he funds necessary for the
undertaking, the foundress travelled throughout Europe. Her tomb is in the
church. "Julie Francoise Catherine Postel, nee a Barfleur, 1756. Soeur
Marie Madelaine, Fondatrice et premiere Superieure Generale de l'Institut
des Ecoles Chretiennes de la Misericorde, morte en odeur de Saintete 16
Juillet 1846, a l'Abbaye de St. Sauveur-le-Vicomte." The badge of the
sisterhood is a cross inscribed with their motto "L'obeissance jusqu'a la
mort." Some of the party made an attempt at fishing in the little river
Douve, but without success, though rewarded for their walk by a pretty
view of the apse of the Abbey church, with its delicately-sculptured
lancet windows, from the opposite side of the river.

[Illustration: 5. L'OBEISSANCE JUSQU'A LA MORT.]

We hired a private carriage (_voiture a volonte_) to Periers. After
passing over a hilly road we crossed a marsh which extends from Carentan
to the sea, and reached a town called La Haye-du-Puits--a singular name
derived from the custom in the middle ages of surrounding the "motte" or
enclosure upon which the donjon was built, with a wooden palisade, or
sometimes with a thick hedge formed of thorns and branches of trees
interlaced: hence La Haye-du-Puits, La Haye-Pesnel, and others. Here is a
Norman church restored: all the capitals of the columns are of the same
pattern.

The Abbey church at Lessay, where next we stopped, is of the twelfth
century, and considered, with Coutances and Periers, to be the finest
examples of Romanesque in the Cotentin. The arches are round, and all the
architecture of the church, which has been restored, is of the same
period. The Abbey of Lessay had transmarine jurisdiction and the right of
presentation to the Priory of Boxgrove and other endowments in the diocese
of Chichester. The Abbey house, now inhabited, is a fine modernised
habitation. At Lessay we saw the manner of washing linen practised in many
places throughout Normandy and Brittany. Being first roughly washed in the
river, the clothes are placed in layers in a large cask, with a bunghole
at the bottom, alternately with wood-ashes, and on the top is laid a piece
of coarse sacking. Boiling water is poured over the top, which, as it
passes through the linen, absorbs the soda of the ashes, escaping at the
bottom and carrying away with it all impurities. This process is repeated
several times till the clothes are perfectly white.

Throughout this part of the country