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diff --git a/42866-0.txt b/42866-0.txt index fda8993..7eff03a 100644 --- a/42866-0.txt +++ b/42866-0.txt @@ -1,27 +1,4 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of Rambles in Brittany, by Francis Miltoun - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with -almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license - - -Title: Rambles in Brittany - -Author: Francis Miltoun - -Illustrator: Blanche McManus - -Release Date: June 3, 2013 [EBook #42866] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RAMBLES IN BRITTANY *** - - - +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 42866 *** Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was @@ -8521,366 +8498,4 @@ in the sixth entury=> in the sixth century {pg 304} End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Rambles in Brittany, by Francis Miltoun -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RAMBLES IN BRITTANY *** - -***** This file should be named 42866-0.txt or 42866-0.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/4/2/8/6/42866/ - -Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive) - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license - - -Title: Rambles in Brittany - -Author: Francis Miltoun - -Illustrator: Blanche McManus - -Release Date: June 3, 2013 [EBook #42866] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RAMBLES IN BRITTANY *** - - - - -Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive) - - - - - - -Every attempt has been made to replicate the original book as printed. -Some typographical errors have been corrected. No attempt has been made -to correct or normalize the printed accentuation or spelling of French -names or words. The images have been moved from the middle of a -paragraph to the closest paragraph break. (etext transcriber's note) - - - - - -RAMBLES IN BRITTANY - -_WORKS OF FRANCIS MILTOUN_ - -_The following, each 1 vol., library 12mo, cloth, gilt top, profusely -illustrated. Net, $2.00; postpaid, $2.16_ - -_Rambles in Normandy_ - -_Rambles in Brittany_ - -_The Cathedrals and Churches of the Rhine_ - -_The following, each 1 vol., library 12mo, cloth, gilt top, profusely -illustrated. Postpaid, $2.50_ - -_The Cathedrals of Northern France_ - -_The Cathedrals of Southern France_ - -_L. C. PAGE & COMPANY_ - -_New England Building, Boston, Mass._ - -[Illustration: _<u>Constable's Tower, Vannes</u>_ - -(_See page 147_)] - - - - -Rambles - -in - -BRITTANY - -BY FRANCIS MILTOUN - -_With Many Illustrations_ - -BY BLANCHE MCMANUS - -[Illustration: colophon] - -BOSTON - -L. C. PAGE & COMPANY - -1906 - -_Copyright, 1905_ -BY L. C. PAGE & COMPANY -(INCORPORATED) - -_All rights reserved_ - -Published October, 1905 - -_COLONIAL PRESS -Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds & Co. -Boston, U. S. A._ - - - - -APOLOGIA - - -No promise given to the hostess of one's inn is alleged as an excuse -for writing this book, but it is true that rosy, busy Madame X of the -Soleil d'Or, in the fishing village in which the work received its -final collation and revision, watched its growth for many a week, daily -declaring her hope of some day receiving a volume containing "your -impressions." And, indeed, her hope shall not be vain, for one of the -first copies shall be most speedily despatched to her. Moreover, the -author and artist hope that it may be acceptable to her critical mind, -for she is not likely to be lenient, though she knows full well that to -the many authors and artists who make a refuge of her modest inn for -months she owes her livelihood. - -The book is a record of many journeys and many rambles by road and rail -around the coast, and in no sense is it put forth either as a special or -as a complete survey of things and matters Breton. - -Many lights and shadows have been thrown upon the screen from various -points, but the effort has been made to blend them all into a pleasing -whole, which shall supplement the guide-books of convention. - -It were not possible to do more than has been attempted within the -limits of a volume such as this, and therefore many details of routes, -and historical data of a relative sort, and a certain amount of -topographical information have been scattered through the volume or -placed in the appendix, in the belief that such information is greatly -needed in a work attempting to purvey "travel talk" even in small -measure. - -Some of this knowledge is so little subject to change that it may well -stand for all time, and, in these days of well-nigh universal travel, -may be not thought out of place in a volume intended both for the -armchair traveller and also for him who journeys by road and rail. That -only a very limited quantity of such information can be included is a -misfortune, inasmuch as such a handbook is often used when no other aid -is accessible to the traveller. - -Finally, the illustrative material, the large number of drawings of -sights and scenes, of great architectural monuments, and of the dress -of the people, is offered less as a complete pictorial survey than as a -panorama of impressions received on and off the beaten track,--and more -satisfying and truthful than the mere snap-shots of hurried travel. - -In addition, many maps, plans, and diagrams should give many of the -itineraries a lucidity often lacking in the usual railway maps. - - - - -CONTENTS - - -CHAPTER PAGE - -APOLOGIA v - - -PART I. - -I. INTRODUCTORY 3 - -II. THE PROVINCE AND THE PEOPLE 11 - -III. THE TOPOGRAPHY OF THE PROVINCE 33 - -IV. TRAVEL ROUTES IN BRITTANY 45 - -V. THE BRETON TONGUE AND LEGEND 59 - -VI. MANNERS AND CUSTOMS 70 - -VII. THE FISHERIES 88 - - -PART II. - -I. THE LOIRE IN BRITTANY 99 - -II. NANTES TO VANNES 116 - -III. THE MORBIHAN--VANNES AND THE "GOLFE" 140 - -IV. AURAY AND THE MEGALITHIC MONUMENTS OF -MORBIHAN 159 - -V. MORBIHAN--LORIENT AND ITS NEIGHBOURHOOD 179 - -VI. FINISTRE--SOUTH 187 - -VII. FINISTRE--NORTH 221 - -VIII. THE CTES DU NORD 249 - -IX. THE EMERALD COAST 271 - -X. ON THE ROAD IN BRITTANY--MAYENNE, -FOUGRES, LAVAL, AND VITR 309 - -XI. RENNES AND BEYOND 329 - -XII. RELIGIOUS FESTIVALS AND PARDONS 341 - -APPENDICES 359 - -INDEX 373 - - - - -LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS - - - PAGE - -CONSTABLE'S TOWER, VANNES (_See page 147_) _Frontispiece_ - -THE LOIRE AT NANTES facing 4 - -DEVICE OF ANNE OF BRITTANY 17 - -ANNE OF BRITTANY 18 - -BRETON POST-CARD 21 - -ST. BRIEUC facing 30 - -CROISIC facing 42 - -MAP OF BRITTANY facing 44 - -THE MAIN ROADS OF BRITTANY 48 - -TRAVEL ROUTES IN BRITTANY 55 - -ST. POL DE LON facing 60 - -THE BRETON TONGUE 62 - -GILLES DE LAVAL 66 - -YOUNG BRETONS 78 - -FROM THE ARTIST'S SKETCH BOOK 80 - -LA COIFFE POLKA 81 - -IRONING COIFS 83 - -BRETON TYPES 85 - -DOUARNENEZ facing 88 - -PORNIC 113 - -DONJON OF CLISSON facing 114 - -ST. NAZAIRE 123 - -ANCIENT FORTIFICATIONS OF GURANDE (DIAGRAM) 126 - -CHTEAUBRIANT facing 128 - -CHILDREN OF REDON 133 - -TOUR D'ELVEN facing 138 - -MARKET-WOMAN, VANNES 142 - -THE COUNTRY NEAR VANNES 143 - -ANCIENT CITY WALLS, VANNES (DIAGRAM) 147 - -CHTEAU OF SUSCINO facing 148 - -GENERAL PLAN OF CHTEAU OF SUSCINO (DIAGRAM) 149 - -PLORMEL facing 152 - -SHRINE OF ST. ETIENNE, JOSSELIN 154 - -CHTEAU DE JOSSELIN facing 156 - -INTERIOR OF MARKET-HOUSE, AURAY facing 160 - -SHRINE OF ST. ROCH, AURAY 162 - -THE LINES OF CARNAC 168 - -THE LINES OF CARNAC facing 168 - -MAP OF CARNAC AND THE SURROUNDING COUNTRY 170 - -QUIBERON facing 172 - -HENNEBONT facing 182 - -QUIMPERL facing 188 - -MARKET-HOUSE, FAOUT facing 192 - -MARKET-DAY 193 - -ROSPORDEN 196 - -STONE CRUCIFIX, CONCARNEAU facing 198 - -CONCARNEAU 199 - -PONT AVEN facing 202 - -ENVIRONS OF PONT AVEN (MAP) 204 - -FROM THE MUSEUM AT QUIMPER 207 - -CAPE DE LA CHVRE facing 214 - -WOMAN OF CHATEAULIN 217 - -CAMARET facing 220 - -LANDERNEAU facing 224 - -CALVARY, PLOUGASTEL facing 228 - -LIGHTHOUSE OF CRAC'H, OUESSANT facing 236 - -ROSCOFF 239 - -MA DOUEZ 244 - -CARVED WOOD STAIRCASE, MORLAIX facing 246 - -PROCESSION OF SAILORS, ST. JEAN DU DOIGT 247 - -OLD HOUSE, TRGUIER 253 - -HOUSE OF ERNEST RENAN, TRGUIER 254 - -SHRINE OF ST. YVES, TRGUIER 256 - -A BINOU PLAYER 261 - -BINIC 267 - -RAMPARTS OF ST. MALO facing 272 - -HOUSE OF DUGUAY-TROUIN, ST. MALO 281 - -TOWER OF SOLIDOR, ST. SERVAN facing 284 - -PLANS OF THE TOWER OF SOLIDOR 285 - -THE VALLEY OF THE RANCE (MAP) 292 - -DUGUESCLIN 293 - -REZ-DE-CHAUSSE OF DONJON, DINAN (DIAGRAM) 295 - -COIF OF MINIAC 307 - -MAYENNE facing 310 - -PLAN OF THE ANCIENT WALLS AND TOWERS OF -FOUGRES 314 - -BEUCHERESSE GATE, LAVAL 319 - -PLAN OF VITR IN 1811, SHOWING CITY WALLS 321 - -CHTEAU DE VITR facing 322 - -TOWER OF ST. MARTIN, VITR 323 - -CHTEAU DE ROCHERS 325 - -ARMS OF MADAME DE SVIGN 327 - -MONASTERY OF ST. MLAINE, RENNES 331 - -HUELGOAT facing 340 - -PARDON OF ST. JEAN DU DOIGT facing 352 - -THE PROVINCES OF FRANCE (MAP) 359 - -THE ANCIENT PROVINCES OF FRANCE (MAP) 361 - -COMPARATIVE METRIC SCALE (DIAGRAM) 364 - -SKETCH MAP OF CIRCULAR TOUR IN BRITTANY 366 - -ARCHITECTURAL NAMES OF THE VARIOUS PARTS OF -A FEUDAL CHTEAU (DIAGRAM) 367 - -TIDE AND WEATHER SIGNALS IN THE PORTS OF -BRITTANY (DIAGRAM) 368 - - - - -PART I. - - - - -RAMBLES IN BRITTANY - - - - -CHAPTER I. - -INTRODUCTORY - - -The regard which every one has for the old French provinces is by -no means inexplicable. Out of them grew the present solidarity of -republican France, but in spite of it the old limits of demarcation -are not yet expunged. One and all retain to-day their individual -characteristics, manners, and customs, and also a certain subconscious -atmosphere. - -Many are the casual travellers who know Normandy and Brittany, at least -know them by name and perhaps something more, but how many of those who -annually skim across France, in summer to Switzerland and in winter to -the Riviera or to Italy, there to live in seven-franc-a-day pensions, -and drink a particularly vile brand of tea, know where Brittany leaves -off and Normandy begins, or have more than the vaguest of vague notions -as to whether the charming little provincial capital of Nantes, on the -Loire, is in Brittany or in Poitou. A recollection of their school-day -knowledge of history will help them on the latter point, but geography -will come in and puzzle them still more. - -There are many French writers, and painters for that matter, who have -made these provinces famous. Napoleon, perhaps, set the fashion, when -he wrote, in 1786, that eulogy beginning: "It is now six or seven years -since I left my native country." More familiar is the "Native Land" of -Lamartine. Camille Flammarion wrote "My Cradle," meaning Champagne; -Dumas wrote of Villers-Cotterets, and Chateaubriand and Renan of -Brittany; but head and shoulders above them all stand out Frederic -Mistral and his fellows of the Flibres at Avignon and Arles. - -[Illustration: <u>_The Loire at Nantes_</u>] - -All this offers a well-nigh irresistible fascination for those who -love literary and historic shrines,--and who does not in these days of -universal travel, personally conducted or otherwise? Not every one can -follow in the footsteps of Sterne with equal facility and grace, or -bask in the radiance of a Stevenson or a Gautier. Still, it is given -to most of us who know the lay of the land to discover for ourselves -the position of these celebrated shrines, whether the pilgrimage be -historical, literary, or artistic. - -This is what gives a charm to travel, and even where no new thing is -actually discovered, no new pathways broken, there is, after all, a -certain zest in such an exploration rivalling that to be obtained from -an expedition to the uttermost confines of the Dark Continent, to Tibet, -or to Tierra del Fuego. - -Primarily, the ancient provinces of France have a story of historical -and romantic purport not equalled in the chronicles of any other nation. -The distinctive types are but vaguely limned, but the Norman and the -Breton stand out most distinctly, and such figures as the Norman and -Breton dukes of real history live even more vividly in one's mind than -D'Artagnan and his fellows in the great portrait-gallery of Dumas. - -One need not be of the antiquary species in order to revel in the great -monuments of history abounding in Brittany even as in Normandy. There -are many and beautiful shrines elsewhere,--and doubtless some are more -popularly famous than any in Brittany,--but none have played greater or -more important rles in the history and development of the France of -to-day than those of the two northwestern provinces. - -As has been said, each of the great provinces into which France -was divided previous to the Revolution possessed characteristics, -unmistakable even to-day. As to the topography of any single one, -the question is so vast in its detail that more than mention of -principal features can hardly be made in a book such as this. It is -then perhaps enough that some slight information concerning Brittany -and its principal places should be recorded here, and that the chief -configurations of its territory should be outlined. - -In addition to the principal old-time governments, there were the -ancient fiefs and local divisions, and these in many cases had names -often encountered in history and literature. Sometimes these were relics -of the still earlier day, of Gaul before the Roman conquest, their -ancient names having come down through the ages with but little change. - -If one would understand the economic or agricultural aspect of France of -to-day, he must know these principal provinces by name at least. - -When one is at Chartres, he must be aware that he is on the edge of the -great plateau of Beauce,--the granary of France,--and that as he crosses -into Brittany--perhaps through Perche, whence come the great-footed -Percherons--he enters the country of the ancient Veneti. Farther west -lies rock-bound Cornouaille, which in every characteristic resembles -Cornwall in Britain; Lon on the north, and finally Penthivre. - -The traveller remakes his history where he finds it. If he have a good -memory, this is not a difficult process, but, in any case, the French -guide-books, that is to say, those written in French, not the English or -Anglo-German variety, are sufficiently explicit as to dates and events -to set him on the right track. - -The armchair traveller usually desires something more. He likes -his plain stories garnished with a not too elaborate series of -embellishment, both as to text and illustration, giving him some -tangible reminder of things as they are in this enlightened twentieth -century, when tram-cars have taken the place of the diligence, and the -electric light has supplanted the tallow dip, and one may well say with -Sterne: "Since France is so near to England, why not go to France?" - -Here, in spots all but unknown even in Normandy and Brittany, the -traveller finds for himself monuments of a civilization gone before and -of a local history not yet completely erased, and as interesting as -those of any land made famous by antiquaries whose only claim to fame -rests upon their questionable ability in propounding new theories, of -which the chief merit is plausibility,--a process of history-making -sadly overdone of late in some parts. - -Both in Brittany and in Normandy there are innumerable glorious -architectural monuments of a past from which history may be builded -anew. Character counts for a great deal with cities as with individuals. -One can love Rouen as the capital of the ancient Normandy, or Nantes as -the capital of Lower Brittany, but he will no more have the same sort of -affection for Lyons or for Nice than he will have it for Manchester or -for Chicago. - -In the days of old, when each little town had its dignitaries, who may -have been counts or who may have been bishops, there was perhaps more -individuality than in the present age of monotonous prefects and mayors. -Nantes had its dukes, and Rouen had its prelates, and both of them, -even to-day, overshadow the civic dignitaries of their time; hence it is -the memory of the parts played by them which induces an association of -ideas prompting a desire to know personally the ground trodden by them. - -Normandy and Brittany are supposed to be the happy hunting-grounds of -cheap tourists and trippers, but, as a matter of fact, the former do -not go beyond Dieppe, or the latter beyond the Channel Islands,--with -possibly a day excursion to St. Malo,--so no discomfort need really -arise from the fear of their presence. Furthermore, the tourists from -across Channel that one does meet in Normandy or Brittany to-day are not -so outrageous in their dress and manners as the type pictured by _Punch_. - -It is a generally recognized fact that no special hardship is involved -in modern travel; caravansaries have for the most part given way to inns -which, if not exactly palatial, at least furnish creature comforts of a -quality quite as good or a great deal better than those to which most -travellers are accustomed at home. One may, and most likely will, miss -his or her particular brand of tea or tobacco, but will find substitutes -quite as excellent, and as far as the language question is concerned, -why, that lies at one's own door, unless one wants to go out as a -disciple of Esperanto, the modern successor of Volapuk, dead years ago -of sheer weight of consonants. - -This book, then, is meant to ensure better knowledge on the part of -the casual traveller of that delectable land which may be somewhat -vaguely described as old France, of which Brittany and Normandy are as -representative in their survivals as any other part. - - - - -CHAPTER II. - -THE PROVINCE AND THE PEOPLE - - -Brittany, the ancient province which underwent such a strife of warfare -and bloodshed in the struggle against invaders, and finally against -France, has become one of the most loyal of all the old-time divisions -making up the present republic. Her struggle against a curtailment of -her ancient rights and the attempts to conserve her liberties were -futile, and when the Duchess Anne took Louis XII. for her second -husband, Brittany became a part of the royal domain never to be -separated therefrom. - -It was Duguesclin who saved it for France, Duchess Anne who enriched it, -Chateaubriand, Lamennais, Laennec, and Renan who made it illustrious in -letters, and Duguay-Trouin, Jacques Cartier, Surcouf, Du Coudic, and -many besides who added to all this the spirit of adventure and romance -with which the chronicles of Brittany have ever abounded. - -Commonly it has been called a land of granite, an expression which has -been consecrated by the usage of many years, but it is also a land most -picturesque, melancholy, and dreamy, with immense horizons of sea and -sky, and a climate strictly temperate throughout all the year. - - "O landes, O forts, pierres sombres et hautes, - Bois qui couvrez nos champs, mers qui battez nos ctes, - Villages o les morts errent avec les ventes, - Bretagne! d'o te vient l'amour de tes enfants." - -Brittany in early days had a parliament the most important in France. -Armorica was its more ancient name, which in old Breton signified "near -to the sea," or "on the sea." - -From the beginning of the fifth century, for a matter of perhaps a -hundred years, the peninsula was known as Armorique, and its people -as Armoricans. After this time the name disappeared from general -use, and Brittany and Breton came. From the sixth century onward the -change became permanent, and such chroniclers as Gregory of Tours, for -instance, always referred to Britannia, Britannioe, Britanni, and -Britones, in writing of the peninsula and its people. - -When first peopled from Britain across the Channel, Brittany was the -most thinly populated part of all Gaul. Each wave of immigration, as -the Britons from across the water fled from the invading Saxons, added -to the population of the land, until ultimately it became as a hundred -Britons against ten Armoricans. At least, this is the way the French -historians and antiquaries put it, and so Armorique became Brittany, -and such is the origin of French Brittany, quite independent of the -etymology of the word Breton itself. - -The inhabitants even to-day--more than in any other of the ancient -provinces of France--have preserved the ancient nomenclature of the land -and its people, and everywhere one finds only Bretons whose home is -Brittany. - -Mercator, the map-maker, was more of a success than Mercator, the -historical chronicler. He said of the Bretons, in 1595, that they were -"for the most part avaricious and largely given to making distinctions -between glasses and tumblers." As a matter of record, this is not so -true of the Bretons as it is of the Normans, or of the Germans, or of -the Spaniards. Up to the time of Csar the name Armorica seems to have -been applied to all the coast of Northwestern France of to-day, with a -little strip running as far south as the mouth of the Garonne, but more -particularly it afterward designated the peninsula of Brittany as we -know it to-day. - -The region was early put under the guardianship of a chieftain, who -invariably, here as elsewhere in those days, took advantage of every -opportunity to advance his frontiers. - -This attempted aggrandizement was not so successful here as in other -parts, and by the fifth century Armorica had shrunk to the region lying -entirely between the Seine and the Loire. In the life of St. Germain of -Auxerre one reads: - - "Gens inter geminos notissima clauditur amnes - Armoricana prius veteri cognomine dicta est." - -Finally, at the close of the sixth century, Armorica merged itself in -Brittany, but the "Concile de Tours" makes a remarkable distinction -between the new settlers and those who had previously been known as -Romans. This distinction was also clearly made by St. Samson, who wrote -in the seventh century that Britannia was the name given to Armorica by -the exiled Britons who had fled from the Saxons and the Angles and had -there taken up their home. - -Before the Roman conquest there were five tribes in the country, named -by Csar as the Nannetes, the Veneti, the Osismii, the Curiosolit, -and the Rhedones,--names which, with but slight evolution, exist even -to-day. Things went on quietly under Roman control, but when Clovis -became the master of a part of Gaul he was obliged to treat with the -Armoricans. Finally the Britons from across the sea came "like a -torrent," and established themselves, changing the names of certain -regions to Cornouaille, Lon, Bro-Waroch, etc. Conquered in 799 by a -lieutenant of Charlemagne, the Bretons revolted again some little time -after, and, at the death of the great emperor, successfully withstood -the attacks of the formidable army which Louis the Amiable had sent -against them. For a quarter of a century Brittany now suffered attack -and pillage by the Normans, relieved only when Alain Barbe-Torte drove -the invaders from his territory. Previous to the Norman inroad, the -Bretons lived in petty tribes, of which each formed a "_plou_," a prefix -still often met with in Breton place-names. The chief of a _plou_ was -known as a _machtiern_. - -Up to this time no foreign customs had been introduced, but, after the -victories of Alain Barbe-Torte, tribal organization was succeeded by -that of the fief. - -By the tenth century feudalism was thoroughly established throughout -most of the ancient provinces of France, and the land was covered with -seigniories, great and small, the one more or less dependent upon the -other. Dukes, counts, and seigneurs, each in his own territory, played -the hereditary sovereign in little, and above them was the suzerain -power of which they were vassals. - -After the expulsion of the Normans, the ancient Breton kingdoms of -Domnone, Cornouaille, and Bro-Waroch disappeared, and the sovereign of -all Brittany bore the title of duke. - -Historians write of the nine ancient barons of Brittany, among whom -was divided the governmental control of the country, all of them being -virtually subject to the reigning duke. They were: - - I. Seigneur d'Avaugour or De Gollo. - II. Vicomte de Lon. - III. Seigneur de Fougres. - IV. Sire de Vitr. - V. Sire de Rohan. - VI. Seigneur de Chateaubriand. - VII. Seigneur de Retz. - VIII. Seigneur de la Roche-Bernard. - IX. Seigneur du Pont. - -These original baronies expanded into a round hundred by the fifteenth -century, and the list of them contains the ancestral names of the Breton -nobility. - -Henry II. of England dealt severely with Brittany, but his son Geoffrey -married Constance, the daughter of Duke Conan IV., and this made the -condition of the province more tolerable. - -The first step toward the union of Brittany with the kingdom of France -came when--through the intrigues of Philip Augustus--the daughter of -Geoffrey Plantagenet married Pierre Mauclerc, Count of Dreux, and a -prince of the blood royal of France. Joan of Penthivre also married the -Count of Blois, another lieutenant of the King of France. - -[Illustration: <u>_Device of Anne of Brittany_</u>] - -The war of succession in Brittany between the ducal houses of Blois and -Montfort was, up to the fourteenth century, the principal event of the -province's early history. The Montforts achieved final victory at Auray -in 1364. Upon the death of Francis II., his daughter Anne, the chief -figure in all Breton history, so far as existing memorials of her life -are concerned, became duchess. - -[Illustration: <u>_Anne of Brittany_</u>] - -In 1491, she married Charles VIII. of France, and eight years later his -successor, Louis XII. The daughter of this last marriage, the Princess -Claude of France, married the Duke of Angoulme, afterward Francis -the First, and the fortunes of Brittany and France were thenceforth -indissolubly allied, for, upon becoming Queen Claude of France, the -inheritor of Brittany ceded the province to her royal spouse and his -descendants in perpetuity. Queen Claude died in 1524, which event for -ever assured France of this province,--the most beautiful gem in the -royal crown. The union of Brittany and France was celebrated with much -pomp in 1532. - -The ancient county or duchy of Bretagne was bordered on the east by -Anjou and Maine, on the west by the Atlantic, on the north by the -British Channel and Normandy, and on the south by Poitou. The province -had two territorial divisions, Upper and Lower, and Rennes was the -parliamentary capital. - -Upper Brittany comprised the five episcopal dioceses of Dol, Nantes, -Rennes, Saint-Brieuc, and St. Malo, and Lower Brittany counted four -similar divisions, Quimper, St. Pol de Lon, Trguier, and Vannes. Thus -the political divisions of a former day corresponded exactly with those -of the Church. - -To-day Brittany is divided into five departments: Ctes du Nord, -Finistre, Ille-et-Vilaine, Loire-Infrieure, and the Morbihan. - -The administrative government of Brittany, or rather of its present-day -departments, like that of the rest of France, radiates from the -capital of the department, which is the residence of the prefect, the -tax-collector, the bishop, and, in general, of all heads of departments. -The chief town is also the seat of the General Council and (with few -exceptions) of the assize court. - -The most ancient codified law of Brittany was known as the little book, -but the manuscript copy has been lost. The most ancient work which -recites the "customs" of this great province dates only from 1330. This -curious document is known as the "Very Ancient Law," and contains 336 -articles. "The Ancient Law" was compiled and published at Nantes in -1549, and contains 779 articles. - -Brittany has been, and perhaps ever will be, considered by Frenchmen -an alien land, where, in its great plains and mountainous regions, in -the valleys of its bubbling rivers, and on its rock-bound shores, the -people, one and all, "speak a tongue so ancient and so strange that he -who hears it dreams of a vanished race." - -Yes, Brittany is a land of menhirs, of legends and superstitions, but -all this but makes a roundabout journey the more enjoyable, and one -must really cross and recross it to its uttermost confines in order to -realize its great variation of manners and customs, to say nothing of -speech, for, even though the Breton tongue is dying out as a universal -language, one still buys his post-card with a queer legend on its face, -which looks like Dutch at first glance, but really is Breton. - -In Madame de Svign's time the ladies of Lower Brittany were famous -for their beauty. In "Letter XLIV.," written to her daughter, Madame de -Svign said: "Many beauties of Lower Brittany were present at the great -ball, the brilliant Mademoiselle de L----, a fine girl who dances very -well." - -[Illustration: <u>_Breton Post-card_</u>] - -Things do not seem to have changed greatly to-day, and, although Madame -de Svign wrote of court beauties only, in the Lower Province one -frequently meets such beauty of face as one does not see everywhere in -France. It must be owned that the figures, if not exactly found wanting, -are often too ample. The sternness of the land, like the bleakness of -Holland, has, apparently, added no end of grace to the features of the -women, whatever may have been its hardening effect upon the men. - -In Cornouaille, Latin _Cornu-Galli_, one finds almost the same name -and the same derivation as in English Cornwall, and the topographical -aspect is much the same in both instances. "The people of Cornuaille are -faithful to tradition, and above all others merit the name of Bretons," -says J. Guillon. - -The Province of Lon forms the northern part of the Department of -Finistre. The name was a development from Pagus Legionensis, a large -military colony having been quartered there in Roman times. - -In the south the ancient Breton Province of Bro-Waroch became the -county of Vannes, the counts being in reality dependents of the Duke -of Brittany; their people spoke, and retain even to-day, a distinct -dialect, greatly varying from that of the rest of Brittany. - -In the earliest times, both Nantes and Rennes were the seat of important -administrative governments, but the Counts of Nantes ceded their fiefs -to the Bretons in the eleventh century. Chief of these were the fiefs of -the Baron of Retz, the Seigneur de Clisson, who defended the southern -frontier against Poitou, and the Baron of Ancenis, who was the bulwark -between Brittany and Anjou. - -In the north, the ancient Breton kingdom of Domnone was, in the twelfth -century, divided into two counties, that of Penthivre and Trguier. - -It was Duke Geoffrey who introduced feudalism of the Anglo-Norman and -French variety. In earlier times, when a nobleman died, his children -divided his lands and goods in equal parts among them, but in Normandy -and France the estate went to the eldest of the line. - -It was only in the twelfth century that the Bretons went outside their -own domain. Previously, they were decidedly an untravelled race, but -under Philip the Fair Paris came to know Breton well, though chiefly -through the poorer classes. - -They went to the schools and seminaries of Orleans to become clerics; -sold their cattle and horses in the markets of Paris, and their wheat -in Maine and Anjou, and their feudal lords, it is perhaps needless to -say, bought their dress in the capital of fashion, and their wines in -Gascony. From this time, Brittany may be said to have been opened to the -world. - -Not always were the Bretons a peaceful, law-abiding race, at least -they did not always appear in such a light to their contemporaries. -According to Bouchart, Duke Francis II. received a letter wherein his -brother-in-law, the Count of Foix, said: "Monseigneur, I declare to -God, I would rather be the ruler of a million of wild boars than of such -a people as are your Bretons." - -In 1460, Francis II. founded the University of Nantes, thus doing away -with the necessity of the young Breton's going to Paris, Orleans, or -Angers for his education. - -Printing was discovered in Germany, and all in good time it appeared -in Brittany, at Lannion, and at Trguier. There were establishments -devoted to the art even before they existed in such important places as -Lyons or Montpellier. One of the first books printed in Brittany was a -French-Breton dictionary, published in 1499, and known as the Catholicon -of Jean Lagadeuc. - -By this time, a remarkable form of government, unique in all the -world, was established in Brittany. In some respects it was modelled -on the English Parliament, but in no way resembled that of the French -legislative body. - -The Estates met each year at Rennes, at Vannes, at Nantes, at Redon, at -Vitr, or at Dinan, and at last, under Francis II., Parliament came to -be a fixture at Rennes. - -Even after the union of Brittany with France, the ancient rights, -privileges, and liberties were assured to the old province until the -Revolution. These sittings of the Estates at Rennes were sumptuous -affairs, accompanied by a round of feasting and dancing at which -appeared all the aristocracy who could. - -Madame de Svign wrote to her daughter of one of the grand affairs as -follows: - -"The good cheer is excessive; the roasts are brought on entire, and the -pyramids of fruit are so huge as to make it necessary to take down the -doors for their entrance.... After dinner, MM. de Locmaria and Cotlegon -danced with two Breton girls, taking some amazing steps.... Play is -continuous, balls endless, and thrice a week there are comedies." - -The relations between the nobility and peasantry in seventeenth-century -Brittany were perhaps closer and more affectionate than in any other -part of France. The noblemen frequently visited the peasants on their -farms, and on Sunday the peasants danced in the courts of the castles -and manor-houses. - -"Virtually, under the old system, Brittany was peopled by rural -nobility," says Cambry, and indeed this must have been so, for within a -small radius of Plougasnou were more than two hundred noblemen's houses, -"so poor," says the chronicler, "that their inhabitants might well be -classed with the labourers themselves." - -Brittany's part in the Revolution was equivocal. The Republicans really -had beaten the Royalists, but they had also aided the Girondins, and at -Paris the Girondins were as much hated as the Royalists themselves. The -Convention sent its representatives into the province, not to thank the -Bretons for their help in the great struggle, but with the idea of still -further arousing the passions of the people. - -Among these representatives were Geurmer, Prieur de la Marne, -Jean-Bon-St.-Andre, and the rascally and heartless Carrier, who drowned -his hundreds at Nantes, and guillotined twenty-six Bretons in one day at -Brest. - -The Breton feeling and sympathy was in the main with the Republicans, -though manifestly the majority had no sympathy with the rule of -the Terrorists. It is curious to note, however, the change in the -nomenclature of places in the endeavour to eliminate the religious -and aristocratic prefixes and suffixes with which many of the Breton -place-names were endowed. - -St. Cast became Havre-Cast. - -St. Fiacre became Fiacre-les-Bois. - -St. Gildas became Gildas du Chaneau. - -St. Gilles-les-Bois became Bellevue. - -St. Jacut-de-la-Mer became Isle Jacut and Port Jacut. - -Chateaulin became Cit sur An. - -Pont l'Abb became Pont Marat. - -Quimper became Montagne sur Odet. - -St. Martin des Champs became Unit des Champs. - -St. Pol de Lon became Port Pol. - -Belle Ile en Mer became Ile de l'Unit. - -Chteau Fouquet became Maison-des-Sans-Culottes. - -Isle aux Moins became Isle du Morbihan. - -Roche-Bernard became La Roche Sauveur. - -Rochefort en Terre became Roche des Trois. - -St. Gildas de Rhuis became Ablard. - -St. Briac became Port Briac. - -St. Lunaire became Port Lunaire. - -St. Malo became Port Malo. - -St. Servan became Port Solidor. - -With the incoming of the Empire, most of these names reverted to their -early form. - -In our day, while many of the old provinces of France have suffered--if -they really do "suffer"--from a decreasing population, Brittany has -augmented her numbers continually. It is a well-worn saying among the -political economists of France that the "fine and healthy race of -Bretons is one of the greatest reserves and hopes of the republic." -Three-quarters of all those who man French ships come from the Breton -peninsula. - -Hamerton has said that no race, more than the English, had so strong -a tendency to form attachments for places outside their native land. -There may be many reasons for this, and assuredly the subject is too -vast and varied to be more than hinted at here. Brittany, at any rate, -has proved, in and out of season, a haven, as safe as a home-port, -for the Briton and his family, when they would not wander too far. -Possibly it comes after Switzerland, though France as a whole, "the most -architectural country in Europe," has been sadly neglected, for, as has -been said before, no Englishman ever loved France as Browning loved -Italy. - -The native love of the Frenchman for the land of his birth is, to him, -above all else. It is almost incomprehensible to an outsider; it is -something more than mere patriotism; it is the love of an artist for his -picture, as Balzac said of his love of Touraine. This sentiment goes -deep. After the province comes the immediate environment of his village, -and then the village. "_Rien n'est plus beau que mon village, en verit -je vous le dis._" Thus has written and spoken many a great Frenchman. - -Nowhere in the known world is provincialism so deep and profound a trait -as in France; and the Breton is always a Breton, contemptuous of the -Norman, God-fearing, and peaceful toward all. There is throughout France -always an intense provincial rivalry, though it seldom rises to hatred -or even to jealousy. - -Probably there is no great amount of truth in the following quatrain, -evidently composed by a resident of Finistre, and there first heard -by the writer of this book, but it reflects those little rivalries and -ambitions which have appeared in the daily life-struggle among the -inhabitants of other nations since the world began: - - "Voleur comme un Lonard, - Traitre comme un Trgarrais, - Sot comme un Vannetais, - Brutal comme un Cornouaillais." - -Sometimes the love of one's own country may be carried to an extreme. -We read that for long years, and until recently, the inhabitants of -Trlaze positively refused to assimilate with outside conditions of life -to the least degree, and finding a Breton of this little zone or islet -who spoke French was as improbable as to find one who spoke English. -At St. Brieuc there is a special quarter where the Breton-speaking -folk live to the number of two thousand, and this out of a population -of only twenty-two thousand, while at Nantes the Bretons number ten -thousand. At Angers there is a large and apparently growing Breton -colony; likewise at Havre, in Normandy, where they have a special chapel -in which the priest preaches in the Breton tongue. At Paris, too, there -are various Breton colonies, and the Church of St. Paul and St. Louis, -in St. Anthony's Street, has a Breton priest. It is the same with the -church of Vaugirard. At Havre there are something over three thousand -Breton-speaking persons, and in Paris seven thousand. - -Perhaps Brittany has produced fewer great painters and sculptors than -any other section of France, but all Bretons are artists in no very -small way, as witness their wonderfully picturesque dress and their -charmingly stage-managed ftes and ceremonies. - -The pioneer painter of Breton subjects was doubtless Adolph Leleux, who, -as one of the romantic school in Paris, found in this province what many -another of his contemporaries was seeking for elsewhere, and discovered -Brittany, as far as making it a popular artists' sketching-ground is -concerned. His first paintings of this region were exhibited in the -Salons of 1838-39-40, and Paris raved over them. His peasant folk, -with their embroidered waistcoats and broad-brimmed hats, had the very -atmosphere of Brittany. - -[Illustration: <u>_St. Brieuc_</u>] - -Leleux's success was the signal for a throng of artists to follow in his -footsteps, and to-day their number is countless, and the very names of -even the most famous would form too long a list to catalogue here. - -Among Leleux's most celebrated canvases were "La Karolle, Danse -Bretonne" 1843; "Les Faneuses," 1846; "Le Retour du March," 1847; -"Cour de Cabaret," 1857; "Jour de Fte en Basse Bretagne," 1865; and -successively the "Foire Bretonne," "Les Braconniers," "Le Pcheur de -Homards," "Plerinage Breton," and "Le Cri du Chouan." - -In all these works one finds the true Brittany of Rosporden and -Penmarc'h. - -Fortin's "Cahute de Mendicant dans le Finistre" (1857), "La -Bndicit," and "La Chaumire du Morbihan" follow Leleux as a good -second, then Trayers with "March Breton and "Marchande de Crepes -Quimperl." - -Among other noted pictures are Darjours's "Palaudiers du Bourg de Batz" -and the "Fagotiers Bretons"; Guerard's "Jour de Fte" and "Messe du -Matin, Ille-et-Vilaine"; Fischer's "Chemin du Pardon" and "Auberge -Scar," and Roussin's "Famille Bretonne." - -Gustave Brion, with his "Bretons la Porte d'une Eglise"; Yan -Dargent, with his "Sauvetage Guisseny," and Jules Noel, with his -"Danse Bretonne," and various landscapes of Brest, Quimper, Auray, and -Douarnenez, are on the list of names of those who made the Breton region -famous in the mid-nineteenth century. - -Since then, the followers in their footsteps have been almost too many -to number. - -Most folk call to mind with very slight appreciable effort such -masterpieces as Jules Breton's "Retraite aux Flambeaux" and "Plantation -d'un Calvaire," now in the museum at Lille, and Charles Cottet's -"Bateaux de Pche Camaret" in the Luxembourg gallery. - -In addition, there have been innumerable "great pictures" painted by -English and American artists whose very names form too long a list to -catalogue here. - - - - -CHAPTER III. - -THE TOPOGRAPHY OF THE PROVINCE - - -One reason for the diversified interests of France and the varying -methods of life is the vastly diversified topographical features. "Great -plains as large as three Irelands," said Hamerton, "and yet mountainous -districts quite as large as the whole of the British Isles." This -should have served to disabuse British travellers of some false notions -regarding France, but many of them still hold to the views which are to -be gained by railway journeys across the lowlands of Gaul, forgetting -for a moment that well within the confines of France there are fifty -mountain peaks above eleven thousand feet high, and that majestic Mont -Blanc itself rises on French soil. - -Then there are the two thousand miles of seacoast which introduce -another element of the population, from the dark-skinned sailor of the -Mediterranean to his brother of Finistre, who is brought into the world -chiefly to recruit the French navy. The Norman sailorman is a hardy, -intrepid navigator even to-day, but he is to a great extent of the -longshore and fishing-boat variety, whereas the true Breton is a sailor -through and through. - -Before now, Brittany has been compared, disparagingly, with Provence, -and with some justness perhaps. Provence, however, does not persistently -broil under a "fierce, dry heat," and Brittany is not by any means -"a wind and wave swept land, where nothing nourishes itself or grows -fat." Potatoes are even fattening, and Brittany, in all conscience, -grows enough of that useful commodity to feed all France. In three -things Brittany and Provence more than a little resemble one another. -Both preserve, to a very remarkable extent, their ancient language and -their old-time manners and customs, though in all three they are quite -different one from the other. - -The general topographical aspect of the coast of the whole Breton -peninsula is stern and wild, whether one encounters the dreary waste of -sand, in the midst of which sit Mont St. Michel and Tombelaine, or the -cliffs away to the westward, or the bleak and barren Belle Ile en Mer, -where Fouquet built his famous stronghold. - -On the "Emerald Coast" the sea and sky are often of a true Neapolitan -clearness, and, indeed, the climate of the whole peninsula is, even in -winter, as mild as many a popularly fashionable Mediterranean resort; -but it is not always so bright and sunny; there is a deal of rain in -winter, and often a penetrating dampness, whose only brother is the -genuine Scotch mist. - -Still, in all but four months of the year, there is a brilliancy and -softness about the climate of the coast of Brittany which encourages -violets, roses, onions, and potatoes to come to maturity at so early a -date that the Londoner has ceased to raise the question as to whether or -not they may be "best English," when he sees these products laid out of -an early morning in his beloved Covent Garden. - -To know a country or its people at its best, one should really take one -of its great men for a guide. Hear then what Chateaubriand says of "La -Terre Bretonne": - -"This long peninsula, of a wild and savage aspect, has much of -singularity about it: its narrow valleys, its non-navigable rivers -bathing the feet of its ruined castle-keeps and chteaux, its old -abbeys, its thatch-covered houses, and its cattle herded together in its -arid pastures. One valley is separated from another by forests of oak, -with holly bushes as large as beech-trees, and druidical stones around -which sea-birds are for ever circling. - -"Of an imagination lively, but nevertheless melancholic, of a humour as -flexible as their character is obstinate, the Bretons are distinguished -for their piety, and none the less for their bravery, their fidelity, -their spirit of independence, and their patriotism. Proud and -susceptible, but without ambition and little suited to the affairs of -court or state, they care nothing for honours or for rank." - -The picture is not very vivid, but it is wonderfully true, and of this -one meets continual evidence in a journey around the coast, from the Bay -of St. Michel in the north to Belle Ile or Nantes in the south. - -No part of France has a physiognomy more original than Bretagne; none -has been marked by nature in a more emphatic manner than this ancient -home of the Celts. - - "...la terre du granit - Et de l'immense et morne lande." - -It is indeed a land of contrasts, where ancient, mystical, and weird -menhirs and dolmens, relics of prehistoric times, are mingled with -medival monuments and modern forts, arsenals, and viaducts. - -The country is by no means unlovely, but it partakes of none of the -conventional beauties of other parts. It is not sterile, though it is -stern; it is not very fertile, but its product is ample; and it stands -as the most westerly point of the mainland of Northern Europe, open to -all the wild buffetings of the tempestuous Atlantic which has sculptured -its coast-line into such fantastic forms that a shipwrecked mariner must -think himself fallen upon the most stern and rock-bound of coasts. - -The general aspect of Brittany is green and gray. It is, as the Breton -himself says, an austere heath,--the country-side half-effaced in -demi-tints, and the sea boisterous and wicked. - -This, however, is only one of its moods; to-morrow it may be as -brilliantly sunlit as the Bay of Naples, and may have a sea and sky of -gold and turquoise. But this mood passes quickly, and again it settles -down to a misty softness and mildness of climate that has given its name -to one of the five great climatic divisions of France, the Armorican. - -The sunsets of Brittany are always glorious. Nowhere on the rim of great -ocean's mirror are there more splendid and grandly scenic effects to be -observed. An exceedingly realistic Frenchman once described a sunset in -the Bay of Douarnenez as a "bloody apotheosis," the real aspect of which -is readily inferred. Of this Breton Cornouaille, Branger sang: - - "Faisons honte aux hirondelles. - Tu croiras, sur nos essieux, - Que la terre a pris des ailes - Pour passer devant les yeux." - -The country inland is as original as the coast, and both the peasant on -shore and the sailor on the sea are Breton to the core. Never has -Brittany been called charming or gracious, never lovely or sweet, but -always cold, though not so in climate, which is always terrible and -austere. - -But, for all that, it is delightful, and when one has tired of the -stupid gaieties of Switzerland or the Rhine, let him rough it a bit -among the low hills and valleys of the Ctes du Nord, or the rocky -promontories and inlets of Finistre, or, on the south coast between -Quimper and Nantes, on one of those little tidal rivers such as the -Aven, and let him learn for himself that there is something new under -the sun, even on well-trodden ground. - -Truth to tell, Brittany is not nearly so well known to English-speaking -folk as it should be. There is a fringe of semi-invalid, semi-society -loiterers centred around St. Malo, and enlivened in the summer months by -the advent of a little world of literary and artistic folk from Paris. -Then there is an artist colony or two in Lower Brittany, where the -visitors work hard, dress uncouthly, and live cheaply for four or five -months of the year. At Nantes there is the overflow of tourists of -convention from the chteaux district of Touraine, and up and down the -length and breadth of Brittany, from Mont St. Michel to St. Nazaire, and -from Dol to Brest, are to be found occasional wanderers on bicycles or -in motor-cars. - -The great mass, however, is herded around the conventionally "gay" five -o'clock resorts of Dinard, Param, and St. Malo, and in by far the -greater area of the province the seeker for pleasure and true -edification is far more rare than is popularly supposed. The occasional -rather wretched hotel has hitherto kept the fastidious away, and the -terrific hobnails of the Breton wooden shoe have all but driven -travellers in motor-cars and bicycle riders to despair. Both these -deterrents, real and fancied, are disappearing, however. The hygienic -bedrooms of the Touring Club are found here and there, and the peasants, -or, at least, some of them, now wear a sort of cast-iron sole -apparently clamped or riveted to the wooden shoe; at least there are no -big, pointed, mushroom-headed tacks to drop out, point uppermost, in dry -weather. - -The topographical aspect of Brittany is largely due to the two great -zones of granite formation which come together at their western -extremities,--the mountains of Alenon and the jutting rocks that come -to the surface from Poitou northward. - -In general, the whole aspect of Brittany echoes the words of Brizeaux, -the Lorient poet: - - "O terre de granit, recouverte de chnes." - -One would hardly call Brittany mountainous, but its elevations are -notable, nevertheless, in that they rise, for the most part, abruptly -from the dead level of the ocean. Inland, the topography takes on more -of the nature of a rolling moorland, with granite cropping out here and -there in the elevations. The following quatrain describes it exactly: - - " MON PAYS - - "O ma chre Bretagne, - Que j'aime tes halliers, - Tes verdoyants graniers, - Et ta noire montagne." - --_Corbinais._ - -The greatest altitudes in Brittany are: The Sillon de Bretagne (near -Savenay), eighty-nine metres; La Motte (Montagnes Noires between Quimper -and Brest), 289 metres; Menez Hom (Montagnes Noires), 330 metres; Mont -St. Michel (Montagne d'Arre), 391 metres. - -The Breton rivers are not great rivers as the waterways of the world go, -although they are important indeed to the country which they irrigate. -Chief among them are the Vilaine, navigable to Rennes, the Rance, the -Odet, the Aulne, and of course the Loire, which flanks the southern -boundary of the old province nearly up to its juncture with the Mayenne, -and continues its navigable length in Brittany up to, and a trifle -beyond, the town of the same name. The Couesnon, flowing northward -into the vast Bay of Mont St. Michel, forms the northeastern boundary -separating Brittany from Normandy. - -The great length of irregular coast-line accounts for the continuation -of the generally severe and stern aspect of the interior, the sombre -granite cliffs jutting far out into the open, half-enclosing great bays -and forming promontories and headlands which are characteristically -Breton and nothing else. They might resemble those of the Greek -mainland and archipelago were they but environed with the life and -languor of the South, but, as it is, they are Breton through and -through, and their people have all their hopes and sympathies wrapped up -in the occupations of a colder clime. - -The old territorial limits of the Province of Brittany embraced a small -tract south of the Loire, known as _Le Rais_, or the Retz country. - -Here is Clisson, the feudal castle and estate so constantly recurring in -French history. Pornic, Paimboeuf, and the Lac de Grande Lieu also lie -southward of the Loire in this old appanage, but, in the main, Breton -history was played on the Armorican peninsula north of the Loire. - -The height of the tides on the Breton coast varies considerably. All -this is caused by the flow of the North Sea and the Straits of Calais -meeting the current coming directly from the Atlantic, so that in some -instances the flood-tide rises to a height of from fifty to sixty feet -above "dead water," as the French call it. - -The immense Bay of Mont St. Michel, at low water, is a stretch of bare -sand more than three hundred square kilometres in extent, but it is -completely covered and converted into a great tranquil gulf by the -rising tide. - -[Illustration: <u>_Croisic_</u>] - -At Croisic, at the mouth of the Loire, there is a 5.16 metre rise of -the tide, which around the Breton coast-line varies as follows: - - Port Navalo, Morbihan 4.72 - Lorient 4.60 - Concarneau 4.68 - Douarnenez 6.16 - Brest 6.42 - Ouessant 6.38 - Roscoff 8.22 - Ile Brehat 9.90 - St. Malo 11.44 - Iles Chausey 11.74 - Mont St. Michel 12.30 - -The aspect of the region round about Dol, in the north, is that of a -little Holland, with its flats and windmills and its cultivated ground -protected from the sea by a rim of downs and dikes. It is not so very -great an expanse that follows these outlines, but the likeness is one -to be remarked. To the westward lie the jutting rocks and capes, beyond -which are the isolated islands of Ouessant and its fellows, and all -around the coast extend landlocked bays and harbours sheltering the -great fishing ports of Douarnenez and Concarneau and the commercial -ports of St. Malo, Morlaix, Brest, Lorient, and Vannes. - -From a military and strategic point of view the whole northwest coast of -France, from the mouth of the Loire through Brittany and Normandy, is -exceedingly well protected, with a great port and base of supplies both -at Brest in Brittany and at Cherbourg in Normandy. - -Forts Minden, Ville Martin, and Penthivre, Port Louis, Lorient, and -Brest, and the Forts du Pilier, Le Palais, Lacroix, Cezon, and Chteau -du Taureau, with St. Malo and Fort des Rimains, protect the whole Breton -seashore in practically unassailable fashion, though there are still the -sea fights at Ouessant, in 1778 and 1794, and The Hogue in 1692, to say -nothing of the land engagements at Quiberon in 1795, to remember. - -[Illustration: Map of Bretagne] - - - - -CHAPTER IV. - -TRAVEL ROUTES IN BRITTANY - - -Tourists are commonly supposed to belong to the pleasure-seeking -or invalid class, and so they mostly do, still one may travel for -instruction (which is pleasure, also) and be mindful of the conditions -of life around him, and profit accordingly, unless he absolutely demands -the life of the boulevards of Paris or the homoeopathic excitements of -the little horses in some popular watering-place. - -It is undoubtedly true that most tourists are of limited interests, -which may be pleasure, or art, or architecture, or worshipping at -historical shrines. All this is well enough in its way, but if one could -combine a modicum of each he would profit much more largely, to say -nothing of being amused and instructed, too. - -The time has long since passed when travellers reviled Brittany as -a province where "husbandry was no further advanced than among the -Hurons," as a writer of the eighteenth century said within twenty-four -hours after he had crossed the boundary between Normandy and Brittany, -at Pontorson, where the causeway road branches off to Mont St. Michel. -Evidences of husbandry are still very much to the fore, but it is more -advanced in the interior, at least; on the coast the harvest of the sea -takes its place. - -Brittany, in husbandry, may not be so advanced as some other parts. -There are no such elaborate operations going on here as in the regions -where high farming is practised--in Beauce, or Normandy, or Anjou. -Neither are such numbers of mechanical farming-tools in operation, -but in spite of all this there is a very considerable and prosperous -industry born of the soil of which most strangers to Brittany, and some -who have travelled there, are entirely ignorant. All along the great -highways crossing and recrossing