eau_ even in the latter sense. It stands
pleasantly at the end of the town, with fields beyond it, and a good
slope down to the river, if only it could be seen. But the whole way
from the castle to the Rille is blocked with modern buildings. We wish
that the home of Richer was in the same case as the head of the
_Oximenses_, where the gardens in the ditch do comparatively little
harm. Or rather we cherish a hope that the _vieux chateau_ may not be
the true _castrum de Aquila_. We cannot say that we saw any other castle
anywhere else at Laigle; but we saw one or two sites higher up the hill
where a castle might have stood very fittingly.

But the main object at Laigle is not Laigle. The place may be used, like
Argentan, as a centre for seeing several objects, and in the case of
Laigle the objects to be seen from the centre are certainly of higher
interest than the centre itself. There are the famous border castles of
Verneuil and Tillieres, easily to be reached by railway, and there is an
ecclesiastical spot of still higher fame which can in a rather
complicated way be reached by railway, but which it is pleasanter and
certainly more appropriate to take by road. Yet as a means of
approaching Ouche, Aticum, Saint-Evroul, even the road seems too modern.
It is essentially a place of pilgrimage, not a Canterbury pilgrimage,
but a pilgrimage to the cell of a hermit, to the _scriptorium_ of a
chronicler of whom we get more personally fond than of any other.

At Saint-Evroul we ought to think first of all of Saint Evroul; we do
think first of all of Orderic the Englishman, called in religion
Vital.[55] We called him just now a chronicler; but that is assuredly
not his right description. If he were more of a chronicler, that is, if
he told his story in a more orderly way, without so many repetitions and
runnings to and fro, that is, if he were other than the kindly,
gossiping, rambling old monk who has made Saint-Evroul a household word
for all students of English and Norman history in his own day we ought
not to feel so warmly drawn to him as we are. It was the home of Orderic
that we wished to see. But it was very hard to find out whether his home
had anything left to show us. Not a word could we find in any guidebook
to say whether the abbey was living or ruined or desecrated or wholly
swept away. It might be as unlucky as Avranches or as lucky as Saint
Peter-on-Dives. And a monastic site from which everything monastic has
b