We have more than once been censured for saying that the French people have little natural love for scenery, and a stilted, not to say morbid, theory of landscape; but whilst we stay in this inn, from which we might have had such splendid views, we become confirmed in the opinion (formed in the Pyrenees), that the French people do not care, and that they think nothing of defiling Nature’s purest places.  At this hotel we are in the position of the prisoners confined aloft in the tower at Florence; the hills and valleys are before and around us, but we are not allowed to see them.[36]

On our road to VIRE, twenty-three miles distant, it is tempting to make a digression to the town of Domfront (which the reader will see on the map, a few miles to the south-east); we should do so, to see its picturesque position, with the ancient castle on the heights, and the town, as at Falaise, growing round its feet; also an old church at the foot of the hill, which is considered ’one of the best and purest specimens of Norman work to be found anywhere.’

But the route we have chosen for description, now turns northward, passing through a still beautiful land, studded with thatched cottages, and lighted up with the dazzling white helmets of the women who are busy in the fields, and in the farms and homesteads.  As we approach the town of Vire, the population has evidently been absorbed into the cloth and paper mills, for, excepting in the morning and the evening, there are very few people abroad; we see scarcely any one, save, at regular intervals on the road, the old cantonniers occupied in their business of making stone-pies,[37] or a village cure at work in his garden; but we notice that the houses are neater and better built than those near Mortain, where grass grows luxuriantly upon them, and the roofs are covered with coloured mosses.

The situation of Vire is one of extreme beauty (reminding us again of Switzerland), with hills and valleys richly wooded, the trees being larger than any we have yet seen on our route.  If we had approached Vire from the west, by way of Villedieu and St. Sever, we should have had even finer views than by way of Mortain; but Villedieu is at present more deplorable than Mortain in its domestic arrangements, and the inn is to be avoided by all cleanly people; however, with the completion of the railway from Vire to Granville, we are promised much better things.

[Illustration:  CLOCK TOWER AT VIRE.]

The chief architectural object of interest at Vire is the old clock-tower of the thirteenth century, over the Rue de Calvados, with its high gateway, formerly called ‘the gate of the Champ de Vire.’  Over this gateway (which we cannot see from the position where we have sketched the belfry) there is a statue of the Virgin, with the inscription, ‘Marie protege la ville.’  This tower has been altered and repaired at several periods, and, like two others near it, is too much built up against and crowded by, what the French call ’maisons vulgaires,’ to be well seen.