[Illustration:  Head-dress of females of Bernay]

On our road between Bernay and Orbec, we stopped at the village of Chambrais, more commonly called Broglie.  Before the revolution, it belonged to the noble family of that name, and it thence derived its familiar appellation.  The former residence of the Seigneurs of Broglie, which is still standing, apparently uninjured, upon an adjoining eminence, has lately been restored to the present Marechal Duc de Broglie.  It looks like an extensive parish work-house, or like any thing rather than a nobleman’s seat.—­The village church is very ancient and still curious, though in parts considerably modernized.  Unlike most churches of great antiquity, it is not built in the form of a cross, but consists only of a nave and choir, with side-aisles and an apsis, all on a small scale[63].  Towards the north, the nave is separated from the aisle by some of the largest and rudest piers I ever saw.  They occupy full two-thirds of the width of the intervening arches, which are five feet wide, elliptic rather than semi-circular, and altogether without ornament of any kind.  Above each of these arches is a narrow, circular-headed window, banded with a cylindrical pilaster; and, in most instances, a row of quatrefoils runs between the pillar and the window.  The bases of the windows rest upon a string-course that extends round the whole building; and on this also, alternating with the windows, rest corbels, from which spring very short, clustered columns, intended to support the groinings of the roof.  On the south side, the massy piers have been pared into comparatively slender pillars; and the arches are pointed, as are all the lower windows in the church.—­The font is of stone, and ancient:  it consists of a round basin, on a quadrangular pedestal, like many in England.—­The west front of the church is peculiar.  It is entered by a very wide, low, semi-circular door-way, of rude architecture, and quite unornamented.  Above is a window corresponding with those in the clerestory; and, still higher, a row of interlaced arches, also semi-circular.  A pointed arch, the receptacle for the statue of a saint, surmounts the whole; but this is, most probably, of a later aera, as evidently are the two lateral compartments, which terminate in slender spires of slate, and are separated from the central division by Norman buttresses.

We stopped to dine at Orbec, a small and insignificant country town, formerly an appendage of the houses of Orleans and Navarre, with the title of a barony; but, more immediately before the revolution, the domain of the family of Chaumont.  Its church is a most uncouth edifice:  the plan is unusual; the entrance is in the north transept, which ends in a square high tower.