t needs no strong effort of imagination
to fancy ourselves on the look-out against the hosts of Geoffrey of the
Hammer coming from the South. Yet it is at Domfront that the traveller
coming from the land of Coutances and Avranches finds himself in one
important point brought back to the modern world. After going for many
days by such conveyances as he can find, he is there enabled to make his
journey into the land of Maine by the help of the railway which leads
from Caen to Laval. His first stage will take him to a spot which formed
another of William's early conquests, but which was not, like Domfront,
permanently cut off from the Cenomannian state.

This spot is Ambrieres, a town of the smallest class, hardly rising
above a village, but which holds an important place in the wars of
William and Geoffrey. There William built a castle, and the shattered
piece of wall which overhangs the road running on the right bank of the
Varenne may well be a part of his building. The little town climbs up,
as it were, to the castle, and contains more than one house bearing
signs of ancient date. It is clearly one of those towns which grew up
immediately round the fortress. But of the castle itself so little is
left that the most striking object now is the church, which stands apart
on the other side of the river. A large cruciform building of nearly
untouched and rather early Romanesque, it is thoroughly in harmony with
the memories of the place. But the church of Ambrieres is more than
this. It tells us in what direction we are travelling; its aisleless
nave, though it would be narrow in Anjou, would be wide in England or
Normandy; and there is another feature which looks as if the men of
Ambrieres had got on almost too fast in their tendencies towards a
southern type of architecture. The central tower is indeed low and
massive, but so are many others both in Normandy and England; nor would
the wooden spire with which it is crowned suggest that in the inside the
four plain arches of its lantern support as perfect a cupola as if we
were on the other side of the Loire. But both the arches of the lantern
and the barrelled vault of the choir keep the round arch. Maine was far
off from the land of the Saracen, and the pointed arch would here be a
sign that later forms were not far off. From Ambrieres either the
railway or, if the traveller likes it better, a road leading up and down
over a series of low hills, will take him to another sce