ces, or from
Avranches. Yet the ascent from the Orne to the upper part of the town
is very marked, and as the chief buildings, ecclesiastical and military,
are gathered together on the higher ground, there is a true akropolis.
And there is no doubt that this akropolis had its own circuit of wall,
distinct from that of the lower town. This last took in a large space,
and was of a strangely complicated shape, running out hither and thither
in various directions. According to all our experience of other places,
we would take for granted that the inner circuit was the older. Here, we
should say, was the original settlement; the town, after the usual
manner of towns, outstripped its boundaries; it spread itself in
whatever directions suited its inhabitants; lastly, the suburbs which
thus grew up were taken into the town, and were fenced in by a second
wall. This, one need hardly say, is a thing which has happened over and
over again, in this place and that, till we take it for granted as the
explanation of such a state of things as we see at Argentan. But in a
local book, in which a great deal of information about Argentan is
brought together, _Le Vieil Argentan_, by M. Eugene Vimont, it is
distinctly asserted that the case is the other way. The wider circuit,
he tells us, is the older. In the wars of the early days of William,
King Henry of France burned Argentan. The burning is undoubted; it is
recorded by William of Jumieges. But M. Vimont's inference seems
strange--namely, that after this destruction the town was rebuilt, but
on a smaller scale. The case would be something like one stage in the
history of Perigueux, when only a part of old Vesona was fortified at
the time of the barbarian invasion of 407, and the part outside the new
walls was forsaken.[49] But an ordinary burning of a town in warfare
like that which went on between France and Normandy did not commonly
lead to such great changes as this, and it is very hard to believe that
the town of Argentan can, in the first half of the eleventh century,
have reached this great extent and this irregular shape. We are bound to
suppose that a local writer who shows much local knowledge has some
reason for what he says. But for a thing so hard to believe some direct
authority should be quoted, and M. Vimont quotes none. Till some other
convincing authority is produced, we shall believe that the growth of
Argentan followed the same law as that of other towns.

It is only