Sunday was a leisurely day.
We got a tour of the Château proper from our host, Marie. The most fascinating parts of the tour were the hidden doors from one room into another and the toys and knick-knacks collected throughout the house. One entire room was devoted to old toys and dolls. A display case included medals from the family’s prominent military figures. There was even a miniature wood-burning toy stove that Marie said she had played with as a child (and managed not to burn the house down!) My favorite item, however, was an old dance card -- just like the ones we have at Trinity School’s Junior-Senior formals!
We went into Bayeux for the day and got to look around in the Notre Dame de Bayeux Cathedral. It is a beautiful Gothic church, not too large but still stunning by any standards. The crypt was also interesting, with some very old, simple tombs. And we found out that there would be an organ and trumpet concert at the church later that day!
Half the clan went from the cathedral to view the Bayeux Tapestry while the rest, myself included, walked through the old Medieval section of Bayeux. The River Aure winds through the old city center and there are mills, ancient walls and buildings dating back at least to the first millennium. The city has had its share of sackings, pillagingd and burnings since its foundation in the first century B.C.
After accidentally rendezvousing at the same brasserie attached to the Hôtel Reine Mathilde, we attended the free concert in the cathedral.
From there we went back to the Château and relaxed. The kids swam in the pool again. Jen lounged in the back yard. I took a drive out to a few of the local churches.
Each town in the Bessin region had its own small church, mostly Norman Romanesque architecture. And each church had its own graveyard wherein were buried both the great and the humble of the parish. Small wooden crosses over a mound of dirt rest beside grander stone markers, time wearing both. There are also remnants of broken gravestones, abandoned crucifixes and other items in odds corners of the churchyard. Examining one broken grave, I found the scattered beads of a rosary.
Day 18 Reflection One
During the organ concert in the Cathedral a small, bird-like old woman entered the church.Seemingly oblivious to the seated concertgoers, the classical music or the anything in the sacred space other than the sacred space she moved from chapel to chapel, simply tending to the votive candles. She put me in mind of Sebastian Flyte in Brideshead Revisited. I think some find his outcome in the story hopelessly tragic. However, I have always found reason for great hope in Sebastian, believing him to be one of the best illustrations I have ever encountered to the Psalmist’s cry, “I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of wickedness.”
Day 18 Reflection Two
Though Bayeux as a metropolitan area has been reshaped beyond recognition by the centuries, it is still possible to perceive the harmony of nature and human activity that Guardini believed carved out a specific kind of human existence, now largely lost to us. Reading this back over our experience of Paris, I was even more melancholy, but illuminated.
