practically abandoned. Many good bridges were destroyed, and the work of road-building ceased completely, the people finding their way about by mere trails.
With the advent of Christianity in Gaul there was a partial renaissance of these Roman roads, thanks to great fairs and pilgrimages. The monastic orders became in a way the parents and protectors of bridges and roads, with St. Bénèzet at their head, who in the twelfth century constructed the wonderful Pont d’Avignon, which still stands.
The general system of the present-day national roads follows largely the old Roman means of communication, as well as those traced by nature, along the banks of rivers and on the flanks of mountains and in the valleys lying between. The great national roads of France form a class by themselves, independent of the departmental and communal roads. They approximate forty thousand kilometres, and run at a tangent from the capital itself and between the chief cities of the eighty odd departments which make up modern France.
In general, the designation of the road, its number, and classification are indicated on the kilometre marks with which every important road in France is marked.
The national roads, having their origin at Paris, have their distances marked from Notre Dame, and certain of the secondary cities are taken for the point of departure of other great roads.
A ministerial decree, put forth in 1853, decided that the national roads should have their distances marked from their entrance into each department, a regulation which has been followed nearly everywhere, except that distances are still reckoned from Paris on most of the great highroads of Normandy and Brittany.
Guide-posts are placed at all important cross-roads and pattes-d’oie (a goose-foot, literally).
An iron plaque, painted white and blue, beside the road, shows without any possibility of mistake the commune in which it is situated, the next important place in either direction, and frequently the next town of considerable proportions, even though it may be half a hundred kilometres distant.
French roads are indeed wonderfully well marked; and these little blue and white plaques, put up by the roadside or fastened on the wall of some dwelling at the entrance or the exit of a village or town, must number hundreds of thousands.
In these days of fast-rushing automobiles a demand has sprung up for a more striking and legible series of special sign-boards along certain roads, in order that he who runs may read. And so the Touring Club of France, on the great road which runs from Paris through Normandy, to Havre and Dieppe, for instance, has erected a series of large-lettered and abbreviated sign-boards, which are all that could be desired.
Besides these, there are other enigmatical symbols and signs erected by paternal societies of road users which will strike a stranger dumb with conjecture as to what they may mean.
They are all essentially practical, however, as the following tableau will show. It is very important indeed for an automobilist or other road user to know that a railway-gate (like enough to be shut) awaits him around a sharp curve, or that a steep hill is hidden just behind a bank of trees.
Still another class of signs met with by road users in France is most helpful. They, too, shoot out a warning which one may read as he rushes by at high speed; printed in great staring letters, one, two, or three words which one dare not, if he values his life, ignore.
Truly one who goes astray or contravenes any law of the road in France has only himself to blame.
The chief national roads crossing Normandy are as follows:
| No. | 192 and | —Paris to Havre, by the right bank of the Seine, passing Poissy, Melun, La Roche-Guyon, Les Andelys, and Rouen. |
| " | 14. | |
| " | 190. | —Paris to Rouen and Honfleur, by the left bank of the Seine. |
| " | 182. | |
| " | 180. | |
| " | 13. | —Paris to Cherbourg, via Evreux and Caen. |
| " | 26. | —Paris to Fécamp by Yvetot. |
| " | 14. | —Paris to Dieppe. |
| " | 14, | —bis. Paris to Tréport. |
| " | 155. | —Paris to St. Malo, via Mayenne. |
| " | 24, | —bis.Paris to Granville by Verneuil. |
| " | 13. and | —Paris to Coutances by Bayeux and St. Lô. |
| " | 172. | |
| " | 10. | —Paris to Vannes, via Ploërmel. |
| " | 12. | |
| " | 24. | |
| " | 166. | |
| " | 10. | —Paris to Quimper, via Rennes and Lorient. |
| " | 12. | |
| " | 24. | |
| " | 165. | |
| " | 10. |
—Paris
|
