glance, but which have a vast reserve fund of attractions
hidden behind them, needing only to be sought out to be admired.

St. Ouen l'Aumone, a tiny little town of a couple of thousand souls,
opposite Pontoise, has two remarkable attractions which even a bird
of passage might well take the time to view. One is the very
celebrated Abbaye de Maubisson, indeed it might be called notorious,
if one believed the chronicles relating to the proceedings which took
place there under Angelique d'Estrees, sister of the none too saintly
Gabrielle.

It was founded in 1236 by Blanche of Castile, for the former
_religieuses_ of Citeaux, and was justly celebrated in the middle
ages for the luxuriousness of its appointments and the excellence of
its design.

The other feature of St. Ouen l'Aumone, which got its name, by the
way, from a former Archbishop of Rouen, is a remarkable example of
one of those great walled farmyards in which the north of France,
Normandy in particular, formerly abounded. It is all attached to what
was known as the Parc de Maubisson, which itself is closed by a high,
ancient wall with two turrets at the corners. This wall is supposed
to date from the fourteenth century, and within are the remains of a
vast storehouse or _grange_ of the same century. The only building at
all approaching this great storehouse is the Halle au Ble at Rouen,
which it greatly resembles as to size. It is now in the hands of a
grain merchant who must deal on a large scale, as he claims to have
one hundred thousand _gerbes_ (sheaves) in storage at one time. The
interior is divided into three naves by two files of monocylindrical
columns, though the eastern aisle has practically been demolished.

At Auvers, just above Pontoise, which is bound to Mery by an ugly
iron bridge across the Oise, is a fine church of the best of twelfth
and thirteenth century Gothic, with a series of Romanesque windows in
the apse. Here, too, the country immediately environing Auvers and
Mery is of the order made familiar by Daubigny and his school. French
farmyards, stubble-thatched cottages, and all the rusticity which is
so charming in nature draws continually group after group of artists
from Paris to this particular spot at all seasons of the year. The
homely side of country life has ever had a charm for city dwellers.
Auvers is somewhat doubtfully stated as being the birthplace of
Francois Villon--that prince of vagabonds. Usually Paris has been
given