Brittany one sees the little roadside -farms with their attendant small flocks of live stock, sheep, cattle, -geese, ducks, and fowls, which point, at any rate, to the fact that the -peasant need not be as ill-nourished as he is generally supposed to be; -and really he is not. - -The charm of journeying by road in France is indescribable, perhaps, -to its fullest degree. Natural beauties count for much, but in a land -peopled with historic castles, churches, and abbeys, as Normandy and -Brittany are, it is found doubly enjoyable even though one professes no -expert architectural knowledge, or no profound aptitude for historical -research. These, however, are but side-lights, which make the actual -pilgrimage among such shrines greatly to be cherished among one's -personal experiences. - -It is the whole which pleases, and not fragmentary and piecemeal -beauties and charms; and never was this more true than of a well-beloved -land, be it one's own or an alien shore. - -Brittany and its travel routes, whether by road or rail, offer as full a -measure of all these attractions as it is possible for one to conceive. - -The great highways of Brittany have not the same favour with travellers -by road as those of other parts of France. They are equally important -and equally well cared for by a paternal government, but their inclines -are steeper--sometimes suicidal--and certainly more frequent than -elsewhere in France, and distances stretch out interminably. - -[Illustration: <u>_The Main Roads of Brittany_</u>] - -The great national road which stretches from Paris to Brest covers a -distance nearly equal to that from Paris to Turin, or from Paris to -Amsterdam. - -There are, however, in Brittany no long stretches of unrolled road -surface, and for the most part the roadways are as smooth as can -anywhere be found. Were it not for the eternal switchbacks, and the -aforementioned hobnail, with its pointed end usually upmost, Brittany -would be a far more popular touring-ground for the automobile than it -is. The hooded cart of Normandy and Brittany, such as one meets going -to and from the market-towns, is another real dread to the man in the -motor-car. - -It is not that the occupant is unwilling to hear one's horn, but it is -almost impossible that he should against a head-wind, until you are -close upon him. It is useless to point to your ear as you whisk by and -ask him--in a shout--if he is deaf, or to say: "Well, now, you sleep -well." He will pay little or no attention to you, and anyway, most -likely, he was _not_ asleep, as are so many of his fellows that one -meets on English roads. - -In Brittany the traveller by road often meets an obstruction in the -shape of a flock of sheep slowly making its way toward one, or in the -opposite direction, or even a flock of ducks or geese, which are even -more dreadful. Sheep are stupid, hens and chickens are silly, but geese -are arrogant and obstinate. - -It is very disconcerting, of course, for the motor-car driver at full -speed to have to draw in his ten, or twenty, or thirty horses in order -to avoid decapitating a whole goose and gosling family, but it lends a -charm to the travel, which a badly paved stretch of roadway--in Picardy, -for instance--wholly lacks. - -Here when one does actually run into a flock of geese, such as one sees -on the high-coloured posters advertising a certain make of car, and in -the comic journals, it is one of the real humours of life. The amount of -curiosity an old goose or gander can show in a death-dealing motor-car -as it rushes by, and the chances they take of sudden death, are enough -to give an ordinarily careful driver innumerable heart-leaps. - -This is about all the trouble one is likely to meet on Breton roads, -except, of course, the always present grazing cows, which here, though -they are always attended,--generally by a small boy or girl, who often -is not able to keep them in line as one would wish,--are allowed to -stray freely, and are not tethered as they are throughout Normandy. - -It is not for the aforesaid reasons alone that motor-cars are scarce -in Brittany, for, after all, they form but minor troubles as compared -with the eccentricities of the machinery itself, and the tourist in -a motor-car is usually prepared for most things which are likely to -happen to him _en route_. So really if one likes a hilly country--and -it is not without its charms--Brittany offers much in the way of varied -and natural beauties that certain other provinces lack. Touraine, for -instance, delightful as it is as a touring-ground, is as proverbially -flat as a billiard-table. - -There are, in the first place, not nearly so many motor-cars owned in -Brittany, and accordingly there are astonishingly few shelters and -repairers. Apparently, the Breton does not care for the new-fangled -means of locomotion, not recognizing, perhaps, that it has come to stay. -Still less does the Breton peasant's brother, the Breton sailor or -fisherman, care for the motor-boat, which ought to have a great vogue in -such great inland seas as Morbihan, the Bay of Douarnenez, or the Goulet -or the roadstead of Brest. - -The sailor of Brest or Lorient and the little fishing villages of the -west will tell you: "I like my boat better, with my sail and my arms -for motors." - -Often these great stretches of Breton roadway show an aspect of human -nature that is probably the same the world over; a peasant man or woman -is leading a cow,--always on the wrong side of the road, of course,--or -a sleepy farm-hand is drawing his cart to or from market,--still on the -wrong side of the road,--when the whirr and snort of a motor-car does -something more than awaken echoes. - -The cows entangle themselves in their leading ropes, and the usually -placid horses bolt with the cart into the ditch. The native, of course, -reviles the car and its occupants, not because he hates them,--for they -are one of the mainstays of the inns of the countryside,--but merely to -display that untamable spirit of independence, which every mother's son -of a French peasant has developed to a high degree. - -In Brittany, as in most other lands,--in summer,--the traveller by road -gathers in a fine crop of wingy, stingy things, which project themselves -into one's eyes with a formidable force when one goes at them with a -swift-moving car. - -Occasionally one thinks he has come upon a vast convention of them, -so many are they in numbers and variety--flies, wasps, bees, and what -not, with a peculiar Gallic species of fly so infinitesimal that one -only stops to clear them out when he feels that his eyes are so full -of them that they may be uncomfortably crowded. The real or fabled -Jersey mosquito would go out of business with his Breton brother as a -competitor. Truly this is a new terror, and one that certainly was not -apparent, to anything like the present extent, before the advent of the -motor-car. - -One comes upon a dull week in Brittany often, even in summer, when the -sky remains overcast, and great clouds roll up from out of the western -ocean. Often it is not cold, but it is bitterly damp and sticky, even -though it does not rain, but the native does not seem to mind it, at -least, he never complains. - -The only objector ever met with by the writer was a Gascon who kept -a pharmacy at Quimper. He discussed it as follows: "Hideous country! -The wind blows here every day in the year, and the rest of the time it -rains," he continued, enigmatically. "Yes, that abominable wind always -plays the same trick on me! What a country!" He was probably thinking of -his own bright and sunny home in the South, where seldom, if ever, are -conditions other than brilliantly tranquil. - -There are three great highroads which cross Brittany from east to west, -the main road of Brittany from Alenon in Normandy, through Mayenne, -Fougres, Dol, Dinan, Guingamp, and Morlaix to Brest; the southern road -from Paris via Le Mans, or even following the Loire valley down from -Orleans to Nantes, and thence westward via Vannes, Lorient, and Quimper -to Brest, thus making the complete circuit of the Breton coast. A midway -course lies in almost a direct line east and west through Laval, Vitr, -Rennes, Plormel, Pontivy, and Carhaix. - -These three highroads cover completely the itinerary of Brittany, in so -far as they follow the north and south coast and the country-side lying -between. - -Cross country, from the Bay of Mont St. Michel to the mouth of the -Loire, one "route nationale" lies directly through Rennes, and another -ends at Vannes, in Morbihan. - -These cover practically all the regular lines of traffic, and include -all the chief points of historical and topographical instances. - -[Illustration: <u>_Travel Routes in Brittany_</u>] - -Distances of themselves are not great in Brittany. From St. Malo to -Nantes is but 180 kilometres; from Laval to Brest but 337 kilometres; -and from Nantes to Brest is but 324 kilometres. - -In these days of motor-cars and even bicycles, these distances are not -great, and so long as they are not taken at a rush,--which forbids -enjoyment,--they form no drawback to the pleasures of travel by road in -Brittany. One has only to add two or three hundred kilometres more, in -order to reach the starting-points of Nantes, Laval, or St. Malo from -Paris. Then the tour may seem a lengthy one; but even this is nothing -to find fault with; the intermediate country is in itself delightful, -whether one journeys down through the Orleanais, Touraine, and Anjou, or -westward through the heart of Normandy. - -The railways in Brittany, except on some of the cross-country routes, -are developed to a high stage of efficiency. The great express lines of -the Western Railroad to St. Malo and to Brest run due west from Paris, -straight almost as the crow flies. Again, one may make his entry via -Nantes and the Loire valley through Touraine and Anjou by the Orleans -line, and have the satisfaction of setting out from Paris by the world's -finest and most modern railway station, that wonderfully convenient and -artistic structure on the Quay of Orsay. - -Rennes is the great railway centre of Brittany, and accordingly all -roads lead to Rennes. Here one may make up his itinerary at a price -which will include nearly every place west of that point for a matter -of _frcs._ 65 for first-class, and _frcs._ 50, second-class, and if -he tell the clerk of the booking-office at his point of departure for -Rennes that he intends doing this (and agrees with the formalities) he -will get a discount of forty per cent, on the price of first or second -class tickets up to that point. A plan of this itinerary and further -particulars are given in the appendix. - -Third-class railway travel in Brittany ought to form one of the -long-remembered experiences of one's visit to that province. - -There is much amusement to be got out of a journey across Brittany from -St. Malo to Nantes, with mob-capped peasant-folk and blue-bloused and -picturesque farmers, all laden with huge baskets and bundles, and an -occasional live fowl, or perhaps a rabbit, or even a guinea-pig, though -one must not believe that Frenchmen eat guinea-pigs. The writer, at -least, never saw one being eaten, though what use they are really put to -is an open question. - -Occasionally there will be a want of elbow-room in a third-class -carriage, but this is no great inconvenience, as the Breton mostly -travels short distances only, and at the next station one may be left -alone with only a drowsy Breton sailor--off on a furlough from a -man-of-war--to keep him company, with his red-knobbed tam-o'-shanter -rakishly over one ear. - -Often a _foreigner_ will throw himself into one's compartment,--an -American or an English artist, with his sketching paraphernalia, white -umbrella and all,--for artist-folk are mostly of the genus who travel -third-class. Good-naturedly enough, if his journey be a long one, he -will tell you much of the country round about, for your artist is one -who knows the byways as well as the highways--and perhaps a little -better. By this procedure, one stands a chance of gathering information -as well as being edified and amused. - - - - -CHAPTER V. - -THE BRETON TONGUE AND LEGEND - - -The speech of Brittany, like its legend and folk-lore, has ever been a -prolific subject with many writers of many opinions. - -The comparison of the speech of the Welshman with that of the Breton -has often been made, but by no one so successfully as by Henri Martin, -the historian, who, in writing of his travels in Wales, told how he had -chatted with the Celtic population there and made himself thoroughly -understood through his knowledge of Breton speech. - -In its earliest phases, the Breton tongue had a literature of its own, -at least a spoken literature, coming from the mouths of its bards -and popular poets. In our own day, too, Brittany has its own songs -and verses, which, though many of them have not known the medium of -printer's ink, have come down from past generations. - -The three ancient Armorican kingdoms or states, Domnone, Cornouaille, -and the Bro-Waroch, had their own distinct dialects. - -There is and was a considerable variation in the speech throughout -Brittany, though it is and was all Breton. The dialects of Vannes, -Quimper, and Trguier are the least known outside their own immediate -neighbourhood; the Lonais of St. Pol de Lon is the regular and common -tongue of all Bas Bretons. - -The old-time limits of the Breton tongue are wavering to-day, and -from time to time have drawn appreciably toward the west, so that the -boundary-line, which once ran from the mouth of the Loire to Mont St. -Michel, now starts at the mouth of the Vilaine, and finishes at a point -on the northern coast, a little to the westward of St. Brieuc. - -It was during the decadence of the Breton tongue--known to philologists -as the third period--that the monk Abelard cried out: "The Breton tongue -makes me blush with shame." - -The nearer one comes to Finistre, the less liable he is to meet the -French tongue unadulterated. The numbers knowing the Breton tongue alone -more than equal those who know French and Breton, leaving those who know -French alone vastly in the minority. The figures seem astonishing -to one who does not know the country, but they are unassailable, -nevertheless. - -[Illustration: <u>_St. Pol de Lon_</u>] - -Here in this department at least, and to a lesser degree in the Ctes -du Nord and the Morbihan provinces, one is likely enough to hear -lisped out, as if it were the effort of an Englishman: "_Je na sais -pas ce que vous dtes_," or "_Je n'entend rien_." No great hardship or -inconvenience is inflicted upon one by all this, but now and again one -wishes he were a Welshman, for the only foreigners who can understand -the lingo are Taffy's fellow country-men. - -Breton legend is as weird and varied as that of any land. It is -astonishingly convincing, too, from the story of King Grollo and -his wicked daughter, who came from the Britain across the seas, the -Bluebeard legend, the Arthurian legend, which Bretons claim as their -own, as do Britons, to those less incredible tales of the Corsairs of -St. Malo and the exploits of Duguesclin and Surcouf. - -[Illustration: _The Breton Tongue_] - -There is a quaint Breton saying referring to little worries, which -runs thus: "When the wind blows up from the sea, I turn my barrel to -the north; when it blows down from the hills, I turn my barrel to the -south." "And when it blows all four ways at once?" "Why, then I crawl -under the barrel." - -This is exactly the Breton's attitude toward life to-day, but he finds -a deal of consolation in his legends and songs of the past, and in his -ruffled moments they serve to put him in a good humour again. This is -something more than mere superstition, it is a philosophical turn of -mind, and that is good for a man. The heroes of legend are frequently -those of history. One may cite Joan of Arc with relation to old France, -and Duguesclin in Brittany. There is a difference, of course, and it is -wide, but the comparison will serve, as there is no other character in -all the history of Brittany--unless it be that of Duguay-Trouin, the -Corsair of St. Malo--who stands out so distinctly in the popular mind as -does Duguesclin, "the real Breton." - -There is none in his own country, however illiterate he may be, and the -Breton peasant, in some parts, is notoriously illiterate, who knows -not this hero's name and glory. Still more deeply rooted are the old -folk-lore superstitions which have come down through the ages by word of -mouth, no doubt with the accruing additions of time. - -Morlaix is the very centre of a land of mystery, tradition, and -superstition. Among these superstitious legends, "Jan Gant y tan," as it -is known by its Breton title, stands out grimly. - -Jan, it seems, is a species of demon who carries by night five candles -on the five fingers of each hand, and waves them wildly about, calling -down wrath upon those who may have offended him. - -Another is to the effect that hobgoblins eat the cream which rises on -milk at night. - -Yet another superstition is that the call of the cuckoo announces the -year of one's marriage or death. - -Another, and perhaps the most curious of all, is that, if an infant by -any chance gets his clothes wet at certain pools or fountains, he will -die within a year, but he will live long years if he fall in, yet is -able to preserve his garments from all dampness. - -When one drinks of the Fountain of De Krignac three times within the -hour, says the peasant of Plougasnou, and is not cured of the fever, let -him abandon all thoughts of a remedy and prepare for death. - -There are two legends associated with Brittany which are little known. -Both relate to Bluebeard. This legend is of Eastern origin, as far as -concerns the story of the man who slew his wives by dragging them about -by the hair, ultimately decapitating them; but the French Academy of -Inscriptions and Polite Learning evolves a sort of modern parallel as -another setting for the same apocryphal story. It concerns a certain -Trophime, the daughter of a Duke of Vannes, in the sixth century. She -was married to the Lord of Gonord, whose castle was situated on Mont -Castanes, and was the eighth wife of her husband. He killed her because -she discovered the bodies of her seven predecessors; but her sister Anne -prayed to St. Gildas, who came with her two brothers to the rescue. St. -Gildas restored Trophime to life, and the Bluebeard of Gonord and his -castle were swallowed up by the earth. - -The origin of the story has always been in doubt, but the generally -accepted theory is that Perrault founded the tale on the history of -Gilles de Laval, Seigneur de Rais. - -The Academy, however, destroys all this early conjecture in favour of -the Gilles de Laval affair. Since Gilles de Laval was a kinsman of the -Dukes of Brittany, the following is given as his claim to having played -the part, though, as the report of the Academy goes on to say, De Laval -proved himself to be but a fanatical sorcerer. - -[Illustration: _Gilles de Laval, after an engraving of the fifteenth -century in the Bibliothque Nationale._] - -Gilles de Laval was born in 1404, and was a member of the family of -Laval-Montmorency. He was handsome, well born, rich, and a most valiant -soldier, and one of the warmest supporters of Joan of Arc, whom he -defended against all who spoke ill of her, constituting himself her -personal champion. He fought valiantly with the "Maid," and was made a -marshal of France when twenty-six years of age. He was very wealthy, -and he doubled his possessions when he married at the early age of -sixteen. His extravagances, however, were greater than his riches. He -had a refined taste, and loved illuminated manuscripts, stamped Spanish -leather, Flemish tapestries, Oriental carpets, gold and silver plate, -music, and mystery plays. After peace was made, he and his wife retired -to their castles and lands in the Vende, where Gilles soon found -himself hopelessly in debt. He had to find money somehow, for he was of -a fine, open-handed disposition, and had never denied himself anything. -It was only natural in that century that he should turn his thoughts -toward alchemy and the philosopher's stone. - -Francesco Prelati, an Italian with a reputation as a magician and a -maker of gold, was installed, with all his alchemist's apparatus, in -Gilles's castle; but when he was asked to make gold, he confided to -his patron that it would be necessary to summon the aid of the devil, -and that for this purpose the blood of young children was absolutely -required. The two then scoured the country round for children, whom -they murdered with horrible rites, until at last their crimes became -so notorious that they were arrested and tried at Nantes. Gilles de -Laval and his accomplice were accused of murdering no fewer than twelve -hundred children, and were tried for sorcery and found guilty. The Lord -of Laval was strangled, and his body was burned; but Francesco Prelati, -as a mere vulgar sorcerer, was burned alive. - -At Saint Cast in the Ctes du Nord, one hears vague and fabulous reports -from the natives, even to-day, of a pirate ship--a veritable sister -ship to those of Duguay-Trouin of St. Malo--named the _Perillon_ and -commanded by one Besnard, known as the terror of the seas. Like other -songs of seafarers of the days gone by, that concerning the terror of -the seas is good enough to incorporate into the text of some rattling -story of pirates and corsairs, such as boys--and some grown-ups--the -world over like. Another popular Breton air was known as "Biron ha -D'Estin" ("Byron and D'Estaing"), and had to do with the war in America. -Another was the "Chant du Pilote," and had for its subject the combat of -the _Surveillante_ and the forts at Quebec in 1780. - -Of the same period was the "Corsairs' Song," which is very well known -throughout Upper Brittany even to-day, beginning thus: - - "Le trente-un du mois d'aot." - -Throughout Upper Brittany also one hears the old housewives still -mumbling the old words and air of the song current in the times of -Francis the First. - -It was when the prince was treating for his release from captivity that -the words first took shape and form: - - "Quand le roi dpartit de France, - Vive le roi! - la male heure il dpartit, - Vive Louis! - la male heure il dpartit (bis). - - * * * - - Il dpartit jour de dimanche. - - * * * - - Je ne suis pas le roi de France. - - * * * - - Je suis un pauvre gentilhomme - Qui va de pays en pays. - - * * * - - Retourne-t-en vite Paris." - - - - -CHAPTER VI. - -MANNERS AND CUSTOMS - - -To-day the Bretons are the most loyal of all the citizens of the great -republic of France. In reality they are a most democratic people, though -they often affect a devotion for old institutions now defunct. They may -be a superstitious race, but they are not suspicious, although they have -marked prejudices. When thoroughly understood, they are both likable and -lovable, though their aspect be one of a certain sternness and aloofness -toward the stranger. Their weapons are all in plain view, however, like -the hedgehog's; there is nothing concealed to thwart one's desires for -relations with them. - -Their country, their climate, and their environment have much to do -with their character, manners, and customs; and environment--as some -one may have said before--is the greatest influence at work in shaping -the attitude of a people toward an outsider, and every one is still an -outsider to a Breton, be he French, English, or American. - -The Breton is really a gayer person than his expression leads one to -suppose. Madame de Svign wrote, with some assurance, as was her wont: -"You make me prefer the gamesomeness of our Bretons to the perfumed -idleness of the Provenals." - -Certainly, to one who knows both races, the comparison was well made. It -is a case of doing mischief against doing nothing. - -Brittany has not Normandy's general air of prosperity, and indeed at -times there is a very near approach to poverty and distress, and then it -is bruited abroad in the public prints that the fisheries have proved a -failure. - -The Breton farming peasant, however, is not the poverty-stricken wretch -that he has sometimes been painted. He lives humbly, and eats vast -quantities of potatoes and bread, little meat, some fish, always a -salad, and, usually, a morsel of cheese, but he eats it off a cleanly -scrubbed bare board and from clean and unchipped plates. - -In his stable, such few belongings in the form of live stock as he has -are well fed and contented, and his chickens and ducks and pigs and cows -are as much a pride and profit to him as to the peasant of other parts; -but, after all, Brittany is not a land of milk and honey. The peasant -lives in the atmosphere of dogged, obstinate labour, but he draws a -competence from it, and it is mostly those who live in the seacoast -villages, and those who will huddle themselves in and about the large -towns and ports, such as Quimper and Brest, that are ever in want, and -then only because of some untoward, unexpected circumstance. - -Agriculture and the business of the sea are closely allied in Brittany. -Hundreds upon hundreds of young men work in the winter upon farms far -inland, and come down to the sea with the coming of February and March, -to ship in some longshore fishing-smack, or even to go as far away as -Newfoundland, the Orkneys, or to Iceland. - -This gives not only a peculiar blend of character, but also a peculiar -cast of countenance to the Breton; he is a sort of half-land and -half-sea specimen of humanity, and handy at the business of either. - -In many ports, the Breton struggles continually against shifting -sand,--sand which is constantly shifting when piled in banks on the -seashore, and becomes of the nature of quicksand when lying beneath the -water where the Breton moors his lobster-pots. Between the two, he is -constantly harassed, and until the off season comes has little of that -gaiety into which he periodically relaxes. Every one will remark that -the aspect of both men and women is sombre and dark, even though their -spontaneous gaiety and dress on the feast of a patron saint or at a -great pardon gives one the impression of gladness. - -One sees this when on the great holidays the Breton peasant is moved -to song, and chants such lines as the following, which more nearly -correspond in sentiment to "We won't go home till morning" than anything -else that can be thought of. - - "J'ai deux grands boeufs dans mon table, - J'ai deux grands boeufs marqus de rouge; - Ils gagnent plus dans une semaine - Qu'ils n'en ont cout, qu'ils n'en ont cout. - J'aime Jeanne ma femme! - J'aime Jeanne ma femme! - Eh bien! j'aimerais mieux la voir mourir, - Que de voir mourir mes boeufs." - -Doubtless there is not so much hard-heartedness about the sentiment as -is expressed by the words, which, to say the least and the most, are not -wholly up to the standard of "love, cherish, and protect." - -Once in awhile one sees the type of man who is known among his fellows -as _Breton des plus Bretons_. Like his Norman brother, the Breton in -the off season works hard playing dominoes or cards in the taverns, -where one reads on a sign over the door that _Jean X donne boire et -manger_, that is, if the sign be not in Breton, which more often than -not it is. - -The landlord does not exactly "give" his fare; he exchanges it for -copper sous, but he caters for the inner man at absurdly small prices, -and accordingly is well patronized, in spite of his refusal of credit. - -Bowls is the national game of Brittany, having a greater hold upon the -simple-minded Breton, particularly in the neighbourhood of the Lannion, -than any other amusement. No respectably ambitious inn in all Brittany -is without its bowling-alley. As a distraction, it is mild and harmless, -and withal good exercise, as we all know. - -The religious fervour of the Breton folk has been remarked of all who -know them howsoever slightly. It is universal, and, if it be more -apparent in one place than any other, it is in the Department of -Finistre, and it is not in the cities and towns that it reaches its -greatest height, but mostly in the country-side, or on the seacoast -among the labourers and the fisher-folk. - -The religion of Brittany to-day is of the people and for the people. It -is one of the great questions of the world to-day, but from a dogmatic -point of view it shall have no discussion here. Suffice it to say that -throughout France, with the numerous great, and nearly always empty, -churches ever before one, one can but realize that the power of the -Church is not what it once was. - -The churchgoers are chiefly women; seldom, if ever, except on a -great feast-day, are the churches filled with a congregation at all -representative of the population of the parish, and even in the great -cathedrals the same impression nearly always holds good. - -In Brittany, the case is somewhat different, in the country districts -at least, and even at Roscoff, Quimper, Vannes, and Rennes, where -there are great cathedrals. In Brittany, in every parish church and at -every wayside shrine, is almost always to be found not only a little -knot of devoutly kneeling peasants, but, on all occasions of mark, a -congregation overflowing beyond the doors. What this all signifies, as -before said, is no concern of the writer of this book. It is simply a -recorded state of affairs, and, judging from the attitude of the people -themselves--when seen on the spot--toward the subject of religion, -the most liberal thinker would hardly consider that here in Brittany -religion was anything else than spontaneous devotion on the part of the -people. - -Of religion and priests, Brittany is full, but the people are not by -any means priest-ridden, as many uncharitable and slack observers have -asserted before now. No priest bids a Breton worship at any shrine. They -do it of their own free will, and, though a churchman always officiates -at the great pardons and festivals, the worshippers themselves are as -much the performers of the ceremony as the priest. - -In Brittany to-day the piece of money which passes current in most -transactions, though in numbers it is infrequently handled by the -traveller, is _la pice_, the half-franc or ten-sous coin. - -It is confusing when you are bargaining for a carriage to drive to some -wayside shrine, to be told the price will be "_deux pices_," when--in -Normandy--you have just formed the habit of realizing offhand that _deux -cent sous_ is the same thing as ten francs. It's all very simple, when -one knows what they are talking about, and the Breton likes still to -think his institutions are different from those of the rest of France, -and so he goes on bargaining in _pices_, when in other parts they are -counting in _sous_, which is even more confusing, or in _francs_. - -Most of the farmhouses of Brittany are constructed of stone and wood, -with their roofs covered with a straw thatch. Of course this is a -dangerous style of building to-day, as the authorities admit. Indeed -a decree has gone forth in some parts forbidding the erection of any -new straw-thatched building, and again in other parts against using -any structure so built as a dwelling-house. The law is not absolutely -observed, but it is by no means a dead letter, and the homely and -picturesque thatched roof has now all but disappeared, except from the -open country. - -To enter the Breton peasant's farmhouse, one almost invariably descends -a step. The interior is badly lighted, and worse ventilated, but, as -it is mostly the open-air life that the peasant and his family lead, -perhaps this does not so much matter. Usually the house is composed -of but one room, with a floor of hard-trodden earth. This is the -dining-room, kitchen, and bedroom of all the family. The ceiling is -composed of great rough-hewn rafters, sometimes even of trunks left -with the bark on, and from it are hung the knives and forks and dishes, -as in a ship's cabin. - -[Illustration: YOUNG BRETONS - -_B. McManus--1905_] - -Furniture has been reduced to the most simple formula. Two or three -great closed and panelled beds or bunks line one side of the wall, with -perhaps a wardrobe, where the "Sunday-best" of the whole household is -kept. Beneath the great beds is a series of oaken chests, and there -the household linen is stored. These, with a long table, with a bench -and a wide passage on either side, the great, yawning fireplace, -with its crane and the inevitable highly polished pots and pans, form -the furnishings of this remarkable apartment. All this is homely and -strange, but it is comfortable enough for the occupants, if one does not -mind being crowded, and it is the typical dwelling throughout Brittany. - -Everywhere in the Breton country one sees oxen, cattle, and, above -all, the horses of the indefatigable Breton race, "ready and willing -to work and full of spirit in warfare." So said Eugene Sue, and the -same observation holds true to-day. None of the animals are so large -or so fat as in the neighbouring provinces, but this is not because of -malnutrition or because they are ill-tended. The cows of Brittany are by -no means such plump, dainty animals as the cows of the Cotentin, and the -Breton horses are certainly undersized when compared to the Norman sires -and the great-footed Percherons, but one and all possess good qualities -purely their own, and one thing above all should be noted,--Brittany is -exceedingly rich grazing country, if not agricultural. - -[Illustration: _From the_ ARTIST'S SKETCH BOOK.] - -Much of the local character is shown in the dress of the people, and -throughout the country-side and the seacoast villages alike both -men and women show that remarkable attention to dress which marks the -strong individuality of the race,--individuality which has come down -through the ages, and endures to this day in very nearly, if not quite -all, its original aspect. One knows this dress through photographic -reproductions, and from having occasionally seen it on the comic opera -stage, but actually to live among such picturesquely dressed folk is -like a step back into the past. - -[Illustration: LA COIFFE POLKA--_The Smallest Coiffe in Brittany_ - -B. McM. 1905] - -The costumes of Brittany are greatly varied, but all look theatrical, -and many of them are remarkably embroidered in multicoloured braid. On -all great occasions, feast-days and fairs, on Sundays and on the days -of the pardons, many ancient costumes, not modern reproductions, are -seen. Particularly is this to be noted at Pont l'Abb, Pont Aven, and -elsewhere in the far west. The coifs of the women and the embroidered -waistcoats and velvet-ribboned hats of the men mark them as a species of -Frenchmen different from their Norman brethren; lovers of fanciful dress -and customs quite Southern in gorgeousness, and not the least like the -colder fashions of other dwellers in the same latitude. - -At Quimper is an interesting Ethnological Museum, where one may study -the subject at length, and in the town one may buy fabrics and stuffs -and articles of wearing apparel fashioned in the genuine Breton manner. - -The greatest activity of life in Brittany is in the coast towns, for -there the populace has for the longest time been in touch with the ideas -of an advanced civilization. - -[Illustration: <u>_Ironing Coifs_</u>] - -By the very geographic position of Brittany this was inevitable, as the -country was not in the direct path of any great current of commerce, -and had no great navigable river, except the Loire, which bordered it -upon the south. There had been malicious critics of things Breton before -him, but there could have been no real justification for the lament of -Paul St. Victor, who must have had an exceedingly bad dinner at his inn -when he delivered himself of the following: - -"Breton dialect is full of barbarisms, and Brittany is not even a -healthy country for painters. It is a land of monasteries and dull -routine; the same types and the same costumes; no men, no women, all -Bretons, all of Brittany." - -As a race, the Breton may well be summed up as follows: They are the -descendants of the men of a primitive epoch, from whom they inherit -traits which even time has not entirely eradicated. Their intuitions are -correct, and their convictions profound; their will tenacious, and their -energies equal to all that may be demanded of them. They are proud, -truthful, courageous, intrepid, hospitable, and religious. - -The manufacturing industry throughout Brittany is practically null, if -one except the work of the great arsenals and ship-building ports, and -the production of such articles of local consumption as sail-cloth. - -Flax and hemp are grown in considerable quantities, but the ordinary -crops of cereals rise to nothing like the proportions of those reared -in Normandy or Perche. The Breton is strong on bee-keeping, however, -and keenly watches the busy workers of his hives as they gather their -harvest from the abundant crop of wild flowers covering the hillsides. - -[Illustration: <u>_Breton Types_</u>] - -The Breton communes are of vast extent compared with those of other -parts of France, but the population is scattered. Gathered around the -parish church are the dwellings of the market-towns of three, four, -or five hundred inhabitants or more. Upon the whole, Brittany is not -thinly peopled, the mean of its population exceeding that of most of -the other provinces of France. Whatever the aborigines were, whether -of Indo-Germanique type or of a species hitherto unplaced, the present -Breton population has been developed along lines close to those of -Britain. And the Bretons are not far behind, and herein undoubtedly lies -the charm of Brittany for the English-speaking traveller. - -Writing of his stay at Guingamp,--which is about the dividing line -where one passes from the zone of the French tongue to that of the -Breton, where one is frequently to hear the short exclamation, "I do -not understand you,"--Arthur Young tells us of putting up at a roadside -inn "where the hangings over his bed were full of cobwebs and spiders." -The inn-keeper remarked to him that he had "a superb English mare," and -wished to buy it from him. "I gave him half a dozen flowers of French -eloquence for his impertinence," said the witty traveller, "when he -thought proper to leave me and my spiders in peace." "Apropos of the -breed of horses in Lower Brittany," he continues, "they are capital -hunters, and yet my ordinary little English mare was much admired, while -every stable round about is filled with a pack of these little pony -stallions sufficient to perpetuate the local breed for long to come." - -To the humble inn--one of the regular posting-houses on the great -highroad from Paris to Brest--he is not so complimentary. "This -villainous hole," said he, "which calls itself a great house, is the -best inn of the town, at which marshals of France, dukes, peers, -countesses, and so forth, must now and then, by the accidents to -which long journeys are subject, have found themselves. What are we -to think of a country that has made, in the eighteenth century, no -better provision for its travellers?" In this our author was clearly a -faultfinder, or at least he was unfortunate in not living at a later -day, for the above is certainly not true of the inns of France to-day, -though it may truthfully be said that, even to-day, the inns of Brittany -are a _little_ backward, but it is not true of the Htel de France at -Guingamp, which has even a dark room for the kodaker, and a _foss_ for -the motor-car traveller. - - - - -CHAPTER VII. - -THE FISHERIES - - -What the cider-apple crop is to Normandy, that the fisheries are to -Brittany, and more, for the fisheries turn over more money by far than -the cider of Normandy, which is grown purely for home consumption. The -Breton young person of the male sex takes to the sea in the little -pilchard-boats, the three-masters of the deep-sea fishery, or the -whalers, for the purpose of earning his livelihood, and also to secure a -prescribed term of exemption from military or naval service. With such -an object, it is no wonder that the industry employs so many hands, -and has become so important and considerable in its returns. Of course -the geographical position of the country has more than a little to do -with this, and also the stony soil of the country-side, suggesting the -harvest of the sea as a more ample crop. - -In Brittany, the sea nourishes the land, though perhaps but meagrely. - -[Illustration: <u>_Douarnenez_</u>] - -From the mouth of the Loire, around Finistre to Lannion, thousands upon -thousands of the inhabitants live by the harvest of the sea, whereas, -if it were not for this, they might be forced to emigrate, or to hie -themselves to the large towns, there to herd in unsanitary quarters, -which is worse. - -The pilchard fishery is practically at its best directly off the -Quiberon peninsula, opposite Lorient and Concarneau. It is important -also just offshore from Audierne, Douarnenez, and Camaret. - -It is well to recall just what the sardine really is, inasmuch as we -mostly buy any "little fishes boiled in oil," which a pushful grocer -may thrust upon us. The "corporal's stripe," or the "cavalry corporal," -as the sardine is known in France, is quite a different species from -the "armed policeman," or common sea-garden herring. The Atlantic, the -North Sea, the Baltic, and some parts of the Mediterranean are its -home. It winters between 50 degrees and 60 degrees north latitude, in -a zone where the temperature is constant, but from March to October it -emigrates toward the north. Sometimes the future sardines are known as -pilchards; on the coasts of Normandy and Picardy as _hareng de Bergues_; -as sardines in Brittany; as _royan_ in Charente; and as _sarda_ and -_sardinyola_ in the Pyrnes Orientales. - -The best and most common method of preserving the sardine is by slightly -heating the oil before placing it with the fish in those little tin -boxes known the world over; then the boxes are soldered and put into -a double boiler and boiled for the better part of an hour, when the -exceedingly simple process is finished. So simple is it, and so readily -accomplished without a great capital investment, that the wonder is -that imitations of the "real Brittany sardines" are not more successful -elsewhere. Up to this time, however, nothing rivals the Breton product. - -Each year, at the feast of St. Jean, the barques set out from the -various ports, all richly decorated, and often sped on their way by a -religious ceremony, at which a priest officiates and gives his blessing. - -The profits vary considerably one year from another, as may be supposed. -The catch is by no means constant. Its ordinary receipts approximate -twelve million francs, and, when it drops below this figure, distress -is likely to ensue, particularly if a hard winter falls upon Brittany, -which in truth it seldom does. - -The little fish return each year, their feeding-ground scarcely varying -thirty miles in any direction. Thus, in season, the boats with their -red sails and blue and brown nets put off for the same spots where -they took their catches last year, only to find that the habits of the -sardines have not in the least changed. Five or six men to a boat is -the average crew, and, if the wind be contrary, their speed is much the -same by means of oars. Once arrived on the ground, the skipper of the -boat throws overboard at intervals some handfuls of _rogue_ as a bait; -this is a paste composed of the roe of the cod, and the only drawback is -that its cost is great. It comes mostly from Norway, and, after passing -through many intermediate hands, finally reaches the Breton fisherman, -who pays from sixty to seventy francs per hundred kilos. When the price -rises above this figure, the ingenious skipper fabricates a substitute, -a mixture of the real article and a local vegetable product known as -_farine d'arachides_. Its results are not so good as those from the real -article, and the local fishermen have a saying which is doubtless so -true as to have become a proverb: "One must bait with fish to catch a -fish." Moreover, the fish caught by this means do not rank as a first -quality product in the markets of the Breton fishing ports, owing to -the after-effects on the fish, which shall be undefined here. It may be -well to recall the fact, however, and, if you get a sardine which is not -what you think it ought to be, and is too much like a bad oyster, you -may depend upon it that it was caught with _farine d'arachides_. - -The Breton custom is to fish with buoyed nets, disdaining the drag-net, -though occasionally the latter is used. - -The buoyed nets merely scoop the surface of the water, but the drag-nets -are sunk to a depth of from forty to fifty metres. When the skipper -estimates that the net is full, or, at least, that he shall have a haul -worthy of his trouble, all hands, singing as all sailor-folk do, pull -the net inboard, and, with a clever turn, empty it of its freight of -silver-scaled fish, which are forthwith scooped up and placed in great -baskets. On the return to port, the fishermen still in harbour, the -factory hands, and all the inhabitants who are not otherwise employed, -even though they ought to be, to say nothing of curious peasant-folk -from the inland towns, and always a generous sprinkling of tourists, and -the inevitable American artist, are in waiting, curious as to the luck. - -Here the dealers come and bargain for the catch. Thirty to thirty-five -francs a thousand is usually the market price, and the choicest fish -naturally sell first. Speculation comes in now and then, and a scare -as to the prospect of the catch being too abundant is as common and as -disastrous as the fear that it may not be large enough. Sometimes the -price will fall as low as a franc and a half, and then come "trials -without number for the sailors," as an old fisherman told the writer. -Certainly, if thirty francs a thousand be only a paying wage, a franc -and a half must mean about the same as utter failure to the crew, who -generally work the boat on shares. - -The pilchard fishers have not forgotten the crisis of 1903, to combat -the recurrence of which it was proposed to establish special schools -for fishermen apprentices, and to forbid the use of the drag-net, and -they are seeking a rearrangement of conditions whereby the returns -may be more equally distributed among the workers than now. At the -present time the owner--who fits out the boat--claims a third, and the -skipper a third, the hands dividing the other third. According to this -arrangement, the novice or apprentice receives an infinitesimal share. - -As a Frenchman, a Breton of Quimper who was not in the sardine business, -said to us: "_Ces pauvres diables! Ils mriteraient mieux._" All of -which is true, so let all well-wishers, who are fond of the "little -fishes boiled in oil" at their picnic dinners, give a thought now and -again to the Breton fisherman. - -Besides the sardine fisheries, there is a considerable traffic from -such ports as Trguier, St. Malo, and Morlaix in the deep-sea fishery, -and elsewhere in the mackerel and herring fishery in Icelandic waters -and the North Sea, and these give a prosperity that would otherwise be -wanting. - -Statistics are dry reading, and so they are not given here, but there -are some curious things with regard to the laws regulating the offshore -and deep-sea fisheries of France, just as there are with respect to -the line fishing, by which method one can legally take fish only if he -actually hold his rod or line in his hand: he may not lay it on the -ground beside him and doze until an unusually frisky gudgeon wakes him -up. - -On all of the French fishing-craft, which sail to the Banks or -to Iceland for cod, French salt must be used, and all masters of -fishing-craft must keep a supplementary log or diary relating to the -takings of fish alone. - -In deep-sea fishing the law prescribes that a vessel which is fitted -out for the fishing-banks must remain on the ground a certain length of -time. This is to preclude the possibility of a decreasing catch, it is -to be presumed, as many a fisherman has been known, before now, to give -up the labour with holds half-filled simply because he had come upon a -meagre feeding-ground. It seems a wise precaution, and is another of -those parental acts which the French government is always undertaking -on behalf of its children. There is still the whalebone catch to reckon -with, for the French government specializes this industry, and offers -a bonus of seventy francs a ton displacement on leaving port for all -French equipments, and fifty francs per ton displacement upon returning -after the term prescribed. - - - - -PART II. - - - - -CHAPTER I. - -THE LOIRE IN BRITTANY - - -At Ancenis, the Loire, that mighty river which rises near the frontier -of Garde, a Mediterranean department, enters Brittany on its way to the -Atlantic. For more than nine hundred kilometres above this point, the -Loire has been navigable for such fresh-water craft as usually are found -upon great waterways, and, having passed Orleans, Blois, and Tours, and -broadened out into a great, wide, shallow stream, it is to be reckoned -as one of the world's great rivers. Mostly its appearance is that of a -broad, tranquil, docile stream, with scarce enough depth of water to -make a respectable current, leaving its bed with its bars of sand and -pebbles bare to the sky. This lack of depth, except at occasional flood, -is the principal and obvious reason for the comparative absence of -water-borne traffic. - -At the times of the great freshets there are twenty-three feet or more -registered on the huge black and white scale of the bridge at Ancenis, -and again it falls to less than a fourth of that height, and then there -is a mere rivulet of water trickling through the broad channel at -Chaumont, at Blois, or at Orleans. - -In the olden time, as one passed from Anjou into Brittany, by way of -the valley of the Loire, he came to a great barrier across the road,--a -veritable frontier post, with a custom-house and examiners, as if -one were passing into a foreign country. The Revolution changed all -this, and now nothing but another of that vast family of great, white -departmental boundary-posts marks the dividing line between the Maine et -Loire and the Loire-Infrieure, the border departments between the old -province of the Counts of Anjou and that of the Breton dukes. - -Just above Ancenis, one passes vineyard after vineyard, and chteau -after chteau follows rapidly in turn,--all very delightful, as Pepys -would have said. Not so the bridge at Ancenis, quite the ugliest -wire-rope affair to be seen on the Loire, and one is only too glad to -leave it behind, though it is with a real regret that he parts from -Ancenis itself. - -Ancenis is one of those blessed spots possessing a chteau; it is -endowed with a wonderfully picturesque situation, and, moreover, is -capable of catering for the inner man in so satisfactory a manner that -one can but put it down in his books as one of the spots to be favoured. -The Barons of Ancenis were a long and picturesque line, and their local -fame has by no means perished. The old-time chteau, constructed in the -fifteenth century, was the masterwork of a famous Angevin architect, -Jean Lespine by name. To-day this fine building, or what is left of it, -has become an Ursuline boarding-house. Much is still left to tell the -story of its former greatness, but it is not so accessible as one would -like. - -The most that can be remarked is a great doorway flanked by two towers, -with overpowering machicolations, another smaller tower,--a _tourelle_, -the French themselves would call it,--and a ruined pavilion, where, in -1468, Francis, Duke of Brittany, signed a treaty with Louis XI. On the -market-house of Ancenis is superimposed a sort of a belfry which, seen -in conjunction with the low-lying river-bank, imparts a low-country -aspect to the town. The old streets of Ancenis give shelter to many fine -medival houses, of which the most notable is perhaps the old "house of -the Croix de Lorraine." - -Below Ancenis, navigation is not so difficult, but the river current -is more strong. For a long distance, on the right bank, extends a -dike, carrying the roadway beside the river for a matter of a hundred -kilometres. This is one of the charms of travel by the Loire. When you -see any animation on its bosom, save an occasional fishing-punt, neither -it nor its occupant usually very animated, it is one of those great -flat-bottomed ferry-boats, with a square sail hung on a yard amidships, -such as Turner always made an accompaniment to his Loire landscapes. - -Conditions of traffic thereon have not changed much since those days. -Whenever one sees a barge or a boat worthy of classification with those -on the rivers of the east or north, or of the canals, it is only about -a quarter of the usual size, so, altogether, in spite of its great -navigable length, the waterway of the Loire is more valuable as a -picturesque and healthful element of the landscape than as a commercial -artery. Below Nantes is the "section maritime," which from Nantes to the -sea is a matter of some sixty kilometres. Here the boats increase in -number and size. They are known as lighters, barges, and tenders, and go -down with the river current and return on the incoming ebb, for here the -river is tidal. - -From this one gathers that the Loire, so noble and magnificent, is the -most aristocratic river of France, and so, too, it is with respect to -its associations of the past. - -It has not the grandeur of the Rhne when the spring freshets from the -Jura and the Swiss lakes have filled it to its banks; and it has not the -burning activity of the Seine, as it bears its thousands of boat-loads -of produce and merchandise to and from market; it has not the prettiness -of the Thames, or the legendary aspect of the Rhine; but, in a way, it -combines something of the features of all, and has, in addition, a tone -that is all its own, as it sweeps the horizon through its countless -miles of ample curves, and holds within its embrace all that is best -of medival and Renascence France, the period which built up the later -monarchy and--who shall say not?--the present prosperous nation. - -The Loire is essentially a river of other days. Truly, as Mr. James has -said, "it is the very model of a generous, beneficent stream.... A wide -river which you may follow by a wide road is excellent company." The -Frenchman himself is more flowery. "It is the noblest river of France. -Its basin is immense, magnificent." All of which is true, too. For a -good bit of local colour of this region, one should read Chapter V. of -"The Regent's Daughter," by Dumas, wherein the willing Gaston, in the -midday sunshine of a winter's day, made his way from Nantes to Paris, -"travelling slowly as far as Oudon opposite Champtoceaux." "At Oudon he -halted and put up at the Char-Couronne, an inn with windows overlooking -the highroad." Some stirring events took place here, but the reader is -referred to the pages of Dumas for the details. - -Oudon, however, will not detain the cursory traveller of to-day, even if -he deigns to visit it at all. - -Champtoceaux, on the other hand, though only a small town of thirteen -hundred inhabitants, does awaken interest. Formerly it belonged to the -Counts of Anjou, and then to the Dukes of Brittany. - -Its site is most picturesque; it stands on a mound some two hundred -feet above the Loire. There are two fine medival churches, and an old -chteau, which, with the ruins of the ancient fortified castle, now -forms a part of the domain of a M. de la Touche, who will kindly permit -the visitor to inspect the details of this ancient feudal stronghold. - -The dismantled old walls are covered with moss and lichens, and -their picturesqueness is of that quality that painters love to put -on canvas. The wonder is that Champtoceaux has not become a new -artists' sketching-ground, such as are so often discovered--or -rediscovered--throughout France. Perhaps it is because of its distance -from Paris, for your artist-painter, be he French, English, or American, -dearly loves the streets of the Latin Quarter, and, as a rule, prefers -Fontainebleau and its circle of artist colonies to going farther afield. - -At last one beholds what a Frenchman has called the "tumultuous vision -of Nantes." To-day the very ancient and historic city which grew up -from the Portus Nannetum and the Condivientum of the Romans is indeed a -veritable tumult of chimneys, masts and smokestacks, and locomotives. -But all this will not detract one jot from its reputation of being -one of the most delightful of provincial capitals, and the smoke and -activity of its port only tend to accentuate the note of colour, which -in the whole itinerary of the Loire has been but pale. - -The former reputation of Nantes as a little capital where gaiety and -wealth came in abundance is correct for to-day, but a comparison is -interesting. Here is a reminiscence of old stage-coaching days, when -the post took four days to make the journey from Paris: - -"The neighbourhood of the theatre is magnificent, all the streets being -at right angles and of white stone. One is in doubt as to whether -the Htel Henri IV. is not the finest inn in Europe." (It must have -disappeared since those days, but really its reputation still lives in -any one of the three leading hotels.) "Dessein's" (also disappeared) "at -Calais is larger, but is not built, fitted up, or furnished like this, -which is new. It cost nearly five hundred thousand francs, and contains -sixty bedrooms. It is without comparison the first inn of France, and -very cheap withal. - -"The theatre must have cost a like sum, and, when its seats are full, -holds 120 louis d'or. The ground that the inn is built upon cost nine -francs a foot, and elsewhere in the city one may pay as much as fifteen -francs. This ground value induces them to build so high as to be -destructive of beauty." Unquestionably this last observation was quite -true then, as it is now, but Nantes nevertheless fills very nearly every -qualification of a well-laid-out and attractive city. - -To some Nantes will be reminiscent of Venice, or at least some Dutch -city, for its five river branches are continually crossing and -recrossing one's path in most bewildering fashion, and bridges confront -one at every turn. - -The city's attractions are many, from its great cathedral and its -chteau-fortress, enclosing a beautiful edifice wherein once lived the -Duchess Anne, to its great hotels, cafs, and shops of modern times. - -Five great events of history stand forth prominent in the memory of the -very name of Nantes: the struggle of John of Montfort against Charles -of Blois for the ducal power; the affairs of the League; the famous -Edict; the Cellamare conspiracy; and the rising of the Vendeans and the -rascally Carrier's retaliation in Revolutionary days. - -Each and every one of these were vivid and bloody enough to furnish -inexhaustible material for a novelist of the Dumas school, should he -rise in the future, for the half has not yet been used. It was in -the Place of Bouffay that that execution of the Breton conspirators -took place, of which we read in the graphic pages of Dumas. Gaston, -who sought to deliver his former companions, was posting along the -road to Nantes with their reprieve safely guarded. Before the age of -steam and electricity, news travelled slowly, and Svres, Versailles, -Rambouillet, Chartres, Mans, and Angers were then far apart. But the -faithful Gaston travelled fast, one of the bystanders at Rambouillet -calling to him: "If you go at that pace, you will kill more than one -team between here and Nantes." - -Gradually he learned that a "courier of the minister's" had passed -that way. This was the beginning of what Dumas called the "tragedy -of Nantes." The event was historical, and Dumas's account was most -dramatic, yet did not differ greatly from the facts. Gaston arrived too -late. Talhouet was dead, and the Place of Bouffay reeked with the blood -of the conspirators, who, guilty though they were, had received the -pardon of the Regent. The cry of De Conedic, as he bent his head to the -block, still echoes down through history: "See how they recompense the -services of faithful soldiers! Ye cowards of Bretagne," he cried, as -the sword of the executioner fell upon him. Ten minutes afterward the -square was empty. One of the corpses still held a crumpled paper in his -hand,--it was the pardon of the other four, for the bearer had arrived -too late. Thus finished "the tragedy of Nantes." - -Though this part of Brittany has the reputation of being the least -illiterate of any, as late as the beginning of the last quarter of -the nineteenth century might be seen at Nantes the sign of the public -scrivener, which read: - - CRIVAIN PUBLIQUE - _10 centimes par lettre_ - -Below Nantes the Loire basin has turned the surrounding country into a -little Holland, where fisherfolk and their boats, with sails of red and -blue, form charming symphonies of dull colour. In the drinking-places -along its shores there is a strange medley of peasants, seafarers, -and fisher men and women. Not so cosmopolitan a crew as one sees in -the harbour-side drinking-places at Marseilles, or even at Havre, but -sufficiently strange to be a fascination to one who has just come down -from the headwaters. - -Gray and green is the aspect at the Loire's source, and green and gray -it still is, though of a decidedly different colour value, at St. -Nazaire, below Nantes, the real deep-water port of the Loire. By this -time the river has amplified itself into a broad estuary, and is lost in -the incoming and outgoing tides of the Bay of Biscay. From its source -the Loire has wound its way gently, broadly, and with placid grandeur -through rocky escarpments, fertile plains, populous and luxurious -towns, all historic ground, by stately chteaux and through vineyards -and fruit-orchards. Now it becomes more or less prosaic and matter of -fact, though, in a way, no less interesting, as it takes on some of the -attributes of the outside world. - -Here one gives the last glance to the Loire, as an inland waterway, -for, by the time Nantes is passed, it is of the sea salty. Here the -Svre Nantaise comes from the Department Deux-Svres and numerous other -streams broaden the lower river until it meets the bay at St. Nazaire, -where coasters and deep-sea fishermen take the place of boat-haulers and -vineyard-workers as picturesque accessories to the landscape. - -Jacobites and their sympathizers will take pleasure in noting that it -was in the early days of St. Nazaire's importance as a port that the -Young Pretender set sail thence in 1745, in a frigate provided by a Mr. -Walsh of Nantes. - -It is only now that one realizes to the full the gamut through which -run the varying moods of the Loire, from the hard, sterile lands around -Le Puy through the pleasant Nivernais, the Orleanais, the vineyards of -Saumur, to the Sardinires and the salt works of the marshes of Bourg -de Batz and Croisic. - -It was from Croisic that Talhouet, one of the Breton conspirators of -"The Regent's Daughter," threatened to set sail if discovered in their -dastardly plot against the Regent. - -"I shall be off to St. Nazaire," said he, "and from thence to Croisic; -take my advice and come with me. I know a brig about to start for -Newfoundland, and the captain is a servant of mine. If the air on shore -become too bad, we will embark, set sail, and adieu to the galleys." -"Well, I for one," said his companion, "am a Breton, and Bretons trust -only in God." - -South of the Loire, in that small fragment of territory which formerly -belonged to the old province, is a wonderful collection of old-time and -gone-to-seed towns hardly ever visited by the general run of tourists. - -Paimboeuf and Pornic and Clisson are the three places which appeal -most strongly, and this chiefly by their accessibility to Nantes. To -the southwest is the Lake of Grand Lieu, which, according to an ancient -Armorican legend, was the former site of a city "flourishing, but -dissolute," which was submerged for its sins by the command of God. -This sounds apocryphal, but the moral is plain. - -Anciently the Retz country, lying just southward of the Loire, formed a -part of the ancient Breton province, and, although before the Revolution -and the rearrangement of provinces and departments anew this member had -been shorn away, yet Paimboeuf, on the south bank of the Loire, just -beyond Nantes, is of Breton nomenclature, known in French as Tte de -Boeuf. To-day it is but a relic of a former great port, now deserted; -St. Nazaire, its younger relative, with much more ample commercial -resources, has drawn its trade away, and its quays and docks are now -unoccupied, except by coasters and fishing-boats. - -Paimboeuf has already become depopulated, and the former little -fishing port of Pornic daily takes on more and more importance. - -Pornic itself has a charm which Paimboeuf entirely lacks. It is a -lively little fishing village of perhaps two thousand inhabitants. The -port, the bay, and the canal which empties into the salt waters of the -Atlantic form a delightful setting for artists' foregrounds, let the -backgrounds be what they may. At present, it has taken on somewhat of -the aspect of a watering-place, but it is safe to say that it will -never become popular as such, in spite of the fact that a casino has -already made its appearance. - -[Illustration: <u>_Pornic_</u>] - -In addition to the charm of its situation, the chief attraction of -Pornic is its thirteenth and fourteenth century chteau, with its fine -towers and machicolations. Its history, like that of most others of its -kind, has been romantic, and by no means has it always had the placid -aspect which it has to-day. It was taken from Gilles de Retz by the -Dukes of Brittany during the civil wars, and to-day belongs to a M. de -Bourquency, who has restored it admirably. - -At the foot of the chteau is a great cross of stone, called the Croix -of the Huguenots, erected, it is said, by converted Calvinists. At the -foot of this cross are buried the bones of over two hundred Vendeans -killed at Pornic. - -Clisson is a small town of something less than three thousand -inhabitants, whose very name will conjure up memories of the great -Constable Olivier de Clisson. There is much here of interest, but the -history of the town, the chteau, and of De Clisson himself are so -interwoven with the affairs of state and warfare of the nation that the -outline even may not be given here. The ruins of the old-time chteau -are a wonderfully impressive reminder of other days, other ways. As a -whole, it is a grand ruin only, although an architect or archaeologist -may build up somewhat of an approach to the former glorious fabric. The -great central tower has not even preserved its walls entire, but what -is left stands to-day as one of the most imposing examples of a great -feudal keep yet extant. Clisson has some right to be considered up to -date, in that some enterprising inhabitant has introduced an electric -light plant. In spite of this, however, the donjon is one of those -architectural splendours of the world which, like the Coliseum at Rome -and Melrose Abbey, should be seen by moonlight in order to be rightly -appreciated. - -[Illustration: <u>_Donjon of Clisson_</u>] - -The chapel, in which was celebrated the marriage of Duke Francis II. -and Margaret of Foix, the keep, the dungeons, the ramparts, and the -chief apartments occupied by the constable himself have been preserved, -and make Clisson well worth the half-day it will take to go there from -Nantes. - - - - -CHAPTER II. - -NANTES TO VANNES - - -Next to Marseilles, Nantes is the finest provincial capital of France. -This may be disputed, but it is the opinion of the writer. - -Perhaps it is because of the glorious part that the city played in the -past to preserve its independence, and the independence of Brittany, -succumbing only with the second marriage of Queen Anne; but, for some -reason, the links that bind it with the past have never grown rusty, nor -have modern cosmopolitan characteristics destroyed the individuality of -the Breton. - -The situation doubtless has much to do with the air of geniality which -pervades the city. When the Loire glistens under the caressing rays of -the setting sun, and the roof-tops of the town are all of a reddened -gold, Nantes might indeed be even now the medival capital that it was -before the age of steam and electricity, which sound the only modern -notes to be heard here. At night the spectacle is far more dramatic, -with the streets and quays lit by countless lamps; the subdued murmur -of the workaday world, now all but gone to rest; for an occasional -shriek from a locomotive or a wail from the siren of some great steamer -dropping down-river with the tide is all that one hears. - -There is a forest of masts of shipping, scores upon scores of great -chimney-stacks, of ship-houses, of sugar and oil refineries, and along -the quay-side streets there are yet sailors and longshoremen hanging -about and smoking a finishing pipe, or drinking a last drop of spirit -or glass of beer. But all is "drawing in," and soon all will be hushed -in silence, and only the walls and towers of the great castle and the -cathedral will keep watch, as they have for five centuries past. This -is Nantes, the great trading port. Up in the town blaze forth the great -hotels that would do credit to Paris, and yet are so different, and -coffee-rooms as splendid and brilliant as any in the capital itself, -with the prices of the portions twenty per cent. less. - -They keep late hours in this part of Nantes, and night does not -actually fall until midnight, when, one by one, up go the coffee-room -shutters,--to come down again in the same order between six and seven -in the morning. This is not bad for a climate which on the Loire -approaches almost Mediterranean mildness. It is a pity that cold and -austere England does not rise a little earlier in the morning. London, -it is true, sits up late enough, but she makes up for it by dawdling -away all the morning up to half-past ten or eleven. - -In spite of all its loveliness and gaiety, Nantes is a city more ancient -than modern,--this antique Namntes, the capital, by preference, of the -Dukes of Brittany, and the political rival of Rennes. - -The old lanes and crossways of the middle ages have disappeared in -making the spacious great streets of our own time, but there is much -left to remind one of other days in the old houses and in the ever -dominant cathedral and castle. - -The Cathedral of St. Pierre is not a masterpiece of itself, but it -encloses a treasure that may well be included in that category,--the -tomb of Duke Francis II. and Margaret of Foix. The great harmony of -this composition, under the half-light of the stained-glass windows, -reveals a charm that most mausoleums altogether lack. On a tablet of -white marble lie the effigies of the duke and duchess, with two angels -kneeling at their heads, and, crouched at their feet, a greyhound, -supporting the escutcheon of Brittany. Four statues, at the corners of -the pedestal, symbolize Justice, Strength, Temperance, and Prudence. -This magnificent tomb is justly counted as Michel Colombe's finest work. - -The castle of Nantes, like that of Angers, is now an arsenal, and -accordingly is less interesting than if it were even a shattered -ruin. It was the castle of the dukes, and the great lodge, a dainty -Renaissance building, with delicately sculptured window-frames and -balconies capriciously disposed, gives an idea of the comfort and luxury -with which pervasive Duchess Anne surrounded herself in the vivid days -when she lived at Nantes. Within the walls of the castle, one might yet -see--were one allowed to ramble over it at will--the chambers where the -odious Gilles of Laval, the Marchal de Raiz, Fouquet, the Cardinal de -Retz, and the Duchess de Berri were imprisoned during the long years -that it served as a cage for the political prisoners of France. Madame -de Svign sojourned here in 1675, so the sombre and yet gay castle, -besides having entertained many of the Kings of France, from Louis XI. -onward, has also somewhat of the aspect of a literary shrine. - -In the courtyard is a great well with an admirably worked decorative -railing in wrought iron, quite worthy to rank with Quintin Matsys's -famous well at Antwerp. The museums of painting and of archaeology, -abounding in rare Breton antiquities, give the town prominence among the -artistic centres of provincial France. The former contains some fine -examples of the work of Philippe de Champaigne, Lancret, Watteau, and -Thodore Rousseau among others. - -The environs of Nantes are wonderfully picturesque for the artist, but -offer little for the amusement of the 125,000 inhabitants of this city -of affairs. - -To the north, the Erdre winds its way through flat banks, and widens out -here and there into a veritable lake. - -From Nantes to the ocean the wind blows more strongly and the horizon -widens; the great waterway of the Loire has already become practically -an arm of the sea, and one breathes its salt air. The aspect of nature -now grows more and more melancholy for the seeker after gaiety and life; -only the artist will revel in these dull brown and gray riverside and -seaside towns, which follow the coast-line from St. Nazaire to Batz, -Croisic, and Gurande. It is what the French themselves call a land of -grayish twilight, with vast stretches of marsh-land and pebble-strewn -sands. - -At the extremity of the north bank of the Loire, at the apex of a bend -of the coast-line, is the Bay of Croisic and the Batz country. - -Like a needle pricking the horizon, the tip of the tower of Croisic -marks the location of this sleepy little port in the flat and saline -marsh-land round about. South lie the lighthouse and the tower of the -ruined church of Bourg de Batz, that little Breton village all but -isolated from the mainland itself. - -It is the true borderland or frontier between the sea and the land, the -one almost imperceptibly mingling with the other. Of it Jean Richepin -sang: - - "Mirage! Sahara! les Bdouins! Un mir - Est venu planter l ses innombrables tentes - Dont les cnes dresss en blancheurs clatantes - Resplendissent parmi les tons bariols - De tapis d'Orient sur le sol tals; - Ses cnes dont les tas de sel sur les ladures, - Et ses riches tapis aux brillantes bordures - Ne sont que les Gabiers, les Fares, les OEillets. - On l'vaporement laisse de gros feuillets - Mtalliques, moirs flottant d'or et de soir. - Par l'tier et le tour qu'un paludier fossoil - La mer entre, s'pand, s'parpille en circuits, - Puis arrive aux bassins...." - -"The sea sells cheap" say the natives, who are mostly engaged in the -salt industry, as one would infer from the foregoing. Competition -has cut considerably into the industry of recovering salt from the -sea-water, but it is still kept up, and these little Breton coast -villages depend upon it, and on fishing, for their sustenance. - -St. Nazaire, where the sea first meets the waters of the Loire, is -quite new, created but yesterday by the march of progress. Tradition -connects the site of this busy port--the seventh in rank among the ports -of France--with the ancient Gallo-Roman port of Corbilon. No trace of -its former appellation exists since the sixth century, when Gregory of -Tours, in the first history of France, mentions the settlement as having -been pillaged by a Breton chief, and refers to it as Vic-Saint-Nazaire, -which nearly approaches its present name. - -In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the market-town was called -Port Nazaire, and was defended by a castle erected by the Dukes of -Brittany. - -[Illustration: <u>_St. Nazaire_</u>] - -Modern navigation has replaced the old sailing-vessels, and to-day, with -its coastwise and foreign trade and its great shipyards, St. Nazaire -is a busy, bustling town. The blemish it has, in the eyes of most, will -be its general aspect of modernity and its uncompromising, right-angled, -straight streets, laid out on a plan which suggests that of Chicago, -if one make an allowance for the difference in magnitude. St. Nazaire -surpasses Chicago, however, in having a sea front, instead of a lake -front, and its hotels are better and cost less. What more should a -passing traveller want of a modern city? - -Between Nantes and St. Nazaire, on the granite flank of Sillon de -Bretagne, sits Savenay, as if its houses were ranged around the steps -of an amphitheatre. It has fallen considerably from its proud position -of having been the flourishing capital of the district. It still is the -largest town, but none of the honours go with its size; decay has fallen -upon it, and the hotels are dull, sad places, and even the omnibus from -the railway has stopped its journeys. - -The town was the site of a terrific conflict in the Vendean wars, -and was well-nigh destroyed, and its inhabitants were massacred. Now -vineyards grow upon the very soil that a hundred or more years ago -covered thousands of corpses. Altogether it is a gruesome memory which -Savenay conjures up, if one dare even to think of it. - -Between Savenay and Gurande, at an equal distance between the two, -are the peat-bogs of Grand Brire. They are the great resources of the -country. Would you see them worked? Then come in August, when you are -making your way to some seacoast resort of Lower Brittany. For nine -days only in the year do the authorities permit the sods to be cut, but -everybody takes part therein, you will be told; and enough peat will be -gathered, and dried, and pressed into "loaves," as the Brirons call -them, to warm Nantes for a year. - -Gurande is a capital not quite so dead and alive as Savenay; it is -the possessor of a past of a most momentous and vivid character in -its relation to the history of Brittany and of France. To-day, as in -other days, the town is avowedly Breton, as characteristically so as -any of its size in the province. Much has been sacrificed to the god -of progress, but enough of the ancient aspect of the place remains to -recall its features of the time of Duguesclin and Clisson, and the -Counts of Montfort and of Blois, who proclaimed peace here in 1365. The -enormous Saint Michael Gate is a great fortress-gateway, flanked with -two cylindrical and conical roofed towers of the time when feudalism -ruled Brittany. - -[Illustration: <u>_Ancient Fortifications of Gurande_</u>] - -"Gurande," says a Frenchman, "has not unlaced its corselet of stone -since the fifteenth century." To-day, even, it is surrounded by its -medival ramparts in a manner like no other northern city in France, -reminding one of those great walled cities of Aigues Mortes and -Carcassonne in Southern Gaul. - -This proud belt of machicolated ramparts, ten towers, and four great -gates, and its deep, though now herbage-grown, moat is indeed one of -the few monuments of the middle ages that remain to us in all their -undisturbed splendour. - -Gurande is not exactly a deserted village, but its streets are, at -midday, as lone and silent as though its population had not been in -residence for many months. This is a notable feature in many small -French towns during the hour and a half of the midday meal, but nowhere -else is it more to be remarked. - -The old parish Church of St. Aubin of Gurande has a collection of -strangely carved capitals depicting horrible chimerical beasts, and -the Chapel of Notre Dame de la Blanche--a fine work of the thirteenth -century--is occasionally the scene of a marriage wherein the -participants dress themselves in the old-time resplendent costumes. Such -an occasion is rare, but should one be fortunate enough to meet with it, -he will carry away still another memory of the medival flavour still -lingering about this somnolent little Breton city. - -Seaward beyond Gurande are only Bourg de Batz and Croisic, a gay -little maritime city with a fine Gothic church of the highly ornamented -species, and many old, high-gabled houses of the variety which one sees -frequently in stage settings. There are the local watering-places, -too, of the Nantais, Ste. Marguerite and Baule, which have nothing of -interest, however, for the traveller who seeks to improve his mind and -amuse himself simultaneously. They are undoubtedly of great healthful -and economic value to Nantes and St. Nazaire, however, and they do not -differ greatly from others of their class elsewhere. - -Again returning to the highroad, if one be travelling by road, "_Vous -prenez le chemin de Vennes" (Vannes) "par la Roche Bernard qui est aussy -celuy de Rhennes et de Rhedon_," wrote a sixteenth-century chronicler, -and the direct road to-day lies the same way. It is known as "National -Road" No. 165. - -Straight as the crow flies, but now up and now down, like all Breton -roadways, this highway runs from Nantes to Quimper, 232 kilometres. - -The aspect of the country changes perceptibly as one leaves Savenay on -the way to the real Brittany. One crosses the Vilaine by the suspension -bridge of La Roche-Bernard, hung so perilously high that the great -three-masted coasters may pass beneath. It is unlovely, but convenient, -and saves a round of fifty kilometres on the journey, as one goes from -Nantes to Vannes, so it may be pardoned. - -[Illustration: <u>_Chteaubriant_</u>] - -Northward lies the very ancient town of Chteaubriant, once the centre -and life of Breton warfare and political strife. It was an ancient -barony of the county of Nantes, and owes its name to the compounding -of the word chteau with that of its original lord, who was named Brient. - -The ancient feudal fortress is now a ruin, but the castle built by -John of Laval, governor of Brittany under Francis I., still serves -the gendarmerie and the sous-prfecture offices. Above the portal of -the colonnade one reads this inscription, which gives the date of the -completion of the new castle: - - DE MAL EN BIEN, DE BIEN MYCVLX - POUR LACHEVER IE DEVINS VIEVLX - 1538 - -Each is most interesting, and so abundantly supplied with the lore of -romance and reality, that one can only get his fill of studying it on -the spot. - -The Church of St. Jean de Br is a historical monument of almost the -first rank, and the remains of the ancient Benedictine convent of St. -Saveur date originally from a foundation of Brient I. - -On the thirteenth and fourteenth of September of each year, on the plain -behind the town, is held the celebrated fair of Br, one of those -great combinations of marketing and merrymaking for which old France -was noted, and which have so largely disappeared that to be a part and -parcel of one is to have a most agreeable experience. Guibray, near -Falaise, in Normandy, the "horse-fair" at Bernay, and the Fair de Br -are the most celebrated in these parts. - -It was in the neighbouring forest, as Pontcalec recites in the pages of -"The Regent's Daughter" of Dumas, that he met his adventure with the -"sorceress of Savenay." - -"I saw an enormous faggot walking along," said Pontcalec to his three -Breton friends. "This did not surprise me, for our peasants carry such -enormous faggots that they quite disappear under their load, but this -faggot appeared from behind to move alone." - -A very good description this of what one may see even to-day, not only -in this particular forest, but in any other in France. French frugality -burns small sticks and twigs that in other lands would be made into -a brushwood fire, and who shall not say that this trait, along with -many others, does not contribute to the contentment of the French -peasant? for he is content, if not amply endowed with this world's -goods; marvellously so as compared with his English, Irish, or Italian -brethren. There may be other reasons, but his thrift is the principal -one. - -Any one seeking change and rest will certainly find what he is looking -for at Chteaubriant. It is somnolently dull all through the week and -doubly so on Sundays, but, in spite of all this, it is delightful, and -a romantic novelist--or even a writer of romantic novels--could hardly -find a more inspiring background than the country round about. - -There is a legend, too, in connection with the old chteau that might be -worked up into a first-class romance, either for the stage or as a sword -and cloak novel. After all, it is not exactly legend either, though it -is almost too horrible to appear true. The reader may judge for himself, -for here it is: - -In the old chteau lived for a time that unfortunate Frances de Foix -whom Francis I. had created Countess de Chteaubriant. To-day much of -the luxury with which this mistress of the royal lover had surrounded -herself has disappeared, though enough remains, through restoration -and preservation, to suggest the very splendid appointments of a -former time. The young Frances de Foix, herself of the house that once -possessed the crown of Navarre, married the old Count of Laval, who -soon brooded himself into a passion of jealousy over the affair of -his wife and her princely lover, particularly as it was said that she -had gone to visit Francis while he was in prison after his capture at -Pavia. "The countess found the king's prison very dismal," said the -chroniclers of the time. This last act proved too much for the elderly -spouse, who speedily "shut up his young wife in a darkened and padded -cell, and finally had her cut into pieces by two surgeons," as the story -goes. After this horrible event the murderer fled