"I took the steamer from Havre, and two hours later was at Honfleur; the next morning I was at Trouville." To-day the fly-by-day tourist does the whole journey in a couple of hours--if he does not linger over the attractions of "Les Petits Chevaux" or "Trente et Quarante," at Honfleur's pretty Casino. "You know the little town with its population of fisher-folk. It is one of the most picturesque in Normandy. I stayed there a few days, exploring the neighbourhood, and in the evening I used to sit in the chimney-corner with my worthy hostess, Madame Oseraie. There I heard strange tales of adventures which had been enacted in Calvados, Loiret, and La Manche." Continuing, the author, evidently having become imbued with the local colour of the vicinity, describes, more or less superficially, perhaps, but still with vividness, if not minuteness, those treasure-chests of history, the towns and villages of Normandy:--Caen, Lisieux, Falaise, the cradle of the Conqueror William, "the fertile plains" around Pont Audemer, Havre, and Alençon. Normandy, too, was the _locale_ of the early life of Gabriel Lambert, the unappealing leading-man of that dramatic story of a counterfeiter's life, which bears the same title. Dumas' first acquaintance with the character in real life,--if he had any real personality, as one is inclined to think he had,--was at Toulon, where the unfortunate man was imprisoned and made to work in the galleys. In the course of the narrative the scene shifts from prisons, galleys, and chain-gangs, backward and forward, until we get the whole gamut of the criminal's life. Gabriel, in the days of his early life at Trouville, had acquired the art of skilled penmanship, and used it wherever he could for his own advantage, by fabricating the handwriting of others--and some honest work of a similar nature. Finally the call of Paris came strong upon him, and he set forth by Pont l'Evêque and Rouen to the metropolis, where his downfall was speedily consummated, to the sorrow and resentment of his old friends of the little Norman fishing-village, and more particularly to Marie Granger, his country sweetheart, who longed to follow him to Paris, not suspecting the actual turn affairs had taken. In "The Count of Monte Cristo," Dumas again evinces his fondness for, and acquaintance with, the coast of Normandy. It is a brief reference, to be sure, but it shows that Dumas had some considerable liking for the sea, and a more or less minute knowledge of the coast of France. This is further evinced by the details into which he launches once and again, with reference to the littoral of the Mediterranean, Belle Ile, and its surroundings, and the coasts of Normandy, Brittany, and the Pas de Calais. In "The Count of Monte Cristo," Dantès says to his companion, Bertuccio: