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Philip was about this time besieging Falaise; he won it, and went on in triumph to receive the surrender of Domfront, Séez, Lisieux, Caen, Bayeux, Coutances, Barfleur, and Cherbourg.
But then, of a certainty, we also had come for the fete or, and here a puzzled look of doubt beclouded the provincial's eyes might we, perchance, instead, have come for the trial? Mais non, pas ca, these ladies had never come for that, since they did not even know the court was sitting, now, this very instant, at Coutances.
It implied that some nameless genius at Coutances had, in the middle of the eleventh century, suddenly, at a blow, invented the fully developed style of the thirteenth that this great discovery was kept hidden at Coutances till the very end of the twelfth that then various people in Normandy, France, England, and above all Saint Hugh of Burgundy, began to make many, and at first not very successful, attempts to imitate what the men of one spot in the Côtentin had known, and must have been proud of, for a century and a half.
There is no need to describe anew a building so well known as the cathedral church of Coutances.
Such a city, so set, promises at the very least the dual distinction of looking up as well as looking down; it is the nearer heaven, and just so much the farther removed from earth. Coutances, for a city with its head in the air, was surprisingly friendly. It went out of its way to make us at home.
They were allowed to go to Cherbourg where they took ship to England about the same time as the garrisons from Vire, Avranches, Coutances, and many other strongholds which were at this time falling like dead leaves.
The transepts are practically non-existent, as the widening does not extend beyond the extent of the nave chapels. This leaves the ground-plan, at least, a mere parallelogram with a rounded eastern end. Notre Dame de Coutances is one of the few really great Gothic churches not possessing an example of those French masterworks, the rose window.
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.
For that matter, they also say that the whole channel between here and France was once so narrow that the Bishop of Coutances used to cross to Jersey on a plank." "Tell that to the marines," protested Roger. "You do find the weirdest yarns in those books you're always grubbing in."
Some miles over the landes bring us again into the hilly region round the episcopal city, and Coutances is seen on its hill, truly a city which cannot be hid. Of its lovely minster we once spoke in some detail; of the city itself we may add that none more truly bespeaks its origin as a hill-fort.
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