For Coutances was to hold its great _fete_ on the morrow.

It was a relief to turn in from the noise and hubbub to the bright courtyard of our inn. The brightness thereof, and of the entire establishment, indeed, appeared to find its central source in the brilliant eyes of our hostess. Never was an inn-keeper gifted with a vision at once so omniscient and so effulgent. Those eyes were everywhere; on us, on our bags, our bonnets, our boots; they divined our wants, and answered beforehand our unuttered longings. We had come far? the eyes asked, burning a hole through our gossamer evasions; from Paris, perhaps--a glance at our bonnets proclaimed the eyes knew all; we were here for the _fete_, to see the bishop on the morrow; that was well; we were going on to the Mont; and the eyes scented the shortness of our stay by a swift glance at our luggage.

"_Numero quatre, au troisieme!_"

There was no appeal possible. The eyes had penetrated the disguise of our courtesy; we were but travellers of a night; the top story was built for such as we.

But such a top story, and such a chamber therein! A great, wide, low room; beams deep and black, with here and there a bra.s.s bit hanging; waxed floors, polished to mirrory perfection; a great bed clad in snowy draperies, with a snow-white _duvet_ of gigantic proportions. The walls were gray with lovely bunches of faded rosebuds flung abroad on the soft surface; and to give a quaint and antique note to the whole, over the chimney was a bit of worn tapestry with formidable dungeon, a Norman keep in the background, and well up in front, a stalwart young master of the hounds, with dogs in leash, of the heavy Norman type of bulging muscle and high cheekbones.

Altogether, there were worse fates in the world than to be travellers of a night, with the destiny of such a room as part of the fate.

When we descended the steep, narrow spiral of steps to the dining-room, it was to find the eyes of our hostess brighter than ever. The noise in the streets had subsided. It was long after dusk, and Coutances was evidently a good provincial. But in the gay little dining-room there was an astonishing bustle and excitement.

The _fete_ and the court had brought a crowd of diners to the inn-table; when we were all seated we made quite a company at the long, narrow board. The candles and lamps lit up any number of Vand.y.k.e pointed beards, of bald heads, of loosely-tied cravats, and a few matronly bosoms straining at the b.u.t.tons of silk holiday gowns. For the _Fete-Dieu_ had brought visitors besides ourselves from all the country round; and then "a first communion is like a marriage, all the relatives must come, as doubtless we knew," was a baldhead's friendly beginning of his soup and his talk, as we took our seats beside him.

With the appearance of the _potage_ conversation, like a battle between foes eager for contest, had immediately engaged itself. The setting of the table and the air of companionship pervading the establishment were aiders and abettors to immediate intercourse. Nothing could be prettier than the Caen bowls with their bunches of purple phlox and spiked blossoms. Even a metropolitan table might have taken a lesson from the perfection of the lighting of the long board. In order that her guests should feel the more entirely at home, our brilliant-eyed hostess came in with the soup; she took her place behind it at the head of the table.

It was evident the merchants from Cherbourg who had come as witnesses to the trial, had had many a conversational bout before now with madame's ready wit. So had two of the town lawyers. Even the commercial gentlemen, for once, were experiencing a brief moment of armed suspense, before they flung themselves into the arena of talk. At first, or it would never have been in the provinces, this talk at the long table, everyone broke into speech at once. There was a flood of words; one's sense of hearing was stunned by the noise. Gradually, as the cider and the thin red wine were pa.s.sed, our neighbors gave digestion a chance; the din became less thick with words; each listened when the other talked. But, as the volume of speech lessened, the interest thickened. It finally became concentrated, this interest, into true French fervor when the question of the trial was touched on.

"They say D'Alencon is very clever. He pleads for Filon, the culprit, to-night, does he not?"

"Yes, poor Filon--it will go hard with him. His crime is a black one."

"I should think it was--implicating _le pet.i.t_!"

"Dame! the judge doesn't seem to be of your mind."

"Ah--h!" cried a florid Vand.y.k.e-bearded man, the dynamite bomb of the table, exploding with a roar of rage. "_Ah--h, cre nom de Dieu!--Messieurs les presidents_ are all like that; they are always on the side of the innocent--"

"Till they prove them guilty."

"Guilty! guilty!" the bomb exploded in earnest now. "How many times in the annals of crime is a man guilty--really guilty? They should search for the cause--and punish that. That is true justice. The instigator, the instigator--he is the true culprit. Inheritances--_voila les vrais coupables_. But when are such things investigated? It is ever the innocent who are punished. I know something of that--I do."

"_Allons--allons!_" cried the table, laughing at the beard's vehemence.

"When were you ever under sentence?"

"When I was doing my duty," the beard hurled back with both arms in the air; "when I was doing my three years--I and my comrade; we were convicted--punished--for an act of insubordination we never committed.

Without a trial, without a chance of defending ourselves, we were put on two crumbs of bread and a gla.s.s of water for two months. And we were innocent--as innocent as babes, I tell you."

The table was as still as death. The beard had proved himself worthy of this compliment; his voice was the voice of drama, and his gestures such as every Frenchman delights in beholding and executing. Every ear was his, now.

"I have no rancor. I am, by nature, what G.o.d made me, a peaceable man, but"--here the voice made a wild _crescendo_--"if I ever meet my colonel--_gare a lui_! I told him so. I waited two years, two long years, till I was released; then I walked up to him" (the beard rose here, putting his hand to his forehead), "I saluted" (the hand made the salute), "and I said to him, 'Mon colonel, you convicted me, on false evidence, of a crime I never committed. You punished me. It is two years since then. But I have never forgotten. Pray to G.o.d we may never meet in civil life, for then yours would end!"

"_Allons, allons!_ A man after all must do his duty. A colonel--he can't go into details!" remonstrated the hostess, with her knife in the air.

"I would stick him, I tell you, as I would a pig--or a Prussian! I live but for that!"

"_Monstre!_" cried the table in chorus, with a laugh, as it took its wine. And each turned to his neighbor to prove the beard in the wrong.

"Of what crime is the defendant guilty--he who is to be tried to-night?" Charm asked of a silent man, with sweet serious eyes and a rough gray beard, seated next her. Of all the beards at the table, this one alone had been content with listening.

"Of fraud--mademoiselle--of fraud and forgery." The man had a voice as sweet as a church bell, and as deep. Every word he said rang out slowly, sonorously. The attention of the table was fixed in an instant.

"It is the case of a Monsieur Filon, of Cherbourg. He is a cider merchant. He has cheated the state, making false entries, etc. But his worst crime is that he has used as his accomplice _un tout pet.i.t jeune homme_--a lad of barely fifteen--"

"It is that that will make it go hard for him with the jury--"

"Hard!" cried the ex-soldier, getting red at once with the pa.s.sion of his protest--"hard--it ought to condemn him, to guillotine him. What are juries for if they don't kill such rascals as he?"

"_Doucement, doucement, monsieur,_" interrupted the bell-note of the merchant. "One doesn't condemn people without hearing both sides. There may be extenuating circ.u.mstances!"

"Yes--there are. He is a merchant. All merchants are thieves. He does as all others do--_only_ he was found out."

A protesting murmur now rose from the table, above which rang once more, in clear vibrations, the deep notes of the merchant.

"_Ah--h, mais--tous voleurs--non_, not all are thieves. Commerce conducted on such principles as that could not exist. Credit is not founded on fraud, but on trust."

"_Tres bien, tres bien,_" a.s.sented the table. Some knives were thumped to emphasize the a.s.sent.

"As for stealing"--the rich voice continued, with calm judicial slowness--"I can understand a man's cheating the state once, perhaps--yielding to an impulse of cupidity. But to do as _ce_ Monsieur Filon has done--he must be a consummate master of his art--for his processes are organized robbery."

"Ah--h, but robbery against the state isn't the same thing as robbing an individual," cried the explosive, driven into a corner.

"It is quite the same--morally, only worse. For a man who robs the state robs everyone--including himself."

"That's true--perfectly true--and very well put." All the heads about the table nodded admiringly; their hostess had expressed the views of them all. The company was looking now at the gray beard with glistening eyes; he had proved himself master of the argument, and all were desirous of proving their homage. Not one of the nice ethical points touched on had been missed; even the women had been eagerly listening, following, criticising. Here was a little company of people gathered together from rustic France, meeting, perhaps, for the first time at this board. And the conversation had, from the very beginning, been such as one commonly expects to hear only among the upper ranks of metropolitan circles. Who would have looked to see a company of Norman provincials talking morality, and handling ethics with the skill of rhetoricians?

Most of our fellow-diners, meanwhile, were taking their coffee in the street. Little tables were ranged close to the house-wall. There was just room for a bench beside the table, and then the sidewalk ended.

"Shall you be going to the trial to-night?" courteously asked the merchant who had proven himself a master in debate, of Charm. He had lifted his hat before he sat down, bowing to her as if he had been in a ball-room.

"It will be fine to-night--it is the opening of the defence," he added, as he placed carefully two lumps of sugar in his cup.

"It's always finer at night--what with the lights and the people,"

interpolated the landlady, from her perch on the door-sill. "If _ces dames_ wish to go, I can show them the way to the galleries. Only," she added, with a warning tone, her growing excitement obvious at the sense of the coming pleasure, "it is like the theatre. The earlier we get there the better the seat. I go to get my hat." And the door swallowed her up.

"She is right--it is like a theatre," soliloquized the merchant--"and so is life. Poor Filon!"

We should have been very content to remain where we were. The night had fallen; the streets, as they lost themselves in dim turnings, in mysterious alleyways, and arches that seemed grotesquely high in the vague blur of things, were filled for us with the charm of a new and lovely beauty. At one end the street ended in a towering ma.s.s of stone; that doubtless was the cathedral. At the right, the narrow houses dipped suddenly; their roof-lines were lost in vagueness. Between the slit made by the street a deep, vast chasm opened; it was the night filling the great width of sky, and the mists that shrouded the hill, rising out of the sleeping earth. There was only one single line of light; a long deep glow was banding the horizon; it was a bit of flame the dusk held up, like a fading torch, to show where the sun had reigned.

In and out of this dusk the townspeople came and went. Away from the mellow lights, streaming past the open inn doors, the shapes were only a part of the blur; they were vague, phantasmal ma.s.ses, clad in coa.r.s.e draperies. As they pa.s.sed into the circle of light, the faces showed features we had grown to know--the high cheekbones, the ruddy tones, the deep-set, serious eyes, and firm mouths, with lips close together.

The air on this hill-top must be of excellent quality; the life up here could scarcely be so hard as in the field villages. For the women looked less worn, and less hideously old, and in the men's eyes there was not so hard and miserly a glittering.

Almost all, young or old, were bearing strange burdens. Some of the men were carrying huge floral crosses; the women were laden with every conceivable variety of object--with candlesticks, vases, urns, linen sheets, rugs, with chairs even.

"They are helping to dress the reposoirs, they must all be in readiness for the morning," answered our friend, still beside us, when we asked the cause of this astonishing spectacle.

Everywhere garlands and firs, leaves, flowers, and wreaths; people moving rapidly; the carriers of the crosses stopping to chat for an instant with groups working at some mysterious scaffolding--all shapes in darkness. Everywhere, also, there was the sweet, aromatic scent of the greens and the pines abroad in the still, clear air of the summer night.

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