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Most likely no thought is given it at all, except that Coutances is somewhere on the railway line between Cherbourg and Paris, or that it is near unto Bayeux; also possessed of a magnificent cathedral, but whose greatest fame lies in a certain false sentiment associated with its famous tapestry.
As I had passed the cathedral eleven reverbrating notes had echoed over the town, and it seemed as though Coutances had retired earlier on this night of all nights in order that I might learn to travel at more rational hours.
The present ogival structure is built on the remains of a Romanesque church erected by a famous Bishop of Coutances, Geoffroy de Montbray, with funds supplied by Guillaume Bras-de-Fer, Odon, Roger, Onfroy, and Robert, sons of Tancrede-de-Hauteville, the Norman conquerors of Sicily and Calabria, whose names have been given fabled prominence in more than one epic poem.
At Coutances and at Vire, several monopoliers and gabeleurs, as the fiscal officers were called, were massacred; a great number of houses were burned, and most of the receiving-offices were pulled down or pillaged. Some of these verses are fair enough. The tumult was more violent at Rouen than anywhere else, and the Parliament energetically resisted the mob.
"You do not need to go through Avranches," the latter said. "Take the road by the coast through Granville to Coutances." "How far is it to Coutances?" "About twenty miles. At least, so I have heard, for I have never been there." After walking a few miles, they went down on to the seashore and lay down among some rocks until evening.
The visitor to Saint Saviour may perhaps manage to make his way straight from that place to Coutances without going back to Valognes.
He might well have added, the Renaissance and the pseudo-classicism of a later day. Beauties there are in this region, galore; and the examples which no longer exist, but of which the records tell, point to a still larger aggregate. Who thinks to-day of Coutances as of being a "cathedral town?"
I should like to describe the scenery of the twenty miles of country that lie between Granville and Coutances, but I have only passed over it on one occasion. It was nine o'clock in the evening, and the long drawn-out twilight had nearly faded away as I climbed up the long ascent which commences the road to Coutances, and before I had reached the village of Brehal it was quite dark.
The city which formed the halting-place of Lanfranc on his way from Pavia to Bec is now chiefly to be noticed for its splendid site, and as a convenient starting-point for other places where more has been spared. Avranches, like Coutances, is a hill-city, and, as regards actual elevation, it is even more of a hill-city than Coutances.
The archbishop who was still Walter of Coutances, Richard's faithful minister of earlier days, protested without avail and finally retired to Rome, laying the duchy under an interdict.
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