Seeing France with Uncle John. Warner Anne
went to Jumièges to-day. Uncle found it in the guide-book, and we took an eleven-o'clock train. Mr. Porter and his son were late, and just had time to get into the rear third-class coach. Uncle was much distressed until we came to Yainville, where the train stopped, and they got out. Uncle wanted them to get in with us, and he talked so forcibly on the subject that the train nearly started again before Mr. Porter could make him understand that Yainville is where you get off for Jumièges.
I do wish it wasn't so hard to turn Uncle's ideas another way when he's got them all wrong.
Yainville has a red-brick depot on the edge of a pleasant, rolling prairie, but there is a little green omnibus to hyphenate it with Jumièges. We were a very tight fit inside, for of course we could only sit in Uncle's lap, and he didn't suggest it, so I had to hold Edna; and Mr. Porter and his son knew Uncle well enough not to suggest taking her. I thought that we should never get there; and it was so tantalizing, for the country became beautiful, and we could only see it in little triangular bits between shoulders and hats. Young Mr. Porter wanted to get out and walk, but Uncle said, "Young man, when you are as old as I am, you will know as much as I do," so he gave up the idea. I do believe we were cooped up for a solid hour before we finally rolled down a little bit of a hill into a little bit of a village, and climbed stiffly out into the open air.
We all had to cry out with wonder and admiration then, it was really so wonderful. On one side were the hills, with the Seine winding off toward Paris; and on the other side was the wood, with the ragged ruins of the abbey-church walls towering up out of the loftiest foliage. Uncle thought we had better go and see all there was to be seen directly, so we walked off down the little road with a funny feeling of being partly present and partly past, but very well content.
The story goes that one of the ancient French kings took two young princes of a rival house, crippled them, put them on a boat, and set them afloat at Paris. They drifted down the current as far as this spot, and here they were rescued. They founded a monastery in gratitude, and their tomb was in the church, which is now in ruins. Later we saw the stone, with their effigies, in the little museum by the gate. They were called "Les Deux Enervés," in reference to their mutilation. Uncle thought the word meant "nervous," and we heard him say to Mr. Porter, "Well, who wouldn't have been, under the circumstances?" The whole of the abbey is now the private property of a lady who lives in a nice house up over back beyond somewhere. She built the lodge, and also a little museum for relics from the ruins, and has stopped the wholesale carrying off of stones from the beautiful remnants of what must have once been a truly superb monument. I am sure I shall never in all my life see anything more grand or impressive than the building as it is to-day. It is much the same plan as the cathedral at Rouen, only that that has been preserved, and this has been long abandoned. It is so curious to think of the choir which we saw yesterday, with its chapels and stained glass, and then to compare it with this roofless and windowless one, out of the tops of the walls of which fir-trees—big ones—are growing. You don't know what a strange sensation it is to see trees growing out of the tops of ruined walls the foundations of which were laid by Charlemagne's relatives. Edna and I felt very solemn, and Uncle was quiet ever so long, and then only said, "I vow!" The grass is growing in the nave and transept, and the big carved pediments stick up through the turf here and there, with moss and lichen clinging to the shadowy sides. The rows of pillars are pretty even, and the set of big arches above are mostly all there still. There were a third and a fourth gallery above, and although they are fallen away in places, still you can see exactly how it used to be. When you look away up to the fourth tier of columns, the main walls of the nave are still soaring higher yet; and when you follow the sky-line of their vastness, you see the two mighty towers rising, rising, straight up toward heaven, with the rooks whirling and circling about them and screaming in the oddest, most awfully mournful manner. I'm sure I shall never feel the same way again, not even if I live to be a thousand years old myself. I felt overcome; I felt a way that I never felt before. I don't know what I felt.
Uncle was delighted; he sighed with satisfaction. "This is the real thing," he said to Mr. Porter; "I like this. You can see that there's been no tampering with this ruin." Mr. Porter looked up at the sky above and said: "I should say that there had been considerable tampering with this ruin. I will take my oath that the whole of the little town yonder was built with the stone taken from these walls and those of the monastery buildings."
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