Besides the dust, there were other things abroad on the high-road. What a lot of June had got into the air! The meadows and the orchards were exuding perfumes; the hedge-rows were so many yards of roses and wild grape-vines in blossom. The sea-smells, aromatic, pungent, floated inland to be married, in hot haste, to a perfect harem of clover and locust scents. The charm of the coast was enriched by the homely, familiar scenes of farm-house life. All the country between Dives and Caen seemed one vast farm, beautifully tilled, with its meadow-lands dipping seaward. For several miles, perhaps, the agricultural note alone would be the dominant one, with the fields full of the old, the eternal surprise--the dawn of young summer rising over them. Down the sides of the low hills, the polychrome grain waved beneath the touch of the breeze like a moving sea. Many and vast were the flat-lands; they were wide vistas of color: there were fields that were scarlet with the pomp of poppies, others tinged to the yellow of a Celestial by the feathery mustard; and still others blue as a sapphire's heart from the dye of millions of bluets. A dozen small rivers--or perhaps it was only one--coiled and twisted like a cobra in sinuous action, in and out among the pasture and sea meadows.
As we passed the low, bushy banks, we heard the babel of the washerwomen's voices as they gossiped and beat their clothes on the stones. A fisherman or two gave one a hint that idling was understood here, as elsewhere, as being a fine art for those who possess the talent of never being pressed for time. A peasant had brought his horse to the bank; the river, to both peasant and Percheron, was evidently considered as a personal possession--as are all rivers to those who live near them. There was a naturalness in all the life abroad in the fields that gave this Normandy highroad an incomparable charm. An Arcadian calm, a certain patriarchal simplicity reigned beneath the trees. Children trudged to the river bank with pails and pitchers to be filled; women, with rakes and scythes in hand, crept down from the upper fields to season their mid-day meal with the cooling whiff of the river and sea air. Children tugged at their skirts. In two feet of human life, with kerchief tied under chin, the small hands carrying a huge bunch of cornflowers, how much of great gravity there may be! One such rustic sketch of the future peasant was seriously carrying its bouquet to another small edition seated in a grove of poppies; it might have been a votive offering. Both the children seated themselves, a very earnest conversation ensuing. On the hill-top, near by, the father and mother were also conversing, as they bent over their scythes. Another picture was wheeling itself along the river bank; it was a farmer behind a huge load of green grass; atop of the grasses two moon-faced children had laps and hands crowded with field flowers. Behind them the mother walked, with a rake slung over her shoulder, her short skirts and scant draperies giving to her step a noble freedom. The brush of Vollon or of Breton would have seized upon her to embody the type of one of their rustic beauties, that type whose mingled fierceness and grace make their peasants the rude goddesses of the plough.