very much the same warmth of tone and desolation of attitude. A very
picturesque feature of the cliffs of St. Jouin is that they are double
in height, as one may say. Falling to an immense depth, they encounter a
certain outward ledge, or terrace, where they pause and play a dozen
fantastic tricks, such as piling up rocks into the likeness of needles
and watch-towers; then they plunge again, and in another splendid sweep
descend to the beach. There was something very impressive in the way
their evil brows, looking as if they were all stained with blood and
rust, were bent upon the blue expanse of the sleeping sea.

III.

In a month of beautiful weather at Etretal, every day was not an
excursion, but every day seemed indeed a picked day. For that matter, as
I lay on the beach watching the procession of the easy-going hours, I
took a good many mental excursions. The one, perhaps, on which I
oftenest started was a comparison between French manners, French habits,
French types, and those of my native land. These comparisons are not
invidious; I don't conclude against one party and in favor of the other;
as the French say, _je constate_ simply. The French people about me were
"spending the summer" just as I had so often seen my fellow countrymen
spend it, and it seemed to me, as it had seemed to me at home, that this
operation places men and women under a sort of monstrous magnifying
glass. The human figure has a higher relief in the country than in town,
and I know of no place where psychological studies prosper so as at the
seaside. I shall not pretend to relate my observations in the order in
which they occurred to me (or indeed to relate them in full at all); but
I may say that one of the foremost was to this effect--that the summer
question, for every one, had been more easily settled than it usually is
at home. The solution of the problem of where to go had not been a
thin-petalled rose, plucked from among particularly sharp-pointed
thorns. People presented themselves with a calmness and freshness very
different from the haggard legacy of that fevered investigation which
precedes the annual exodus of the American citizen and his family. This
impression, with me, rests perhaps on the fact that most Frenchwomen
turned of thirty--the average wives and mothers--are so comfortably fat.
I have never seen such massive feminine charms as among the mature
_baigneuses_ of Etratal. The lean and desiccated person into wh