Page:A Motor-Flight Through France.djvu/54

 III

FROM ROUEN TO FONTAINEBLEAU

HE Seine, two days later, by the sweetest curves, drew us on from Rouen to Les Andelys, past such bright gardens terraced above its banks, such moist poplar-fringed islands, such low green promontories deflecting its silver flow, that we continually checked the flight of the motor, pausing here, and here, and here again, to note how France understands and enjoys and lives with her rivers.

With her great past, it seems, she has partly ceased to live; for, ask as we would, we could not, that morning, learn the way to King Richard's Château Gaillard on the cliff above Les Andelys. Every turn from the route de Paris seemed to lead straight into the unknown; "mais c'est tout droit pour Paris" was the invariable answer when we asked our way. Yet a few miles off were two of the quaintest [ 24 ]