Our way through Normandy is as though driving through a beautiful park. The long highways stretch off into the smiling country like great white ribbons turning and twisting on a bed of delicate green satin and the brooks bubble and sing along happy in the ever increasing life of spring. Tall poplars clothed in the pale green which seems peculiar to France in this season, march away in stately procession, while the quaint thatched cottages are all a-blossom with the flowers of peach and pear trees trained over their faces, and through which the windows twinkle out at you like the eyes of a maiden from under the frills of a white sunbonnet. There are many Evangelines abroad in this smiling country, still wearing their Norman caps and kirtles of homespun. Ancient dames sit by the open doors thankful that they may bask in the sunshine of another year, and that they will not as yet add another cross to the many on the hillside yonder. One with whom a black-robed priest is talking is evidently so old that she must say farewell to all this brightness before very long. We pass many curious groups. Here comes one on a make-shift of a wagon, evidently of home construction. It is hauled by three poor dogs, one on each side and one underneath it. A stolid-looking girl pushes behind, and in it sits enthroned a beast of a man, evidently a cripple in his legs, but with bestiality written on every feature; such a man as Quilp must have been. A wretched baby completes the party, but such groups of misery are the exception, most of the people of Normandy look happy.