great forest of Gouffers, over
plains and undulating ground, a wide and striking view, but in which no
remarkable object rises up to catch the eye. We look forth with the
special hope of getting a distant glimpse of Falaise and its donjon.
Perhaps not the donjon itself, but the high ground about it is said to
be seen from the tower of Saint German at Argentan. But we at least
could not see it from Exmes.

The other object in the little town of Exmes, now hardly more than a
village, is the church. This stands on the general mass of high ground
from which the castle hill juts out. It is a building of no small
interest, both from what it has to show and from what it has not. At
first sight it seems utterly shapeless. What first catches the eye is a
very pretty apse of good Flamboyant work, with windows in two ranges, of
which all in the upper and some in the lower are blocked. We see also at
the same glance that something just to the west of the apse has been
destroyed or left unfinished. Beyond this again is a much lower western
body, a nave with its aisles thrown under one roof. This last is not
attractive from without, but when we go in, we find that it is the jewel
of Exmes. There is a nave of five bays, perhaps once of six, of the very
simplest and purest Romanesque, one of the examples which show how that
style, better than any other style, can altogether dispense with
ornament. There are no columns, no capitals, not a moulding of any kind.
Arches of two orders rise from square piers with imposts, and support an
equally plain clerestory. For a clerestory there is, genuine and
untouched, though so strangely hidden outside by the great sloping roof.
This is all; but we ask for no more; the design, plain as it is, leaves
nothing to ask for. One does not rush at a date; it may be twelfth
century; it may be eleventh; but, if so, it is of the second half of the
eleventh. Plain as are the imposts, they show that the work is of the
confirmed Norman variety of Romanesque; there are no Primitive traces
hanging about it, such as we see at Jumieges.

The perfection of the Norman nave seems to have been tampered with in
later days by cutting through a low transepted chapel on each side. The
arches look as if they had supplanted a sixth arch of the nave. But far
greater changes were presently designed. As at Gisors, as at a hundred
other places, the Flamboyant architects thought the elder building too
plain, and above all things