the country, as might -have been expected, in order, say the chroniclers again, "to escape the -vengeance of the king." - -Redon, just to the north, is an unattractive place. Most folk know it -only as the railway official calls out: "Forty-five minutes' stop for -luncheon, refreshments, and all the rest." - -Very amusing are these railway lunch-rooms seen throughout France. But -withal they are most excellently appointed, although the passengers, -like their kind the world over, eat as though they had not a minute -to lose, and have a good fifteen left on their hands when they have -finished their repast. - -The meals are usually divided into three categories: the public table at -a set price, the table for the aristocracy at three francs, the table -with set portions, the frugal repast at half as much, and the service -"to order," which is the most costly of all. - -[Illustration] - -Nothing is of an inferior quality, however, and, as all is served -from the same kitchen, it is merely a question as to whether one will -have more or less, or whether he will eat it off linen napery, with -a napkin to tuck under his right ear,--as is the French commercial -traveller's custom,--or whether he will be satisfied with an oilcloth -table-covering. The difference is more apparent than real, for the -"frugal repast" at a franc and a half is the three franc meal shorn of -its trimmings; you get the same dishes and the same service. - -As if to ease the process, a stentorian railway hand puts his head in -the door and shouts: "Ten minutes before the Vannes express starts!" -and returns again at the end of the allotted time to give a final call: -"Into the carriages, gentlemen!" It is much the same the world over, of -course, but they are more polite in France, and the food is better of -its kind, and much better served, two very appreciable differences. - -Redon itself and its great open square, on which are the railway -station, the hotels, and the gaunt, lone, dismembered tower of the -Church of St. Sauveur, is by no means attractive. The square is bare of -trees, and in the summer the sun beats down upon the frequenters of the -terrace coffee-rooms of the hotels in a manner which makes one wonder -why they do not move off and seek a shady spot elsewhere. - -The indifference shown by the natives of certain localities for the -pelting sunlight, which makes some of us think of cabbage leaves for -our hats and "gin rickeys" for our stomachs, is curious. The Neapolitan -prefers to loll about in the blazing Italian sun, and says that no one -but an Englishman or a dog ever seeks the shade. The citizen of Redon is -like him, and does not care who knows it, and his sunlight, though it -comes to earth some hundreds of miles farther north, appears to be of -the same caloric value. - -Redon was an old monastic foundation of St. Convoon's, of the Vannes -church. He built the Abbey of St. Sauveur, of which the present church -and its lone tower are later additions. The main body of the present -edifice dates in part from the time of the foundation, though its fabric -was frequently added to and restored up to the twelfth century, from -which period it may really be said to date. The central tower of this -church is said to be the only Romanesque feature of its class in all -Brittany, and is certainly one of the most sturdy anywhere to be seen. - -Another remarkable feature is a chapel, the walls loopholed and -machicolated, and built by the Abb Yves in the fifteenth century; -to-day it serves as the sacristy. - -The high altar, a rich and imposing affair, was the gift of the great -Richelieu when he was in possession of the revenues of the abbey. The -city was surrounded by a fortification or wall by the Abbot John of -Treal in 1364, and in 1422 John V., Count of Brittany, established a -mint here. - -Questembert, westward toward Vannes, is a town of four thousand or so -inhabitants, and has many interesting old houses, but otherwise is -devoid of attractions either for the lover of architectural monuments or -for worshippers at religious or other shrines. It is, however, the place -for holding many local fairs or markets of considerable magnitude, where -one may make practically his first acquaintance with the Breton peasant, -becoiffed and beribboned as he, or she, only is on native heath. - -Rochefort-en-Terre is also a chief place; as its population numbers -less than seven hundred souls, it cannot be considered as even a -local metropolis. Its situation and its fine, though not stupendously -remarkable, architectural glories make up for what it lacks in the way -of population. It sits high on a hillside dominating the little river -Arz, a confluent of the Vilaine. Its name is due to the founder of -a chteau built here in the thirteenth century and destroyed by the -Catholic Leaguers in 1594, though it was afterwards rebuilt and again -destroyed, this time by Revolutionary firebrands, in 1793. The ruins of -this chteau are to-day very satisfactory indeed as ruins, though they -include few or none of the architectural details with which the work -must once have been endowed. The lower courses of the walls are there, -remains of five towers, and an ancient well, with a curb of sculptured -granite. - -The ancient collegiate Church of Notre Dame de la Tronchaye -is an ecclesiastical monument of high rank, for a town like -Rochefort-en-Terre, and is an altogether lovable old shrine, with -admirable sculptures in stone and some curious wooden statues, in the -interior, said originally to have been those of Claude of Rieux and -Suzanne of Bourbon, Lord and Lady de Rochefort. These statues are now -converted into a St. Joseph and a Virgin. This may or may not have been -a sacrilege; it certainly was a desecration. The ancient city gates -remain, and there are numerous fifteenth and sixteenth century houses. - -The country round about Rochefort-en-Terre was brought into vogue by -the landscape-painter, Pelouze, some years ago, and other artists have -followed in his wake, making an over growing artist colony in the -summer-time. Studies and sketches decorate the dining-room of the Htel -Lecadre in a surprising number; at least surprising to one who comes -upon this unassuming little town and its excellent, before named, little -hotel while journeying to Finistre. - -Still going toward Vannes one passes Elven, near which is the Manoir of -Kerlean, the family estate of _the_ Descartes. The birth certificate of -the Descartes is in the records in the mayor's office. - -Three kilometres to the north are the remains of the ancient fortress -of Largoet, whose tower, known as the Tour d'Elven, dates from the -fifteenth century. This tower has been called the most beautiful castle -keep in all Brittany, and so it is if one take into consideration -its moss-and-ivy-grown walls and its general eerie aspect heightened -perceptibly if seen by moonlight. This high, majestic tower of a feudal -castle, whose other members have practically disappeared, is also a -literary shrine of high rank, inasmuch as Octave Feuillet has placed -here some of the most moving scenes in his "Story of a Poor Young Man." -Perhaps this true romance is not so well known to the present generation -as to a former, but it should be, and accordingly the clue is here -given, and it should have a double significance so far as travellers in -Brittany are concerned. - -[Illustration: <u>_Tour d'Elven_</u>] - -One enters Vannes, if it be a holiday or a Sunday, amid a gaiety and -uproar that is apparently inexplicable. To be sure Vannes is the -metropolis of the Morbihan, but one does not look for such continuous -gaiety on the part of a people supposed to be wholly devout and not very -rich, as possessors of this world's goods count their gains. Devoutness -need not necessarily mean glumness, and so as it all seems, around -Vannes at least, to be for the general good, one is not sorry to have -his first introduction to a great Breton town in a way so pleasant. - -Really it is a sort of small gaiety, and strictly local, which goes on -here. There is nothing of the riotous order, but it is all very gay, -nevertheless. - -The simple folk of the Morbihan, who have crowded into Vannes for the -day, are as interested and amused with a hurdy-gurdy Punch and Judy -show, a travelling circus, or a merry-go-round as if they were the -latest distractions of Paris. Meanwhile one seeks his hotel, and there -comes another surprise. - - - - -CHAPTER III. - -THE MORBIHAN--VANNES AND THE "GOLFE" - - -The "Golfe" or Bay of Morbihan is one of those great landlocked havens -in which the whole Breton coast abounds; its islands are as many as the -days of the year, as the natives have it. - -Morbihan itself is as much sea as land. The tides rise to a great height -along this whole southern coast of Brittany, and in the Bay of Morbihan -they have full play. - -The metropolis of Lower Morbihan is Vannes, which the railway porters -shout out at you, as you descend from the train, as Va-a-a-nnes. - -Leaving the station, one threads his way through whole batteries of -laundresses, their gull-winged head-dress nodding in rhythm with the -beating of their paddles, a most picturesque sight, but a process which -works disaster to one's clothes, destroying pearl buttons, and causing -mysterious small holes to appear in the most inconvenient places. An -accompaniment of song always goes with these shattering and battering -exercises. At Vannes, according to Theodore Botrel, it runs like this: - - "Pan! pan! pan! - Ma Dou! - Comme la langue maudite - Marche bien au vieux lavoit. - Pan! pan! pan! - Vite! vite! - Plus vite que le battoir!" - -It is the day of the local fair, the chief article of commerce being, -it would seem, pigs, as at Limerick. At any rate, there are hundreds, -if not thousands, of little porkers, who have just put foot to earth, -as their venders tell one; their own voices, too, strident and high -pitched, announce the same thing. - -Vannes, truth to tell, is not much of a capital, but it is a highly -interesting and picturesque old town, with manners and customs quite -different from those of any of its neighbours. - -The chief characteristics of the place seem to be pointed roofs of red -and moss-grown tiles and walls of blue granite. One can almost imagine -that Botrel chose it as the scene of the stanza: - - "Qui donc chante sous nos fentres - Ces mystrieuses chansons? - Ce sont les mes des anctres - Qui reconnaissent leurs maisons!" - -[Illustration: <u>_Market-woman, Vannes_</u>] - -There is a blending of the seashore and the open country here which is -scarcely found in any other part of France. In some respects it is like -Holland, and again it is not, for it lacks the web of canals with which -that country is interwoven. - -The whole bay--"Le Golfe"--forms a dooryard for Vannes, and a yacht or a -boat is as much an appendage of the Vannes household of the better class -as a dog or cat. - -[Illustration: <u>_The Country near Vannes_</u>] - -Vannes, the capital of the Morbihan, is a city of 23,000 souls, and has -two great modern, up-to-date hotels. Choose one, and you will "like the -other best," as Rubinstein said to the young pianist, who was to play -two of his compositions to the master. He said this, be it recalled, -after he had heard only the first one. Not that Vannes hotels are really -bad. Oh, no. Truth to tell, they are excellent in their way, but they -are unconvincing. - -When one is here, in the midst of a new, strange set of conditions -of life, he looks for something characteristic about his inn. If he -find it, he is content; if he do not, all the smugness and propriety -of imported manners and customs in the dinner service will not make -him so. The true traveller prefers taking his chances with the native -dishes to trifling with Paris culinary fashions at the hands of a Breton -peasant-chef,--if that is the exact classification one ought to give the -cooks of Vannes. - -To enter Vannes by road, one has come down a precipitous descent to -the sea-level, and accordingly rises again to an equal height when he -leaves, for Vannes is the great tidewater port for the whole of the -south coast of Brittany between Lorient and St. Nazaire. The traffic of -the bays of Morbihan and Quiberon is considerable, and the ceaseless -coming and going of many small steamers and sailing-craft is unlike -traffic elsewhere. - -The great bay is an inland sea almost surrounded by the jutting -peninsulas which terminate on either side of the narrow channel in -Pointe de Kerpenhir and Port Navalo. The name is compounded of two -Breton words, _mor_ (sea) and _bihan_ (little). The flat tree-grown -islands of this little sea make vistas and groups of a unique character, -and to learn the bay well by a voyage among them in a flat-bottomed -skimming-dish of a craft, or by the more facile motor-launch, is a -thoroughly agreeable experience. - -The chief of the islands are the Monks Isle and the Ile d'Arz, but the -enfolding shores of the mainland, with its little seaside-farmyard -villages, have the same characteristics. - -On the little passenger steamers, which ply between the islands and the -mainland, one meets a queer company of peasant-folk in coifs and round -velvet or straw caps, fowls, sheep, goats, and an occasional overgrown -calf. - -Such of the islands of the bay as are populated, and many of them -are, were colonized from the neighbouring country, and the women in -particular are physically admirable. They still wear the distinctive -costume of the country in a spirit uncontaminated by the electric lights -and railways of Vannes. Custom in these isles allows the young women -to demand the hand of a likely swain in marriage, and the plan seems -to work well. The population seems generally happy, prosperous, and -contented. What better is expected as the outcome of marriage? - -The climate of all the Morbihan shore is mild and tranquil at all -seasons of the year, and one may sit beside the open window of his hotel -dining-room throughout the year. The mimosa flowers in winter, and -palms, rose-trees, camellias, and fig-trees prosper exceedingly in the -open air. - -Vannes was the ancient capital of the Veneti, a strong coast tribe of -other days which resisted the invasion of Csar and triumphed against -his fleet a half-century or more before the Christian era. - -When finally the Romans came, they made Vannes the centre of six -great highways which radiated to Corseul, to Angers, to Hennebont, to -Locmariaquer, to Rennes, and to Nantes. From this its importance may be -inferred. - -Christianity came to Vannes in 465, when St. Perpetus, Metropolitan of -Tours, consecrated St. Patern as first bishop. By the sixth century it -had become an independent county, but was joined again to the duchy -of Brittany in 990. John IV. established his habitual residence at -Vannes, and constructed the celebrated Chteau de l'Hermine, with its -constable's tower so famous in the history of Brittany as the place in -which he imprisoned Clisson, releasing him only after the payment of a -heavy ransom. - -The history of Vannes and the Morbihan is too long and stormy to be even -outlined here, but there are still many remains and memories which will -serve as a foundation upon which to build the fabric anew. - -[Illustration: <u>_Ancient City Walls, Vannes_</u>] - -The port is most interesting, with its varied traffic and its great -ships of nearly a thousand tons which thread their way up through the -islands of the gulf, bringing lumber, coals, and all the small cargoes -of a great coasting port. - -At Vannes one may see a huge parti-coloured handkerchief of the -_bandanna_ variety waving before a narrow doorway. It is the "shawl," -the sign of the hair-cutter, who will exchange its fellow for your -hair, if you be a Breton girl with dark brown tresses, or even an -elderly person whose hair is iron-gray. In Lower Brittany, on summer -fair-days, the dealer in hair makes a round exceedingly profitable to -his establishment, though at each stopping-place it leaves a hundred -or more young girls shorn of their crowning glory,--a loss which they -successfully cover with their daintily ironed head-dress. - -The chief of the sights and shrines of the neighbourhood of Vannes are -St. Gildas de Rhuis and the Chteau of Suscino. The former is revered -for its sixth-century monastic foundation of St. Gildas, called the -wise, and for some time in the twelfth century governed by the famous -Abelard. The ancient abbatial church is now the parish church. It dates -from the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries, and is an unusual work in -many respects, and rising to a height of grandeur seldom seen outside -the larger Breton cities and towns. - -[Illustration: <u>_Chteau of Suscino_</u>] - -The castle of Suscino--or more properly the ruin--is a wonderful -thirteenth-century structure on the water's edge, built by John the -Red-haired. It follows the best Gothic traditions of its time, and -its crenelated walls and towers, the latter now unroofed, are perfect -of their kind. It was captured by Charles of Blois, and retaken by his -Montfort rival in 1364. An English garrison occupied it in 1373. Finally -it was given by Anne of Brittany to John of Chalons, Prince of Orange, -from whom it was taken by Francis I., and he presented it to Frances of -Foix, Lady of Chteaubriant, as she then was. The rest of its history is -equally varied, and as important as becomes so magnificent a medival -fortress. - -[Illustration] - -In form the chteau is an irregular pentagon, perhaps modified from -its original plan in 1420. Its orchid machicolations are remarkable -both for their beauty and their utility. Seven towers, of which six -remain, originally flanked its gates and walls. The new tower is a fine -cylindrical keep of the fifteenth century. Over the entrance one still -reads a tablet inscription as follows: - - ICI EST N - LE DUC ARTHUR III. - LE 24 AOT, 1393 - -North of Vannes are Plormel and Josselin, two places which no one -should leave out of the itinerary of Brittany. Neither is easily -accessible by rail, but both are conveniently reached by road. - -Plormel has a railway connection with the line to Brest by way of -Rennes, and another with the line to Brest by way of Vannes, but -Josselin is off the beaten track, and one makes his way from Plormel by -omnibus or in a carriage. - -Plormel and its "pardon" have inspired an opera, one of Meyerbeer's -most celebrated scores, known to English music lovers as "Dinorah," but -in French called "The Pardon of Plormel." The town owes its name to an -anchorite who, in the sixth century, retired here to a hermitage. - -The history of Plormel during the middle ages was stormy. It was here -that the edict expelling the Jews from Brittany was issued in 1240. In -1273 the Comte de Richemont--upon his return from the Crusades--founded -at Plormel the first Carmelite convent known to France. This ancient -convent, situated without the walls, escaped from the disasters which -caused the city to be burned in 1347. The Calvinists came in time to -have a temple here, in which they held two synods of their church. - -To-day Plormel is a sleepy, old-world town, with two good inns, and -not much except the fragmentary reminders of old walls and buildings to -remind one of the parts played in other days. - -The Church of St. Armel, a reconstruction of 1511-1602, is in parts -highly decorated with stone sculptures and strange images, recalling, -says an ingenious, but profane, Frenchman, the "pleasantries of -Rabelais." Of course he refers to the players on the bagpipes, the man -sewing up the mouth of his wife, and the wife tearing off her husband's -cap. Certainly these quaint figures are not born of religious symbolism, -unless, by chance, that the symbolism of the religious builders of -Plormel differs greatly from that of others elsewhere. - -There are still remains of Plormel's old city walls dating from the -fifteenth century, and also a fragment of a tower. - -Near by, on the road to Josselin, is a simple granite shaft perpetuating -the famous "Battle of the Thirty," celebrated in history. - -According to Froissart, Robert of Beaumanoir, chatelain of Josselin, -one day provoked an English captain--Bromborough--who was encamped at -Plormel, and challenged him to battle; thirty of his men against thirty -Frenchmen. At the first attack four Frenchmen and two English fell. -Then the combat began again with swords, battle-axes, and lances. Eight -English only finally remained, including Bromborough himself; all the -others were killed or taken prisoners and led away to the dungeons of -the Chteau de Josselin. - -Froissart writes elsewhere of this same engagement: "Twenty-two years -after the battle of the thirty, I saw at the table of King Charles of -France one of the combatants, a knight called Yvain Charnel. His face -showed that the battle had been hot, for it was scarred all over." - -This wayside column or pyramid just off the route bears the following -inscription: - -[Illustration: <u>_Plormel_</u>] - - LA MEMOIRE PERPETUELLE - DE LA BATAILLE DES TRANTE - QUE MGR LE MARCHAL DE BEAU MANOIR - A GAIGNE DANS CE LIEU L'AN 1530 - -Josselin is now chief town of a commune of 2,500 inhabitants; it has a -fine medival chteau yet inhabitable, two ecclesiastical monuments of -more than unusual excellence, and a rather shaky and ill-situated inn -(Htel de France), which makes up in the abundance and excellence of its -fare for what it lacks in the way of electric lights and modern sanitary -arrangements. - -The first houses of Josselin were grouped around a miraculous effigy -of the Virgin, known as Notre Dame du Roncier, because it was found -beneath a blackberry-bush. To-day Notre Dame du Roncier, the church and -the chapel and its statue of the Virgin, are venerated highly by the -faithful who make the pilgrimage to the shrine on the Monday and Tuesday -of Pentecost and on the eighth of September, the birthday of the Virgin, -when the remains of her ancient statue are shown. This effigy was broken -and burned in the Revolutionary fury of 1793, but a modern replica was -crowned, in the Chapel Notre Dame du Roncier, in 1868. The settlement -which grew up around the shrine was surrounded by a protecting wall by -the Count of Guthnoc in 1008, and in 1030 it was given the name of -Josselin, after his son. - -[Illustration: <u>_Shrine of St. Etienne, Josselin_</u>] - -In the thirteenth century, the county of Porhoet, in which Josselin was -situated, passed to the house of Fougres, and its affairs were varied -and involved until Peter of Valois, Count of Alenon, sold it to the -Constable Oliver of Clisson, whose daughter brought it in marriage to -the Rohans, to whose descendants it still belongs. - -In the Church of Our Lady of the Blackberry-bush is a remarkable tomb -placed in the Chapel of St. Marguerite--the former oratory of the -constable--to Oliver of Clisson and Marguerite of Rohan. - -The castle rests on a rocky foundation beside the river Oust, and its -front is most imposing. Three towers with conical roofs flank the -riverside, and are an expression of the best fortress-chteau building -of its era (twelfth century), severe and gaunt in every line, and yet -beautifully planned. The interior court takes on quite a different -aspect, that of the "_architecture civile_" of the third ogival period, -when Renaissance forms and details had crept in, almost destroying -Gothic lines. - -The window openings of the two stories have an admirable decorative -effect, as beautiful as those of Blois and very nearly equalling those -of Chambord. - -An open gallery above the windows is a charming additional -interpolation, and between each window is carved "A Plus," the device -of the distinguished family of the Rohans, who built this part of the -structure. A keep and some later walls and parapets were added by -Clisson somewhere about the year 1400, but most of them disappeared in -1629, when the chteau ceased to be a stronghold of the League. - -In the main it is a twelfth and thirteenth century structure which is -so admirably preserved to-day. One may visit the interior, through the -courtesy of the family in residence, and, though it may be somewhat -disconcerting to walk through these historic apartments of another -day and see such modern innovations as electric bells and other -appurtenances of a late civilization, the experience is, after all, -a peep behind the curtain, and this the up-to-date motor-car tourist -always appreciates highly. - -The great hall, the library, with its magnificent chimneypiece and -its cipher, "A Plus," carved in stone, and the dining-room ornamented -with a modern equestrian statue of Clisson, by Fremiet, are the chief -apartments shown. - -[Illustration: <u>_Chteau de Josselin_</u>] - -In the court within the walls is an ancient well surrounded by an -elaborate forged iron railing. - -One takes the road again, by the way of Locmin and Baud, for Auray, the -most dainty and charming of all Breton market-towns, passing through a -delightfully picturesque country of rolling hills and deep valleys and -fir forests, studded here and there with lakelets. - -Locmin, which derives its name from _Locmenec'h_ (monk's cell), was the -site of a monastery founded in the sixth century by St. Colomban. It was -burned by the Normans in the ninth century, after the pleasant custom of -these invaders, and restablished in 1006 by Geoffrey, Duke of Brittany, -as a priory attached to the Abbey of St. Gildas of Rhuis. - -In the present church of Locmin is a chapel dedicated to St. Colomban, -containing a painting representing scenes from the life of the saint; -others are carried out in the coloured glass of the windows. - -One reads the following,--a supplication on behalf of the dangerous -madmen who at one time occupied two cells beneath the pavement: - - "St. Colomban, patron of Locmin, pray for us! - St. Colomban, help of idiots, pray for us!" - -Behind the church is an elaborate ossuary dating from Renaissance times, -when these adjuncts to burial-grounds were so plentifully scattered -over Brittany. - -Baud has an enormous parish church of the time of Louis XIV., with a -fine Gothic arcade and a great crucifix standing beside the outer wall. -Aside from this, there is not much else here to attract one, unless he -be a pilgrim affected with disease of the eye. If he be, and if he bathe -in the "Fontaine de la clart," and the fates be propitious, and he be -not too far gone otherwise, and everything else be as it should, he will -be cured forthwith--perhaps. - -It is unkind to scoff at these miraculous fountains scattered here and -there over the world, of course, but one has seen so many individual -cases that were not benefited, and heard of so many that were, that one -may be justified in a little skepticism. - -To Auray is twenty kilometres by a road which gently rolls down a matter -of 150 metres of elevation until it reaches sea-level at the little -market-town seaport known in Breton as Alre. - - - - -CHAPTER IV. - -AURAY AND THE MEGALITHIC MONUMENTS OF MORBIHAN - - -Auray is the real centre from which to make the round of the vast -collection of relics of the long lost civilization of Morbihan. - -Many have attempted to explain the significance of these rude stone -monuments. Some have said that the famous avenues of Carnac were the -streets of one of Csar's camps, its roofs having fallen and mouldered -away, and that the famous "Merchants' Table" at Locmariaquer was an -ancient druidical altar, to which the helpless were led to be sacrificed. - -All this and much more is for the antiquary alone, and a nodding -acquaintance with the history of these curious stone formations or -erections is about all for which most travellers will care. - -He who arrives at Auray on a market-day will seem to himself to come -into a region where every one speaks the Breton tongue. Not all, of -course, for French is now compulsory with the school-children, but the -frequency of it here in the booths and stalls in and around Auray's -lovely old timbered market-house is greatly to be remarked. - -It is a question if this same market-house be not quite the most -theatrical-looking thing of its kind in all France. It is for all -the world like a successful piece of stage carpentry, with a great -spectacular stairway running up into its garret above, quite in the -manner that one has seen upon the stage over and over again, when the -heroine or the villain--it does not much matter which--escapes from his, -or her, pursuers. Low built, heavily raftered, and with a leaky roof -allowing rays of sunlight to dribble through