The Project Gutenberg EBook of Normandy, Part 2, by Gordon Home

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Title: Normandy, Part 2
The Scenery & Romance Of Its Ancient Towns

Author: Gordon Home

Release Date: August 11, 2004 [EBook #8594]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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NORMANDY:

THE SCENERY & ROMANCE OF ITS ANCIENT TOWNS:

DEPICTED BY GORDON HOME

Part 2.

CHAPTER IV

Concerning the Cathedral City of Evreux and the Road to Bernay

The tolling of the deep-toned bourdon in the cathedral tower reverberates
over the old town of Evreux as we pass along the cobbled streets. There is
a yellow evening light overhead, and the painted stucco walls of the houses
reflect the soft, glowing colour of the west. In the courtyard of the Hotel
du Grand Cerf, too, every thing is bathed in this beautiful light and the
double line of closely trimmed laurels has not yet been deserted by the
golden flood. But Evreux does not really require a fine evening to make it
attractive, although there is no town in existence that is not improved
under such conditions. With the magnificent cathedral, the belfry, the
Norman church of St Taurin and the museum, besides many quaint peeps by the
much sub-divided river Iton that flows through the town, there is
sufficient to interest one even on the dullest of dull days.

Of all the cathedral interiors in Normandy there are none that possess a
finer or more perfectly proportioned nave than Evreux, and if I were asked
to point out the two most impressive interiors of the churches in this
division of France I should couple the cathedral at Evreux with St Ouen at
Rouen.

It was our own Henry I. who having destroyed the previous building set to
work to build a new one and it is his nave that we see to-day. The whole
cathedral has since that time been made to reflect the changing ideals of
the seven centuries that have passed. The west front belongs entirely to
the Renaissance period and the north transept is in the flamboyant style of
the fifteenth century so much in evidence in Normandy and so i