More daintily environed than any other of Honfleur's churches is the little sailor's chapel of Notre Dame de Grâce, on the Côte de Grâce, on the west side of the harbour. There is nothing very splendid about its surroundings or its appointments; but on a day of pilgrimage, when the sailors and their wives, their sweet-hearts and their daughters, flock hither, it presents a sight comparable only with the _pardons_ of Brittany. Indeed, after its sailors and artists, Honfleur would seem to be noted for religious processions.
The houses of Honfleur are, in general, less lofty and ornate than in many other regions of Normandy; but their narrow timbered fronts and irregular gables render them no less picturesque.
A half-dozen or more kilometres from Honfleur is a little stream, not marked on many maps, known as the Risle. On its banks, about the same distance from its juncture with the Seine, is Pont Audemer, another beautiful town, given over, however, to industrialism. Its tanneries and cider-presses give employment and sustenance to several thousand people.
The Parisian calls Pont Audemer the capital of the "_royaume de chicane_," and goes on to say that this district comprises nearly all Normandy. This is manifestly an exaggeration and unfair; but it is claimed further that the municipal court-house at Pont Audemer is the most frequented of all its buildings, and that to be a notary, a lawyer, or a sheriff here is to become immediately rich.
The town is picturesquely disposed on the banks of the Risle, which furnishes an abundant supply of water to the tanneries which line its banks.
It has a really great church in St. Ouen, which makes it a place not to be omitted from one's itinerary, if it can possibly be included. It dates from the eleventh, the fifteenth, and the sixteenth centuries, and still possesses fragments of early stained glass and some curious Renaissance wood-carvings.
Between Pont Audemer and the juncture of the Eure with the Seine one comes upon one of the most lively and interesting parts of agricultural Normandy. Here the fields are literally covered with apple-trees, planted more closely than elsewhere, to the number of a hundred to the acre, but the trees thrive exceedingly. The peasant cultivates his trees with great regard for their well-being, and is quite as deft and painstaking as his brother of the vineyards farther south. There are no vineyards which are celebrated north of a line drawn from the mouth of the Loire to where the Oise joins the Seine, just south of the confines of Normandy.