into the gloom within in a -most entrancing manner, this old market-house is the centre of the life -and activity of the place for fifty-two Mondays in each year. - -Within and without the walls of the market-house is gathered the most -varied conglomeration of wares imaginable. Beside the draper's counter -are baskets of vegetables, eggs, or fish. A poor little calf, tied by -the legs and lying at full length on the ground, keeps company with his -former farmyard neighbours, the ducks and geese, but on either side is a -second-hand collection of ironmongery and old shoes, and it should be -the envy of the provident, for two sous buy anything in the collection. - -[Illustration: <u>_Interior of Market-house, Auray_</u>] - -The country-side Breton peasant who comes to Auray on a market-day is -the glass of fashion of his race, his jacket embroidered in braid of gay -colours, and velvet bands on his sleeves and collar. His shirt is high -and stiffly starched, and his felt hat or cap heavily hung with velvet -ribbons. The womenfolk are clad in equally spectacular fashion, with -high white caps and full-sleeved bodices, each with a black velvet band -around the sleeve, and full gathered skirts, spoiling all symmetry of -form as nature made it. - -The history of Auray, from the days when it belonged to John of Auray, -grand huntsman of Brittany, has left its mark in the annals of the -country in no indefinite manner. John of Montfort, the Counts of Blois, -Duguesclin, and many others stalk through its pages of history until -finally, in the wars of religions, it was held by the Catholic army -and the Spaniards in turn. Its old chteau, whose foundations now form -the fine Promenade du Loc, dates from the eleventh century; and it was -reconstructed and enlarged two centuries later, finally to disappear, -as the result of an order for its demolition given by the castle -destroyer, Henry II., in 1558. - -[Illustration: <u>_Shrine of St. Roch, Auray_</u>] - -The port of Auray is more daintily and charmingly environed than most -seaports. As it lies between the wooded, deep-cut banks of the little -river, its intermingling of ships and salt water, and country-side, and -sailor lads and rustic maidens, and all the motley population of the -little town, is a marvellous thing to see. - -The smack of antiquity is about it all, and the historic legend of its -shrine of St. Anne--which lives as vividly to-day as ever it lived--most -touchingly connects the present with the past. - -One of the most celebrated, and certainly the most largely attended, -of all the "pardons" of Brittany is that held at St. Anne of Auray, -though Auray itself is something more than a mere place of religious -pilgrimage, and a good deal more than a wayside station on the railway -line where one leaves the train and hires a carriage for Carnac and -Quiberon, though apparently not many tourists know it. In the first -place, it is one of the largest and most characteristic of all the -little Breton market-towns, is a deep-water port of a considerable size, -and has a hotel which supplies one with the most ample and delightful -meals that the traveller will find westward of Nantes. - -This may be a mundane standard by which to judge of an old-world town's -appeal to interest, but it is all-sufficient, and the most marvellous -attractions the world may have to offer will hardly be appreciated by -a travel-worn and hungry traveller, and such should plan to arrive in -town for the Monday dinner at the Golden Lion; also he should not hurry -through the town merely for the sake of visiting the shrine of St. Anne, -which is tawdry enough in its general aspect, except when it is thronged -on the great days of the "pardon," March seventh and July twenty-fifth. - -The great festival of the Pardon of St. Anne of Auray is held in July, -on the birthday of St. Anne, the mother of the Virgin Mary. Its origin -dates back to 1623, when a peasant of the country-side, one Yves -Nicolazic, was commanded by St. Anne, who appeared to him in a vision, -to found a chapel in her honour in the fields of Bocenno, where, she -said, an ancient shrine had existed nearly a thousand years earlier. -Guided by explicit directions and a mysterious star, Yves found a -precious image, which ultimately was transported and set up anew in -the church built at Auray. This miraculous statue was lost during -the Revolution, but a fragment was preserved and is included in the -present shrine, which is surrounded by a modern edifice dating from the -mid-nineteenth century. - -Near by is the miraculous fountain, which, like others of its kind -elsewhere, is exceedingly erratic as to the miracles it performs. It -was beside this fountain, then but a humble little rock-gushing spring, -but now neatly set about with a concrete basin, that St. Anne first -appeared to Yves. - -Each year, by train, by boat, by country cart, and on foot, pilgrims -come from miles around, many of them camping out the night by the -roadside, all, in spite of the solemn purport of their pilgrimage, in -the gayest spirits. There is always a certain amount of discord to be -encountered at all these great festivals,--beggars, deformed or ill -with incurable disease, crippled or what not, all expectant of reaping -a thriving harvest from the simple-minded frequenters of the shrine. -Whether deserving or not, all of them appear to receive liberal alms, -for the custom of giving alms is as much a component part of the -event as any of the other observances, nor is it ever frowned upon or -curtailed by the religious or civic authorities. - -The order of the day includes the massing of the pilgrims at open-air -services, the placing of candles before the shrine, the inspection of -the relics of the saint, the drinking of, or bathing in, the miraculous -fountain, and sermons and admonitions uncounted, all in the Breton -tongue, incomprehensible to outsiders, but to be taken as salutary. The -great feature is the procession of priests and pilgrims, the former -in their brilliant vestments, many of the latter bearing tall, gaudily -coloured candles and gay silken banners. Grouped around each banner -will be found the Breton men and women from a particular section, each -group differently clad from those of other sections, but all gay with -brilliant colouring. - -"Saint Anne, pray for us!" is the cry one would hear were it in English, -or "_Sainte Anne, priez pour nous_" in French; in Breton, its sadness is -indescribable, more like the wail of a _banshee_ than anything else. - -Usually the Bishop of Vannes delivers an exhortation, in the Breton -tongue, of course, from the top of the Holy Steps, after which the -throng--or, at least, such as are truly and sincerely devout--climb to -the top on their knees. According to the printed notice at the foot, -each step mounted on the bended knee, accompanied of course by a prayer, -is good for a nine years' absolution of a soul in purgatory. In the -cloister behind the church is a great crucifix, in which the peasant -pilgrims stick pins, each recording a prayer said or a vow made. - -On the night of July twenty-sixth, St. Anne's Day, a grand torchlight -procession marches. The "Marche aux Flambeaux," a celebrated painting -by Jules Breton, now owned in America, well shows the effect of one of -these great demonstrations, except that it lacks the weirdness of the -sombre background of night itself. - -This ends the great days of the pardon, but throughout the year pilgrims -make their way to the shrine to say a prayer, or to drink or bathe in -the waters of the fountain, or perhaps to carry a jugful home to some -bedridden member of their families. - -Among the offerings in fulfilment of vows made at the shrine of Ste. -Anne d'Auray are a number of very ancient inscriptions, such as the -following best illustrate: - -"William Genin, bitten by a mad dog, vowed himself to St. Anne and -obtained a perfect cure in 1631." - -"Helen Sausse, abandoned by her mother, vomited a two-headed snake and -recovered her health." - -On the way from Auray to Plouharnel, Carnac, Quiberon, and Locmariaquer -are worth one day or three, accordingly as one may feel inclined. The -distance is not great; a dozen kilometres will cover the journey out, -and a little more circuitous return route will take in a half-dozen or -more old centres of a civilization of which all knowledge is lost in -the night of time. - -Whatsoever the great megalithic monuments of Carnac may mean, certain it -is that they tell--or could tell if one could feel sure he understood -it correctly--a story quite out of keeping with the manners and customs -of to-day. Like the tall, gaunt windmills plentifully besprinkled -hereabouts, these great stones rear their heads skyward in fashion most -strange. Long rows of them, like files of soldiers, or like the trees of -the forest, stand to-day for the curious to marvel at, as they stood so -long ago that their origin is not to be definitely traced. - -[Illustration: <u>_The Lines of Carnac_</u>] - -[Illustration: <u>_The Lines of Carnac_</u>] - -Of the Lines of Carnac, as the strange population of -tombstone-looking monoliths is known, much has been written by -antiquaries, archologists, and geologists ever since the tide of travel -set this way. What these stones actually mean--some thousands of them -in all, set out in regular rows--only a vain, presumptuous person could -answer. They offer a prospect of a strange grandeur, for they really -are grand, if not stupendous, and, as they stretch away in long, silent -lines almost to the horizon, they are as phantoms looming to-day out of -the mysterious past to which they belong. - -There are three great companies of these menhirs here. Those of Mnec, -composed of 1,169 members in eleven ranks; of Kermario, 1,120 members -in ten rows; and of Kerlescan, thirteen rows made up of 579 individual -stones. - -Carnac has another ancient monument in the tumulus of Mont St. Michel, -which, like other elevations bearing the same name, is a sky-nearing -little peak of land which supposedly formed a firm earthly foothold for -the archangel. - -The parish church of Carnac is dedicated to St. Cornly, who, according -to legend, lived in the neighbourhood and was many times saved from -an untimely death by the oxen of the region. Just how this was -accomplished no one seems to know, but enough of the tradition still -lives to inspire a grand celebration on the saint's day, the thirteenth -of September, when many animals are offered up to him, as one learns -from the kindly, tall-coifed guardian of the church. - -[Illustration: <u>_Map of Carnac and the Surrounding Country_</u>] - -The painted ceilings of the Church of St. Cornly are remarkable works -of art, if not for their excellence, at least for their ingenuity. The -north porch is an astonishing Renaissance addition, which, from its -curves and curls, would seem to be the precursor of "_l'art nouveau_." - -To the westward of Carnac, at the shore-end of the peninsula of -Quiberon, is Plouharnel, another centre around which are grouped many -curious stone monuments. - -The Chapel of Our Lady of the Flowers is a singularly beautiful small -church built of the granite of the country. It contains a notable -bas-relief in alabaster in the form of what is known in ecclesiastical -art as a "Jesse Tree." - -Just why the promoters of a railway had the temerity to push it to the -very end of the snake-like peninsula of Quiberon is a problem which will -ever remain unsolved so far as the general public is concerned. Stendhal -has written some gloomy views of scenes enacted at Fort Penthivre, -half-way down the peninsula, and Victor Hugo wrote of the same times -(now a hundred years ago): - -"_Mourir plus d'un soldat son prince fidle, un prtre fidle son -Dieu._" - -The aspect of this long, narrow peninsula is everywhere the same, from -its juncture with the mainland to the sandy point fifteen kilometres -away, from which one sees the flash of the twinkling light on Belle Ile. - -Quiberon has what may almost be called an ideal hotel, except that it -is unworldly and not the least new. A travelling salesman, whom we met -at Auray, told us that it was kept by an old cook, one of the Vatels -of the stove. Simple and modest, but clean withal as the proverbial -door-step of Holland, it is one of those inns that the traveller loves -out of sheer inability to find fault with it. - -Quiberon has two ports, Port Haliguen and Port Maria, both in danger -of becoming popular seaside resorts, for the guide-books are already -describing them as places where the sojourn will be agreeable for -persons of simple habits. - -The fish-market of Quiberon is one, if not the chief, of its sights for -the student of manners and customs. "_Cinq lubines pour douze francs -et deux cent quarante maquereaux pour trente-un francs_" was the way -the market ran on the occasion of the visit of the author, all of which -argues that Quiberon is a good place for the fish to come. - -[Illustration: <u>_Quiberon_</u>] - -The lobsters, too, are a great feature of the trade here, and are sold -by their length, measuring from the eye up to the first scale of their -tails. An average price is rather over four sous, and Paris takes the -best of the lot. They travel first-class and by express, the lobsters -of Quiberon, when they take their first and last voyage to the "shining -city," and there are plenty of friends awaiting them at the station. -They invariably arrive at the fish-market for the earliest sales, and at -noon the epicure may eat them at Marguery's, which sounds like a French -version of the "Alice in Wonderland" tale. - -One hour from Quiberon, by a tiny steamboat, and one finds himself -skirting the cliff walls surrounding and sheltering the little port and -town of Palais on Belle Ile, overlooked by the powerful citadel built by -Vauban, who, as the fortress-builder of France, stood in his profession -where Napoleon did in his. - -This "_plus belle le de l'ocean_" has forty-eight kilometres of -coast-line, and every one of them has been so cut and serrated by -the action of the waves that the island would form a veritable ocean -graveyard were it situated on the direct line of travel by sea. - -For the most part, visitors content themselves with making an excursion -to the northerly end of the island, a visit to the apothecary's grotto, -and another to the lantern of the great lighthouse, which at night sends -its electric rays far out to sea. - -What tourists may not do is to roam over the old citadel now occupied -as a national fort, and this is a pity, for there they might conjure up -a reminder of other days that would be like a chapter out of Dumas. - -The citadel was built by Marshal de Retz in 1572, and was the refuge of -the cardinal of the same name when he fled from Nantes in 1653. Not far -away is the Chteau Fouquet. Nicholas Fouquet, Marquis of Belle Ile, -was Superintendent of Finance under the regency of Anne of Austria, -and continued the important office after the accession of Louis XIV. -The consensus of opinion is that Fouquet was insinuating, specious, -hypocritical, and sensual. It was at the great fte given by Fouquet at -Vaux that the king planned his arrest, "fearing he would escape to Belle -Ile," then thought to be an impregnable fortress. Both in the pages of -the historians and in the romances of Dumas one may read the story. - -Belle-Ile-en-Mer, also, was made the home of Aramis after Dumas had -given him episcopal rank. The minute details given in "Le Vicomte de -Bragelonne" would form an admirable supplement to any guide-book. - -The great Sara Bernhardt has of recent years made her home on this -barren and desolate isle. It is not altogether desolate, however, for -there are hotels at Palais and Sauzon, and tourists, solitary and in -droves, are continually making excursions thither in the season from the -neighbouring Breton coast, from Vannes, Quiberon, or Lorient. - -Although Belle Ile is only a pin-head on most maps of France, it has a -considerable population. Palais is a town of five thousand souls, and -Sauzon counts something over sixteen hundred, and so Belle Ile, being -only about 21,000 acres in extent, is a very thickly populated part of -the globe. - -Returning to the mainland, a call at Locmariaquer is inevitable, if one -be a true and genuine traveller, even if it be "out of the world," which -virtually it is, being at the tip end of another peninsula like that of -Quiberon. - -The town itself owns to fifteen hundred or more souls, and all of them -look prosperous and contented. Where all of them get their livelihood, -it is difficult to see, for there is not much intercourse with the -outside world. - -Locmariaquer has not even a railway, as Quiberon has, but lies twenty -kilometres or so south of Auray, almost at the mouth of Morbihan Bay. -The church of Locmariaquer is a fine twelfth-century work, but the -foundation of the little town lies much farther back in antiquity than -this. It was the ancient Doriorigum of the Romans. - -The Chapel of St. Michel is built up from the Roman remains of a -structure known as _er c'hastel_. - -The great celebrities of Locmariaquer are, however, those members -of the great family of menhirs, dolmens, and cromlechs with which -this part of Morbihan is so thickly strewn. The chief of these are -the dolmen known as Man-Lud, Mountain of Ashes, of vast dimensions -and having a grotto beneath it. Not far off is a tumulus and another -dolmen known as Dol-er-Groh, an enormous stone table or altar. Another -is known as Man-er-H'roeck, the stone of the fairies; it is quite -seventy feet long, or was, for it now lies full length on the ground -broken into four pieces. The finest and best preserved of all is the -Dol-ar-Marc'hadouiren, the Merchants' Table. It is hard to see just the -significance of the name given to these three huge stones, but they form -a wonderfully impressive monument of days gone by, nevertheless. - -The most beautiful dolmen known, whatever that description may really -mean (the local renter of boats calls it such: "_le plus beau dolmen -connu_"), can be visited only by boat. It is on an island in the gulf, -and is known as the Gavr'inis. - -La Trinit, "a little village on the very edge of the sea"! This is a -description which exactly fits what the natives and the railway powers -like to think is a watering-place. It is something like one, to be sure, -but the influx of strangers during the summer months has never been so -great as to obliterate or even to deaden the local colour. Its little -harbour is lively with fishing-boats, and occasionally gay, when the -boats are "dressed" for some great festival, but nothing of blatant -bands and riotous crowds mars the quietness and sweetness of La Trinit, -and accordingly it is a place to be remembered. - -Sometimes the sterility of the soil round about causes real distress -among the small farming peasants; "one cannot live on fish alone," they -say. - -There is a local benefactress who, when crops are poor and meagre, gives -the whole of her own harvest gathered from an unusually ample holding -to her more distressed neighbours. This is a true and practical charity -that does not smack of smugness or pretence as do many acts questionably -classed under that head. It is a singularly expressive exemplification -of what the French know as "good socialism," and one hears much of it at -La Trinit and in its neighbourhood. - -Taking to the road again, on the way to Auray, one passes another of -those curious granitic formations. This time it comes down more near -our own day, and is called the "St. Tiviro's hat." It does not look the -least like the saint's hat, any more than the "devil's seats" and the -"old men of the mountains," scattered about the world, look like what -they are called--but let that pass. Legend connects this rock with a -certain St. Tiviro, who one day lost his hat, which ultimately turned to -stone. It does not seem plausible, and it is a pointless story indeed, -but it gives a small child the opportunity to point it out for a penny, -which most folk will not grudge. - - - - -CHAPTER V. - -MORBIHAN--LORIENT AND ITS NEIGHBOURHOOD - - -Three towns of Morbihan little known, still less visited by travellers -in Brittany, lie within a comparatively small area just north of the -coast, and their names are Lorient, Hennebont, and Pont Scorff. - -The very name Lorient will appeal to many. It suggests the great -trade with the East, in full swing in the seventeenth and eighteenth -centuries, when the town grew up as a necessary part of a vast commerce. -Some of the old-time romantic picturesqueness of the shipping has -disappeared, and the Hotels "Royal Sword" and "White Horse" have given -way to the Hotels "Modern" and "of France," with electric lights and -sheds for motor-cars, but there is still a distinguishing excellence to -be remarked which makes Lorient a place well worth visiting. - -It was in the seventeenth century that an association of Breton -merchants, who were carrying on the trade with the East Indies, -first built their warehouses here. The traffic grew to proportions so -considerable that Louis XIV. ultimately gave letters patent for the -foundation of a new and grander East India Company. - -The company erected ship-houses here, and the name Lorient was given to -the settlement, which was fast growing to a prime importance among the -ports of France. An English fleet, under Admiral Lestock, landed some -six or seven thousand men in the bay of Poldu, at twelve kilometres west -of Lorient, and marched upon the town as a revenge for certain attacks -upon British interests in the East. - -The English met with no great triumph here, but Louis XV. was -indifferent enough to allow many of the French settlements in the Indies -to be taken, and this led to the rapid decadence of the great East India -Company and its port. Napoleon resuscitated it, as he did many another -decaying institution in France, and developed the industry of the port -to such an extent that Lorient became one of the principal maritime -towns of France. Its past history sounds romantic enough, but there is -little of romance about the life of its streets and wharves to-day; -instead, there is activity not admitting even the thought of romance. -Jangling gongs of tram-cars, the puffing of locomotives, and the -shrieks of the sirens, to say nothing of the accompaniment of belching -chimney-stacks and the sound of the riveting hammers in the great -shipyards, all testify that Lorient is living in the age of progress. - -Local sights, outside this marvellous exposition of modern spirit, are -few. There is a municipal museum, containing some good modern pictures, -many of them of Breton subjects, but there are no ecclesiastical or -architectural monuments worthy of remark. The commercial harbour and the -dockyard are decidedly the most interesting features. Within the walls -of the latter is the parade-ground, which serves as a fine promenade -for the population of Lorient when the military band plays on summer -evenings. - -The roadstead of Lorient is a great deep-water harbour, which can -shelter the largest ships afloat. It is guarded by six great lights, -one of them in the cupola of the Church of St. Louis. This is one of -the very few instances where a great city church is a mariner's beacon, -besides performing its other functions on behalf of lost souls. - -Opposite Lorient is Port Louis, founded a century before its bigger -sister. Anciently it was known as Blavet, but took its present name in -honour of Louis XIII. Its walls were begun in 1652. - -In the immediate neighbourhood of Lorient and Port Louis are many -delightful little seaside places, hardly popular resorts in any sense -of the word, but all the better for that, where one may get such views -of sea and shore and shipping of all ranks as is hardly to be found -elsewhere on the Breton coast. - -Up the little river Blavet, at the head of deep-sea navigation, is -Hennebont, a most delightfully disposed little place, which has been -called the pearl of the Blavet. Like most of the tidal rivers of France, -the Blavet, on its lower reaches, offers about the most paintable of all -landscapes imaginable. This, with the Auray, the Aven, the Scorff, and -the Elle, would prove a sketching-ground quite inexhaustible, in the -variety of its moods, to the artist of an average length of life. - -[Illustration: <u>_Hennebont_</u>] - -Hennebont, which has eight thousand or more inhabitants and a delightful -inn, electric-lighted though it be, is divided into the new town and the -fortified town. It sits beside the river's bank, and crosses on a bridge -of three arches. Above, the river dwindles to a mere rivulet, but below -the incoming tides will bring craft of a tonnage of three hundred -or more straight to the heart of the town. A tonnage of three hundred -does not mean much to the travellers by twenty-thousand-ton steamships, -but assuredly when one sees one of these little craft, with their three -slender square-rigged masts, by the soft light of the full moon, in the -little Breton port of Hennebont, it looks like the phantom ship, whose -masts and spars "cross the moon like prison bars." - -Hennebont derives its name from the Breton words for old bridge. The -first lord of the place, Huelin of Hennebont, lived in 1037. The -fortified town was, of course, the earlier foundation, the new town only -coming into existence in the sixteenth century, when the great Church of -Our Lady of Paradise was still in the open country. - -Trade follows the flag, but habitations follow the church, and so, when -this great Gothic edifice was built in 1513-30, it began to draw the -houses of the city dwellers around it, and now the fortified town is -practically non-existent except as a quarter. - -This church is a wonder-work of its kind, considering its great size, -its graceful lines, and its ornamental Gothic spire, rising to a height -which must approximate three hundred feet. - -The ancient ramparts of the old fortified town appear here and there -along the river-bank, in the well-preserved gateway which one passes -on the left after leaving the river on the way to the church, and in -yet another fragment--a great circular tower--in the courtyard of the -aforesaid excellent Htel de France. - -The old castle of Hennebont, of which something more than fragments -still remain, saw the death of Comte Charles of Blois, who, escaping -from his dungeon in one of the towers of the old Louvre at Paris, came -here in 1345. One may read in Froissart of the defence of Hennebont by -Jeanne of Montfort in 1342. - -There are many old gabled houses at Hennebont, most fantastic in form, -one of which, bearing the inscription, "LE LEVIC, 1600," is -perhaps the most ancient of any built without the walls of the fortified -town. - -The great fortified gateway, which gives access to the old citadel, is -a fine ogival work flanked by two massive machicolated towers. This old -district is quite the most curious and unworldly feature of this little -city by the Blavet. - -It is a veritable town of the middle ages, yet unspoiled and quite as it -was in the olden days, when its sturdy walls gave protection against -the invader, and its great gates opened only upon the orders of the -governor. - -In suburban Hennebont, scarce a kilometre away, on the left bank of -the Blavet, are to be seen the remains of the old Abbaye de la Joie, -a famous establishment of the monks of the Cistercian order. It was -founded in the thirteenth century by Blanche of Champagne, wife of John -the Red-haired. One still sees her statue in wood and bronze, but the -conventual buildings themselves have come to base uses, and are now a -horse-breeding establishment. - -Pont Scorff, so far as its situation is concerned, resembles Hennebont. -It spans the tiny river Scorff, and the views along the banks are in -every way equally delightful with those on the Blavet. Pont Scorff, -however, has not the magnitude or the antiquity of Hennebont, and its -two parts are known as the upper town and the lower town. - -The most ancient building here is the Chapel of St. John of the old -commandery of St. John du Faout; it dates at least from the thirteenth -century. There is a fine Renaissance house in the little public square, -called the House of the Princes. It is richly decorated and has a fine -series of dormer windows and a row of pilasters bearing the symbols of -the Rohan family. There is another ancient house, formerly belonging, -it is believed, to the Templars. The parish Church of St. Albin dates -only from 1610, and is in no way a remarkable work. - -The