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Pages 226 à 228.
In the summer of 1881 I paid a visit to an old friend who was living at Petites Dalles, on the Normandy coast. I was struck by the picturesqueness of this little port when seen from the coast of St. Martin. It is one of those poetical landscapes which one sees on the Riviera, along the Corniche, between Nice and San Remo. My friend, to whom I expressed my admiration of the view, said to me:
"Why do you not build here a temporary refuge where you may find repose amid the ceaseless agitation of your existence?"
We were promenading at the time in the single street of the village which leads from the valley to the beach. I looked up at the cliff on my left and said to my friend: "If I can buy that little plateau there on the edge of the cliff, with the clump of beeches behind it, I will do so, and build a house there for my old days."
My friend was delighted at the idea, and as I was leaving that very evening, he promised to investigate the matter for me. Forty-eight hours had not elapsed mince my return to Paris when I heard from him that the owner accepted my price and that the bargain was concluded.
In 1883 my little chalet, called by the peasants "Les Lampottes", because of the two small towers in the façade, was finished. I had only to settle down there. But between the two little towers, or lampottes, there was a large empty space under the sharp angle of the roof. I ought to say that this façade has obtained a great reputation among architecte, and that not a season goes by without some of them visiting it, as they consider it the true Norman type. But I repeat that the angle between the lampottes and the summit of the roof was then empty, and this formed a gap which I was most anxious to see filled up. One aftemoon, at Rouen, in the courtyard of a dealer in antiquities, I was struck by the artistic beauty of a statue of the Virgin with the Child Jesus in her arms. The statue had been carved out of one immense half of the bole of an oak. I took the measurements of it, and, as I had in my pocket the plan of my country house, I noticed that this statue, including its pedestal, would exactly fit into the empty space of my Norman façade. The next day I asked the antiquary to sell it to me.
"Oh!" said he, "this is a statue of which I am very fond, for its harmony rests the eye, but I will gladly sell it to you. I bought it at the demolition of a nunnery, which was pulled down on the plea of public utility, but ever since I have had it it has taken away my peace of mind. It always seenis to me that all kinds of faint sounds are buzzing about it at night. Besides, I cannot succeed in keeping it recumbent, and when upright it annoys me. A dozen times I have laid it on the ground, but the next day I have found it upright without being able to explain how or why, and my wife, frightened by this phenomenon, begs me to get rid of it." "Very well," I said with a smile;" as I want to place her upright against a wall, she won't wish to change her position." I had the Virgin transported in a hay-cart from Rouen, and a week later the fisher peasants of Petites Dalles, in their playful way, had baptised my little chateau "Notre Dame des Lampottes".