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CHAPTER III.

LISIEUX.

’Oh! the pleasant days, when men built houses after their own minds, and wrote their own devices on the walls, and none laughed at them; when little wooden knights and saints peeped out from the angles of gable-ended houses, and every street displayed a store of imaginative wealth.’—­La Belle France.

We must now pass on to the neighbouring town of LISIEUX, which will be found even more interesting than Pont Audemer in examples of domestic architecture of the middle ages; resisting with difficulty a passing visit to Pont l’Eveque, another old town a few miles distant.  “Who does not know Pont l’Eveque,” asks an enthusiastic Frenchman, “that clean little smiling town, seated in the midst of adorable scenery, with its little black, white, rose-colour and blue houses?  One sighs and says ‘It would be good to live here,’ and then one passes on and goes to amuse oneself”—­at Trouville-sur-mer!

If we approach Lisieux by the road from Pont Audemer (a distance of about twenty-six miles) we shall get a better impression of the town than if riding upon the whirlwind of an express train; and we shall pass through a prettily-wooded country, studded with villas and comfortable-looking houses, surrounded by pleasant fruit and flower gardens—­the modern abodes of wealthy manufacturers from the neighbouring towns, and also of a few English families.

We ought to come quietly through the suburbs of Lisieux, if only to see how its 13,000 inhabitants are busied in their woollen and cloth factories; how they have turned the old timber-framed houses of feudal times into warehouses; how the banners and signs of chivalry are desecrated into trade-marks, and how its inhabitants are devoting themselves heart and soul to the arts of peace.  We should then approach the town by picturesque wooden bridges over the rivers which have brought the town its prosperity, and see some isolated examples of carved woodwork in the suburbs; in houses surrounded by gardens, which we should have missed by any other road.[11]

The churches at Lisieux are scarcely as interesting to us as its domestic architecture; but we must not neglect to examine the pointed Gothic of the 13th century in the cathedral of St. Pierre.  The door of the south transept, and one of the doors under the western towers (the one on the right hand) is very beautiful, and is quite mauresque in the delicacy of its design.  The interior is of fine proportions, but is disfigured with a coat of yellow paint; whilst common wooden seats (of churchwardens’ pattern) and wainscotting have been built up against its pillars, the stone work having been cut away to accommodate the painted wood.  There are some good memorial windows; one of Henry II. being married to Eleanor (1152); and another of Thomas-a-Becket visiting Lisieux when exiled in 1169.