We are in the midst of the cornfields near Villers-sur-mer, and the hill-side is glorious; it is covered to the very summit with riches—­the heavily-laden corn-stems wave their crests against a blue horizon, whilst, in a cleft of the hill, a long line of poppies winds downwards in one scarlet stream.  They are set thickly in some places, and form a blaze of colour, inconceivably, painfully brilliant—­a concentration of light as utterly beyond our power of imitation by the pencil, as genius is removed from ordinary minds.  We could not paint it if we would, but we may see in it an allegory of plenty, and of peace (of that peace which France so urgently desires); we may see her blood-red banner of war laid down to garland the hill-side with its crimson folds, and her children laying their offerings at the feet of Ceres and forgetting Mars altogether.  The national anthem becomes no longer a natural refrain—­anything would sound more appropriate than ‘partant pour la Syrie’ (there is no time for that work)—­to our little friend in fluttering blouse, who sits in the grass and ‘minds’ fifty head of cattle by moral force alone; we should rather sing:—­

  ’Little boy blue, come blow me your horn,
  The orchards are laden, the cow ‘s in the corn!’

* * * * *

We cannot leave this pastoral scene, at least until the evening; when the sun goes down behind the sea—­leaving a glow upon the hill-side and upon the crowd of gleaners who have just come up, and casts long shadows across the stubble and on the sheaves of corn; when the harvest moon shines out, and the picture is completed—­the corn—­sheaves lighted on one side by the western glow, on the other by the moon; like the famous shield over which knights did battle,—­one side silver, the other gold.

All this time we are within sight, and nearly within sound, of the ‘happy hunting grounds’ of Trouville and Deauville, but the country people are singularly unaffected by the proximity of those pretty towns, invented by Dumas and peopled by his following.[52] It is true that on the walls of a little village inn, there is something paraded about a ‘Trouville Association, Limited,’ and a company for ’the passage of the Simplon,’ with twenty-franc shares; but these things do not seem to find much favour amongst the thrifty peasantry.  They have, in their time, been tempted to unearth their treasures, and to invest in bubble companies like the rest of the world; but there is a reaction here, the Normans evidently thinking, like the old Colonnae, that a hole in the bottom of the garden is about the safest place after all.  And they have, it is true, some other temptations which come to them with a cheap press, such as ‘la surete financiere,’ ’le moniteur des tirages financiers,’ ‘le petit moniteur financier,’ &c., newspapers whose special business it is, to teach the people how to get rid of their savings, we are speaking, of course,