas prevailing among the men as to how much of the face
should be shaved have given the stronger sex an artificial resemblance.
In the towns there is little to suggest in any degree that the mediaeval
kings of England ruled this large portion of France, and at Mont St Michel
the only English objects besides the ebb and flow of tourists are the two
great iron _michelettes_ captured by the French in 1433.
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