ntary attention to their charges. But Avranches
has an historical spot that no student of history, and indeed no one who
cares anything for the picturesque events that crowd the pages of the
chronicles of England in the days of the Norman kings, may miss. It is the
famous stone upon which Henry II. knelt when he received absolution for the
murder of Becket at the hands of the papal legate. To reach this stone is,
for a stranger, a matter of some difficulty. From the Place by the Jardin
des Plantes, it is necessary to plunge down a steep descent towards the
railway station, and then one climbs a series of zigzag paths on a high
grassy bank that brings one out upon the Place Huet. In one corner,
surrounded by chains and supported by low iron posts, is the historic
stone. It is generally thickly coated with dust, but the brass plate
affixed to a pillar of the doorway is quite legible. These, and a few
fragments of carved stone that lie half-smothered in long grass and weeds
at a short distance from the railed-in stone, are all that remain of the
cathedral that existed in the time of Henry II.

It must have been an impressive scene on that Sunday in May 1172, when the
papal legate, in his wonderful robes, stood by the north transept door, of
which only this fragment remains, and granted absolution to the sovereign,
who, kneeling in all humbleness and submission, was relieved of the curse
of excommunication which had been laid on him after the tragic affair in
the sanctuary at Canterbury. In place of the splendid cathedral, whose nave
collapsed, causing the demolition of the whole building in 1799, there is a
new church with the two great western towers only carried up to half the
height intended for them.

From the roadway that runs along the side of the old castle walls in
terrace fashion there is another wonderful view of rich green country,
through which, at one's feet, winds the river See. Away towards the
north-west the road to Granville can be seen passing over the hills in a
perfectly straight line. But this part of the country may be left for
another chapter.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Normandy, Part 2, by Gordon Home

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