Sometimes a Carlovingian tower
would show itself at the corner of some farm-buildings behind a heap of
manure. The kitchen, garnished with stone benches, made them dream of
feudal junketings. Others had a forbiddingly fierce aspect with their
three enceintes still visible, their loopholes under the staircase, and
their high turrets with pointed sides. Then they came to an apartment in
which a window of the Valois period, chased so as to resemble ivory, let
in the sun, which heated the grains of colza that strewed the floor.
Abbeys were used as barns. The inscriptions on tombstones were effaced.
In the midst of fields a gable-end remained standing, clad from top to
bottom in ivy which trembled in the wind.

A number of things excited in their breasts a longing to possess them--a
tin pot, a paste buckle, printed calicoes with large flowerings. The
shortness of money restrained them.

By a happy chance, they unearthed at Balleroy in a tinman's house a
Gothic church window, and it was big enough to cover, near the armchair,
the right side of the casement up to the second pane. The steeple of
Chavignolles displayed itself in the distance, producing a magnificent
effect. With the lower part of a cupboard Gorju manufactured a prie-dieu
to put under the Gothic window, for he humoured their hobby. So
pronounced was it that they regretted monuments about which nothing at
all is known--such as the villa residence of the bishops of Seez.

"Bayeux," says M. de Caumont, "must have possessed a theatre." They
searched for the site of it without success.

The village of Montrecy contained a meadow celebrated for the number of
medals which chanced formerly to have been found there. They calculated
on making a fine harvest in this place. The caretaker refused to admit
them.

They were not more fortunate as to the connection which existed between
a cistern at Falaise and the faubourg of Caen. Ducks which had been put
in there reappeared at Vaucelles, quacking, "Can, can, can"--whence is
derived the name of the town!

No step, no sacrifice, was too great for them.

At the inn of Mesnil-Villement, in 1816, M. Galeron got a breakfast for
the sum of four sous. They took the same meal there, and ascertained
with surprise that things were altered!

Who was the founder of the abbey of St. Anne? Is there any relationship
between Marin Onfroy, who, in the twelfth century, imported a new kind
of potato, and Onfroy, governor of Hastings at