Here we must take leave of Normandy; a small place, but one which, like Attica or Tuscany, has said a great deal to the world, and even goes on saying things--not often in the famous genre ennuyeux--to this day; for Gustave Flaubert's style is singularly like that of the Tour Saint-Romain and the Abbaye-aux-Hommes. Going up the Seine one might read a few pages of his letters, or of "Madame de Bovary," to see how an old art transmutes itself into a new one, without changing its methods. Some critics have thought that at times Flaubert was mesquin like the Norman tower, but these are, as the French say, the defects of his qualities; we can pass over them, and let our eyes rest on the simplicity of the Norman fleche which pierces the line of our horizon. The last of Norman art is seen at Mantes, where there is a little church of Gassicourt that marks the farthest reach of the style. In arms as in architecture, Mantes barred the path of Norman conquest; William the Conqueror met his death here in 1087. Geographically Mantes is in the Ile de France, less than forty miles from Paris. Architecturally, it is Paris itself; while, forty miles to the southward, is Chartres, an independent or only feudally dependent country. No matter how hurried the architectural tourist may be, the boundary-line of the Ile de France is not to be crossed without stopping. If he came down from the north or east, he would have equally to stop,--either at Beauvais, or at Laon, or Noyon, or Soissons,--because there is an architectural douane to pass, and one's architectural baggage must be opened. Neither Notre Dame de Paris nor Notre Dame de Chartres is quite intelligible unless one has first seen Notre Dame de Mantes, and studied it in the sacred sources of M. Viollet-le-Duc.