on market day to help with the horses, but otherwise he pursues the thoughtful tenor of his way, undisturbed and undisturbing.

It is Madame who watches over us. She reigns, as I said before, in the kitchen, where she does all the cooking herself, and does it extremely well. Madame is the working partner; she arranges the terms, makes out the bills, takes the money— and keeps it. She is a kindly woman with a careworn scarlet face, suggestive of fires and stewpans; she works nearly as hard as Auguste, but like him can always spare time for a chat with any one who pauses at the kitchen door. It was Madame, in fact, who, in the course of one of our earlier conversations, let me into Caudebec's great secret; and I could not fail to see that this was the great day-dream of her life.

"We look," she said, a little sadly as it seemed, "to see Caudebec take a place with Dieppe and Trouville. We have beautiful country, and our much-admired church. Monsieur will find here every comfort and most reasonable terms. The most—Ah, pardon!" And Madame, whose watchful eye has detected a goat surreptitiously devouring cabbage in the corner of her kitchen, vanishes abruptly. She gives an amiable smile and nod as she goes, repeating once more "très raisonables."

And her terms are reasonable beyond dispute. For five francs a day she will give you the best of country fare and abundant fruit, with lights, baths, and the ministrations of Auguste thrown in. Thus Madame labours to promote the prosperity of her native place; and with a certain measure of success; for of the crowds of Britons who visit Normandy every year, a large proportion spend at least twelve hours at Caudebec; but no longer, alas! There is nothing to amuse them here; and they soon discover that the most striking characteristic of the little town is the evenness and profundity of its repose. The industry chiefly pursued is that of tanning, whose resulting odour hangs over us like a pall, and earns a welcome by smothering the less fragrant exhalations of which we possess a large and varying assortment. The streets of Caudebec are ill-paved and irregular; a short length of nineteenth-century erection comes to an unexpected end, and meanders off in a labyrinth of narrow lanes, whose medieval overhanging houses almost meet at the topmost storeys and defy the noonday sun. In these the residents faithfully cling to the manners and customs of a bygone age. The six-foot roadway is every

body's ash-pit; the reeking gutter in the middle, every housewife's sink. It is the Norman town of three centuries ago; but a kindly twilight ever reigns there, veiling nauseous detail, and throwing into shadowy relief angular, black-beamed antiquity tottering beneath the weight of Time.

Caudebec bases its claim to public consideration upon its ancient and beautiful church; upon a curiosity shop where old oak is the staple stock-in-trade; and upon the periodical visitation of the "Mascaret," or tidal wave of the Seine. Against these allurements must be placed in overwhelming array the facts, that there are no bathing or boating facilities of any kind, no fishing, and no place of interest in the neighbourhood (save one) which cannot be more conveniently reached from elsewhere. There are certainly the beautiful walks and drives required by the guide-book man, but they lead nowhere in particular, and most demand a talent for climbing steep hills.

Yet Caudebec would fain be a summer resort! One day it will wake up and laugh at its ambitious dream.

We have a share of the tourists' patronage, but our visitors come only to go again. I have seen them smile and exchange glances when Madame recapitulated her terms, and hinted. broadly at a great reduction if Messieurs les Voyageurs proposed to remain longtemps. Thirty-six hours satisfies the majority; in that space of time they have skimmed the scanty cream of Caudebec, and are beginning to make wry faces at the butter-milk below. The wandering artist stays longest; sometimes he is with us for ten days, committing the hundred and one pretty "bits" he finds at every turn, to his sketch-book, but he never waits to fill it; and long before he has exhausted one-third of the resources of the place, he begins to make enquiries about the means of communication with Dieppe or Havre. "A fellow deserves a little gaiety after this," he says. The amateur archeologist comes, and putting on his most critical spectacles, spends his single day wandering about our much-admired church, inside and out. "Very interesting,' he says afterwards; "a very perfect example of-of that style of architecture." Sometimes he stays an extra day and goes out to St. Wandrille, whence he returns raving with the admiration he cannot control, and wishing he could sketch or photograph. The ruins and cloisters of St. Wandrille are our one sight, besides our church, and he has not "done" Caudebec who fails to pay them a visit.

Caudebec lies on the great trunk road between Havre and Rouen, and oftentimes we see a phantom of glitter, speed and physical exertion, coming down the hill toward our hotel. This proves to be the cycling tourist. He only stays long enough to eat a splendid breakfast and enter his name in the visitors' book, before going back to the treadles. Cycling breeds in its votaries an air of mournful earnestness blended with feverish haste; at table the practised eye can detect a "wheelman" by the frantic eagerness with which he swallows his food, for he is as jealous of the lapse of time as a Queen's Messenger. He has no eye for scenery, and the beauties of nature are as nothing to him; his interest in the country is confined to the all-important question of the number and steepness of the hills to be scaled. The cyclist is the only visitor who asks for our visitors' book-we have such a volume at the Marine, though a very unpretending one; he inscribes therein a condensed record of his travels past and future, with a jealous exactness of detail that might be mistaken for egotism. He always comes from "Londres," and is going to Paris by a route he specifies accurately; he is going to return by a totally different road, but he enters that in our book too; possibly in case the police might want hima most improbable contingency, for he is the most harmless individual in the world. He set out from Londres with no more questionable purpose than to cover the greatest possible mileage in the shortest possible time, and those swelling muscles beneath his worsted stockings put our railway service daily to shame.

Once we had a newly married couple with us for three whole weeks, and she at least was sorry to go when the hour came. She hovered about the table in the café where Madame was making laborious and incorrect calcules for the bill, deploring the necessity for ever leaving Caudebec at all. It was so lovely and so quiet, she said. Why, this very morning George and she had spent an hour and a half on the bench under the big chestnut overhanging the river, and they weren't disturbed once -not once. Oh! she did wish this was the first day of the honeymoon instead of the last; didn't George? George wasn't by any means so sure of that; he'd finished all his English tobacco, and this French stuff was poisonous; moreover, though Caudebec wasn't a bad place, as country places go, he rather preferred Brompton and the City; a fellow would soon grow into a mere vegetable here,

I could not but sympathise with both. She, loving the repose of the country, and enjoying here the whole attention of her husband, was loth to leave her paradise. He, whose active brain short rest repaired, felt himself rusting with the dreamy idleness, and longed to join again in that exciting race for life upon the great river of Commerce.

Life in Caudebec is not trying to the nerves, it must be confessed; and to an outsider like myself who enters not into the hundred and one tragedies and comedies passing around him, it is ever the same to monotony. But let me be just. Every Saturday Caudebec shakes off its torpor, and, as it were, stretches itself before turning round with the week's end to go to sleep again; for Saturday is market-day, and the streets are crowded to overflowing with peasants from all the country side, and blocked with commodities of every kind. In addition to the regular stalls which spring up, phoenix-like, each recurring Saturday on their chosen spots, the shopkeepers are attacked by a spasm of business-like energy, and spread their entire stocks-in-trade on the pavement before their doors. We have a method of arranging our market in Caudebec which is peculiarly our own. There is space enough and to spare for everybody on the broad quay; but custom prescribes a system of "scatteration" which would be exasperating to purchasers were our town a little larger. On the quay we find agricultural implements, confectionery, wood, iron, and basketware, ready-made clothing, toys, sabots, and carpet-slippers, all mixed up together. It is impossible to give the names of the localities where other goods are to be found, for if our streets and places have ever been dignified with nomenclature, they are not now. Here and there a faint trace of lettering lingers on the wall, but for the most part any titles they possess dwell only in the memory of the inhabitants.

But what want they with names, after all? They have known for generations that poultry, eggs, and dairy produce are sold under the shadow of Notre Dame; that pigs and calves enlivened the space before the Hôtel de l'Aigle d'Or; that butchers' meat may be purchased in the square before the convent; and our fish-market proclaims its own whereabouts to every one gifted with a nose. Our fish-market, if malodorous, is the most interesting, though. Here you will see the blue shark; the gigantic eel, eight feet long and thirty inches in girth; the hideous lamprey of historical fame; not to mention the

common herd of skate, pike, perch, grey mullet, flounders, and mackerel. These, in an olfactory sense, are harmless; but avoid the crates and slabs of salted fish-meat if you respect your nostrils; even the all-pervading tannery smell flies before their effluvia, when by contrast it were more than welcome.

In front of the Marine ponderous wains are drawn up, awaiting the seven-horse teams, now feeding in the stable. Monsieur le Propriétaire has laid aside his pipe, and is quite active in the café serving "bocks" and "absinthes," and concocting mysterious liquid compounds of many colours. Madame is flying about her kitchen like an immense bee, for her patrons on market-day are many and hungry, and her largest pots and pans are bubbling and fizzling on the stove as if they entered into the spirit of the thing. Upstairs, Auguste, reinforced by Marie, is bustling round the salle-à-manger in a condition of hunted forgetfulness bordering on insanity. The Marine is the very vortex of the weekly excitement, and the staff knows no rest while the day lasts.

But when the sun begins to sink upon his rosy cloud-bed behind the golden brown hills in the west, there comes a lull. Carts are driving away in all directions, stalls are coming down, and the streets are rapidly clearing. Twilight draws in upon the last lingerers departing, and, ere the moon can show her face, Caudebec is Caudebec's self again. Come away softly, lest we wake it. E. D. CUMING.