Chapel of Notre Dame de Kergornet, a fifteenth-century edifice near -by, is a place of pilgrimage for the Breton nurses, that great race of -foster-mothers who care for the thousands of Parisian children in the -Bois, or the gardens of the Tuileries, or the Luxembourg. - -From this point, as one journeys westward, he leaves pretty much all -France behind him. The modern Department of Finistre, the "Land's -End" of the French, is all that lies between him and the vast heaving -Atlantic. - - - - -CHAPTER VI. - -FINISTRE--SOUTH - - -At Quimperl one makes his first acquaintance with that part of -the Armorican peninsula known to-day on the maps of France as the -Department of Finistre. This charming little town is of itself of great -importance, as marking the dividing-line between the dialect of Vannes -and that of the western peninsula. There is no great difference to be -noted by the casual traveller, since all of the younger population speak -the French tongue,--sometimes exclusively,--but there is an unmistakable -modification of manners and customs toward the more theatrical aspect -which one best sees at Pont Aven, Pont l'Abb, and the little fishing -villages around the Bay of Douarnenez. - -Of the women of Quimperl much has been remarked by all who have ever -lingered within its walls. They are "superb in type, elegant and -gracious," we were told by a French artist who had set up his easel on -the quay. But there is no need to tell anybody; even a woman-hater would -remark it. Certainly this is as good an entrance to a new and strange -land as heart could desire. - -Quimperl lies on both sides of the little river Elle, which, like -the other streams of the South Breton coast, is a special variety of -waterway quite unlike their more pretentious brothers and sisters -elsewhere. The country round about has been called the "Arcadia of -Lower Brittany," and so it will strike even the least observant of -travellers--after he has recovered from the effects of the glances of -those elegant and gracious females. - -The most ancient part of the little city is that known as the walled -town, grouped around the ancient Abbey of Holy Cross, on that tongue of -land which separates the Isole and the Elle. The escarpment is badly -built up, but withal it is ruggedly picturesque, abounding in old -houses, some of which have stood since the thirteenth century. - -[Illustration: <u>_Quimperl_</u>] - -The site of the old Abbey of Holy Cross was known in the sixth century -as Anaurot, and became the refuge of one of the Breton Kings of -Cambria, who, abdicating, came here and built a hermitage, which in -time was converted into an abbey of Benedictines. This old Abbey -of Holy Cross, as it exists to-day, has a ground-plan which more -nearly follows that of a four-armed cross than any other extant in -Christendom. The same motive doubtless inspired its builders as that -which induced the architects of Charlemagne to erect that famous round -church at Aix-la-Chapelle, which in reality it greatly resembles in -general features; both went back to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at -Jerusalem for their initial idea. - -This church at Quimperl is one of the three or four in all Brittany -having a crypt, and it is more amply endowed with interior furnishings -and fitments than many a grander edifice. Altogether it is an -ecclesiastical monument of the first importance. - -It has a companion, moreover, of no mean rank, either, in the Church of -St. Michael, which sits high on the hilltop and dominates nearly every -vista of the town. - -After a tempestuous past extending from the monastic foundation of -the sixth century, Anaurot, or Quimperl as it had become meantime, -surrendered to Duguesclin in 1373. Finally, when a treaty had been -signed with the League as to future neutrality, the city walls were -demolished (in 1680), and Quimperl settled down to a peaceful -existence, which is only broken on the year's great feast-days, or on -the days of the pardons,--that of the Passion in March, the Pardon of -the Birds on Whit-Monday, the second day of May, or the last Sunday of -July. - -One or the other of these dates should be made to correspond with one's -itinerary, when one will see the real Lower Breton as he seldom appears -outside a picture. Near Quimperl is the little coast station of Pouldu, -where figtrees, the hydrangea, and other plants of the Midi bloom -throughout the year. - -Needless to say that it may some day become a really popular and -populous seaside resort, with casinos and alleged Hungarian bands, -but that day may be far distant, and any one looking for an unspoiled -seaside resting-place need not hesitate to go out of his way to give -a glance to this altogether delightful little port of Pouldu. There -is nothing like it, nothing so unaffected and unspoiled, on the whole -Breton coast. On the way to Pouldu one passes the important ruins of the -ancient Abbey of St. Maurice, founded in 1170 by the Duke Conan IV., and -the place where Maurice--a monk of Langonnet since become sainted--was -buried in 1191. In part, this fine ruin dates from the thirteenth -century, to which period belong the chapter-room and the chapel, the -principal features still remaining intact. - -Near Quimperl is St. Fiacre, whom some unknowing person has called the -patron saint of the Paris cabman, an individual who has not much regard -for anything saintly. - -There is a beautiful fifteenth-century chapel at St. Fiacre, though -to-day it is greatly marred by wind, weather, and barbarous customs. -Each year, in June, there is an important fair held at St. Fiacre, at -which the young men from round about offer themselves for employment. -Each of them carries a rod or switch. To engage one who seems a likely -person for your purpose, you, or the young man before your eyes,--after -a parley,--break the rod, and he immediately becomes a member of your -domestic establishment. - -There seems something rather uncertain about all this, but surely the -"matter of form" augurs as well for good and faithful service as the -average written "character" with which one engages a servant in England. - -The hair-cutter appears at St. Fiacre as at all Breton fairs. He is -known as Gerard, and since the age of ten years he has been learned in -the art of hair-cutting. For a long time he was the chief barber of a -regiment of the line, and he will tell you (or he may not) that he has -cut many hundreds of thousands of heads in his time, and has garnered -enough of a crop to carpet the whole of the village of St. Fiacre a -metre deep. - -Faout, not to be confounded with the place of the same name in the -Ctes du Nord, is a small town with a great square, and a still more -important old market-house, which, like that at Auray, strikes the -stranger as being a marvellous construction of wooden beams, and quite -impossible to duplicate to-day, whereas the construction is doubtless -far less complex than the modern market-houses that one sometimes -meets,--mere ugly sheds of brick and iron. - -There is a never ceasing ebb and flow of peasant-folk at the Faout -market, the busiest of which come the Saturday of Holy Week, the Friday -after Pentecost, the twentieth of June, and the sixth and twenty-sixth -of July. - -[Illustration: <u>_Market-house, Faout_</u>] - -The scene is too dazzling to describe, and too active to snap-shot, -and one can only feel its real significance by personal participation. -The transactions are not of the stupendous order, and there is much -good-natured chaffing and bartering, and it offers a scene as lively -as if the fate of a nation were depending on the outcome. - -[Illustration: <u>_Market-day_</u>] - -The Breton peasant is not always the sad and superstitious individual he -has been pictured, though both men and women think nothing of embracing -the opportunity of saying a "Hail Mary" in the Chapel of St. Barbara, or -before the great cross of stone beside the main road, as they go into -town, taking to market a small calf or a brace or two of ducks, led at -the end of a cord by their sides. - -The Chapel of St. Barbara occupies an extraordinary position three -hundred metres or more above the bed of the Elle, which bathes the lower -walls of the town. - -After tradition, the Sieur de Toulbodon was one day hunting in the -valley of the Elle, when a terrific storm broke overhead, and a rock -falling at his feet barred the way. He made a vow to St. Barbara to -erect a chapel here, because of his merciful preservation from death. -The rock exists to-day, and is shown to the credulous,--at least, a -rock is shown which the credulous believe is the identical one, and -accordingly it is venerated; though why it is not reviled, no one seems -to know. - -Near Faout is the Abbey of Our Lady of Langonnet, founded in 1136 by -Conan III. of Brittany. Its fortunes have been various; in Revolutionary -times it served as quarters for a stud, but has since been turned over -to religious uses again, and is now occupied by a congregation of the -Fathers of the Holy Ghost. - -The church, the chapter-room, and some other details still remain, -admirably preserved, to illustrate the excellence of the early Gothic -period of the buildings. - -On the way to Rosporden, one passes the principal town of Bannalec, -whose original name was Balaneck, meaning the place for planting the -broom. It has not much interest for the stranger, unless perchance -he happens to pass through it on the day of some local feast or -celebration, when he will most likely see the young peasant-folk, men -and women, dancing in the middle of the roadway, as they do in the -operas. Brittany indeed is about the only place where one is likely -to see such a phenomenon, and, if by chance it happen to be a wedding -celebration, the diversion will be doubly interesting. - -On the particular occasion when the builders of this book passed that -way, a wedding dance was actually in progress, and so edifying was the -ceremony that the bride and groom were invited into the tonneau of our -motor-car, and whirled away to Rosporden for a little excursion, which -was unpremeditated and unexpected to all concerned, and was probably -also a unique experience. - -Rosporden, on the shore of the great lake of Rosporden, as it was -described to us, proved a disappointment. Not that so very much was -expected of it, but that so little was found in it. The lake is a -misnomer, though the water-weedy pond near the church serves the -innumerable artists who flock to the region as a highly interesting -foreground. The women of Rosporden wear the most immense bonnets and -coifs to be seen in all Brittany, and wimples like those of the Sisters -of Charity. - -[Illustration: <u>_Rosporden_</u>] - -The church dates from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries, and is in -every way an admirably preserved monument. - -To Concarneau and the smell of the sea is a dozen or fourteen kilometres -over a gently rising and falling road, with a tendency always to descend -until finally one coasts down the long main street of the celebrated -fishing port and artists' sketching-ground (it would be hard to tell -in which aspect it is the more famous), until one comes to that famous -Great Travellers' Hotel, where one eats of oysters, lobster, and fresh -sardines and many other kinds of sea food to such an extent that one -feels decidedly fishy, or at least thirsty. - -This should make little difference, as the coffee-room of that most -excellent hostelry is likewise excellent, and has a charming outlook -upon the wharfs and fishing-boats, thus affording as delightful a method -of accustoming oneself to strange sights as could be imagined. - -The fishing-boats of Concarneau are one and all great brown-winged gulls -that flit slowly over the great bay, going in and out with the rise -and fall of the tide all through the round of the clock, depositing -their cargoes on the wharfs, shifting crews, and starting off again in -a continuous performance of coming and going which never ceases until -their timbers, from some untoward cause, fall apart. - -As the boats lie at the landing, sails come down and the delicate brown -and blue nets go up for drying, for not all of the boats have so great -a supply that they can shift to another set. The most curious effect is -given by these blue and brown nets swinging masthead high, as if they -were spider-web sails. - -The picturesqueness of the Concarneau fishing-boats is undeniable. -Nothing like them exists elsewhere, and when the sardine boats set out -for the west, as the sun goes down, there are as wonderful combinations -of golden yellow-browns, reds, and purples as the most imaginative -painter could possibly conjure on his canvas. - -On shore, the nets, spread for drying on the wharfs and on the racks -beside the little fisherman's chapel and the great stone crucifix -which faces seawards, are of the deepest blues and purple-browns in a -bewitching mixture. - -Not a white-sailed boat is to be seen, unless it is an occasional yacht -drifting in because its owner has tired of making the fashionable -harbours where his guests can spend the night on shore dancing to the -questionable music of a red or blue coated band. - -[Illustration: <u>_Stone Crucifix, Concarneau_</u>] - -It is a question as to whether Concarneau, were it not the centre of the -sardine fishery, might not be the first seaside resort of the world. -As it is, there are not a few who evidently think it far preferable to -those pseudo-society watering-places, whose chief attractions are big -casinos and little horses. - -[Illustration: <u>_Concarneau_</u>] - -The hotels of the place are in no sense resort hotels, though they -are fitted with a marvellous convenience and comfort, and feed one -most bountifully and excellently on sea food, wherein fresh sardines -and lobsters predominate,--those two great delicacies of the Paris -restaurant which here are the common food of the people, for Concarneau -is one of the few fishing centres of the world which keeps some of its -products for the supply of its own table. - -To-day the town is composed of two quarters, the new town, otherwise the -faubourg Ste. Croix, modern, prosperous, and animated, and the walled -town, the island fort of the middle ages. - -In 1373, Concarneau was occupied by an English garrison, who fled before -Duguesclin. In 1488, the Viscount of Rohan reduced it by order of -Charles VIII., but the Marshal de Rieux retook it from the French the -following year, and repaired and strengthened the old fortifications. - -The religious wars played their part here most vividly, until finally it -fell to the hands of Henry IV. - -The walled town to-day is a remarkable example of an isolated fort -or citadel, the islet upon which it is situated being of a confined -area and wholly surrounded by a thick granite rampart, which, however -invulnerable it may have been in a former day, would stand no chance -against modern guns. - -In part, these fortifications date from the fourteenth century, and -at high water are entirely surrounded by the sea. The great bastion -attributed to the former Duchess Anne--after she had become a queen of -France--is a stupendous work of its time. For the most part, the other -parts of the walls have been restored and built up anew in modern times. - -Concarneau is the Ploudenec of Blanche Willis Howard's charming Breton -tale of "Guenn," and Nevin, where the great pardon dance was held, may -have been Pont Aven or Rosporden. - -There is a wealth of charming colour in this sad tale, and not a little -truth with regard to some of the characters, to which Americans, before -now, have attempted to attach the names of real persons in the world of -art and literature. - -Opposite Concarneau is Beg-Meil, which in more respects than one is an -anomaly. It has some pretence at being a watering-place, but there is -no town there, save such as is built up around a few country-houses and -hotels, catering only to summer folk; besides this, a few scattered -and isolated farms form the sum total of the habitations of this -little jutting point of land running out into the billowy Atlantic. -For four-fifths of the year, the population of this salt meadow is -composed only of sea-birds, which, like their fellows elsewhere, form an -interesting colony of themselves. - -The sea-birds of Brittany, like those of other rock-bound shores, are -ever interesting to the traveller. Like the gulls of London Bridge, -those near the great bay of Concarneau are wonderfully tame and -singularly ravenous, and apparently eat all day. That is, when they -are not sleeping or billing and cooing, as is the sea-birds' way, for -in this they would seem to rival the turtle-dove. When they are not -courting or sleeping, they go a-fishing, and the seaweed-strewn rocks -about Concarneau are their happy hunting-grounds. They will eat, say the -fisherfolk of the sardine fleet, five pounds or more of fish in a day, -which is considerably more than the weight of an individual bird. - -From Concarneau one must perforce follow back along the coast-line to -Pont Aven, for a trip to Brittany without having known the delights of -this colony of artist-folk, in which Americans predominate, would be -like the tragedy without Hamlet, or the circus without the elephant or -the pink lemonade. - -"_Pont Aven, the Barbison of Bretagne! chosen home of the painters of -all nations and all schools, with Americans predominating._" This is -a faithful translation of the remark of an appreciative travelling -salesman, one "who loved art," if the description be credible. You -will hear tales at Pont Aven of the time when artists found their -accommodation at a roadside inn outside the town--now apparently -vanished--for fifty-five francs per month, and paid a sou for a litre -of milk, and four sous for a litre of cider. - -[Illustration: <u>_Pont Aven_</u>] - -These days have gone, and at Pont Aven, as elsewhere throughout the -world, the prices of all things are apparently rising. Really, Pont Aven -and its environs are delightful; its little river is busy and chattering -with many mill-wheels, and the Lovers' Wood--as many know--is well named. - -Because of its many riverside mill-wheels, Pont Aven has been named -Millers' Town by the natives, and also "The famous town with fourteen -mills and fifteen houses." - -Unquestionably, the fame of Pont Aven has been made, or, at least, -furthered, by Mlle. Julia, the most capable landlady of the Travellers' -Hotel. The modest little country-house which formed the original hotel -has now a more magnificent neighbour, built up with a steel frame,--like -a Chicago skyscraper,--and resplendent with modern furniture, with -chairs and sofas of the saddle-bag variety, electric lights, electric -bells which actually do ring, ice-water, afternoon tea, Scotch whiskey, -and all the super-refinements of a twentieth-century civilization. - -It is all very comfortable,--too comfortable the artists will tell -you,--but the eagle eye and strong will of Mlle. Julia still hover over -all, and nothing of deterioration is to be noted in the fare, which is -excellent, and served in the charmingly quaint and beautifully decorated -dining-hall of the little old inn, the precursor of the more splendid -addition. - -[Illustration: Map, ENVIRONS OF PONT AVEN] - -All this is as it should be, of course, but the price has of late gone -up, though it is still thought exceedingly modest by guests who have -spent most of their time in big city or seaside hotels. - -Painters are perhaps fewer here to-day than some years ago, and there -are more of the questionable pleasures of society, such as bridge and -ping-pong, which is a pity. - -Another appendage to the Hotel Julia is found at the St. Nicolas Beach -on the coast. St. Nicolas is hardly more than a bathing-place, but it -is delightfully empty, and altogether Pont Aven, with its environs, is -a charming centre from which to make a week's, a month's, or a summer's -excursion. - -Of the young girls of Pont Aven, Anatole France has uttered many -truthful phrases. Very gracious they are indeed with their great white -quilled collars, their windmill coifs, and their black skirts plaited -like an accordion. - -Here at Pont Aven--as elsewhere--fashion reigns, and the costume as it -is known to-day is quite different from that of fifty years ago, which -was not so picturesque, one would say, judging from old prints. - -The metropolis of these parts and the ecclesiastical capital, for it is -a cathedral city, is Quimper, twenty odd kilometres west of Concarneau. - -Quimper is a real city, though it owns to a trifle less than twenty -thousand inhabitants, and was the ancient capital of the county of -Cornouaille. From all points the marvellously beautiful spires of its -Cathedral of St. Corentin dominate the place. It is one of the most -characteristically Breton towns in the manners and customs of the -people, the general aspect of its wharfs and streets, its shops and its -markets. - -The first establishment of a settlement here was in Roman times, when, -in the eleventh century, it was known as the Civitas Aquilonia. After -the expulsion of the Romans from the land, it became the capital and -the home of the kings or hereditary Counts of Cornouaille, one of whom, -Grollon, has left a legend of great vitality, telling of his emigration -here from Britain across the seas, and the founding of the first -bishopric. - -The cathedral, dedicated to St. Corentin, was built between 1239 and -1515, and shows the marks of the best workmanship of its time. Its fine -spires rival those of St. Pol de Lon and Trguier in the north. The -ground-plan of this fine church is not truly orientated, a detail which -is supposed to indicate the inclining of the head of Christ on the -cross. It is not unique, but the arrangement is so rarely found as to -warrant remark. - -The town hall encloses a library of some thirty-four thousand volumes, -among them a copy of the first dictionary in the Breton tongue, -published at Trguier in 1499. - -The museum contains some interesting archological treasures and some -good modern paintings, including examples of the work of Yan d'Argent, -Joubert Lansyer, Dagnan, and Abram Duvau, mostly depicting Breton -subjects. It also has an admirable collection of old Breton costumes, -etc. - -[Illustration: <u>_From the Museum at Quimper_</u>] - -The Rue Kron is the chief street of the town, and, like the -Kalverstraat of Amsterdam, is one of those narrow thoroughfares so -overflowing with life that to observe and study the passing throng is to -master the manners and customs of the people. - -There are many quaint old houses scattered here and there, and like -those old lean-to and tumble-down structures of Rouen and Lisieux, they -continually reappear on the canvases shown in Paris each year at the two -great exhibitions. - -The Alles Locmaria form a series of magnificently shaded promenades; -this is frequently a feature of French towns above a population of ten -thousand, and a feature which might be imitated in America and England -with considerable accruing advantage. - -South from Quimper lie Pont l'Abb and Penmarc'h, as characteristically -Breton as anything to be seen in the whole province; the former has -something over six thousand inhabitants, and the latter over four, and -each has its own distinct characteristics. - -Pont l'Abb is a town of embroiderers. Everywhere one finds shops whose -sole business it is to sell those fine braid embroideries--yellow on a -black ground--which have made this part of Brittany famous. - -The costumes of Pont l'Abb are famous throughout all Brittany. The -coif recalls those seen in the pictures of the ancient Gauls. It is -virtually a little black velvet hood, and the coif itself is a "_pignon -de couleur_," as the hostess of the hotel described it, and then, -man-fashion, the author felt he was wallowing in a strange subject. -Locally this confection, taken entire, it is inferred, is known as a -_bigouden_,--a picturesque but not precisely instructive word. - -The men wear a hat with three great buckles, and some of them--though -their numbers are few--may yet be seen in the _culotte bouffante_, that -peculiarly Breton species of breeches known in their own tongue as -"_bragou-braz_." - -With such an introduction, one might expect almost any fantastic costume -to step out from a doorway, but, to realize the quaintness of it all to -the full, one should see the inhabitants at the Ftes de la Trminou, -held on the twenty-fifth of March, Whit-Monday, the third Sunday in -July, and the fourth Sunday in September. - -The dances of Pont l'Abb are famous and are indescribable by any one -but a dancing-master. Inasmuch as they invariably take place in the open -air, they may be accepted as the free and spontaneous expression of an -emotion, which stuffy ballroom cotillons most decidedly are not. - -The church of Pont l'Abb dates from a Carmelite foundation of the -fourteenth century, and is a fine work of its era, though surmounted -by a curious and modern bell-tower in wood. Within the church are the -tombs of many of the ancient barons of Pont l'Abb. The magnificent rose -window is of modern glass, but so admirable that one stands before it -with a certain respectful awe, as before that old thirteenth-century -glass in Chartres cathedral. The ancient cloisters are still preserved -and surround a fine garden. - -Pont l'Abb is only five kilometres from the coast, and Loctudy, also -the possessor of a fine medival church, and Penmarc'h form a trio of -Breton coast towns quite as worthy of one's attention as many better -known resorts. - -Penmarc'h--which for some inexplicable reason is pronounced _Penmar_--is -situated in the midst of a great bare peninsula terminating in the -Pointe de Penmarc'h. Instead of a high cliff sheared off at the water's -edge, as one so frequently sees on the north coast, the point sinks -gently into the blue waters of the Atlantic until it is swallowed up, -with never so much as a line of breakers to indicate its presence from -seaward. Penmarc'h in Breton signifies the "head of a horse," and Benzec -Capcaval, a village not far distant, means the same. An ingenious person -will have no difficulty in following the etymology of the latter word, -but the former is quite incomprehensible except to a Welshman. - -Penmarc'h was for four centuries a city which kept pace with Nantes. Its -early riches came from the traffic in "lenten meat," which is simply -codfish. - -The Church of St. Nonna is a late Gothic edifice, with a great square -tower which will be remarked by all who come near it. Its interior -has two baptismal fonts, strangely decorated with stone carvings of -fantastic shapes, depicting the history of Penmarc'h. - -Three kilometres away is the town of St. Gunol, a tiny fishing port -with fine panoramic view of the Bay of Audierne. The chapel of St. -Gunol occupies the base of a great tower, now ruinous, but looking as -though in a former day it must have belonged to some pretentious church. - -"The Handle of the Torch" is one of the local sights. It is formed of a -series of great rocks at some little distance from the mainland. That -bearing the name of "The Torch" is separated from the mainland by the -Monk's Leap, which, according to legend, was the landing-place of St. -Viaud, when he migrated from Hibernia to Brittany ages ago. - -From Quimper to the Point of Raz is one long up and down hill pull of -fifty kilometres, until one finally reaches Point or Cape Sizun, known -to Ptolemy as the promontory of Gaboeum. It is the extreme westerly -point of the peninsula of Cornouaille, and, reckoning from the meridian -of Paris,--for the French do not use the meridian of Greenwich,--is just -on the line of the seventh degree of west longitude. The Lon country -northward of Brest actually extends a trifle farther westward, at Point -St. Mathieu, but most maps do not show it. - -North of the Point of Raz is the great Bay of Douarnenez, with its -sardine fisheries rivalling those of Concarneau, and southward lies the -shallow bay of the Audierne, whose shores, in their own way, are quite -as characteristically wild as those of any part of Northwestern France. - -At the extreme end of the Point of Raz are two unpretentious hotels, -which will please only those of simple tastes and lovers of the -solitary; both are connected with more ambitious establishments at -Audierne. - -The Bay of the Dead, the Hell of Plogaff, and the rocky point itself, -form the tourist attractions, but it will be enough for most lovers of -solitude to bask in the sunlight amid the gentle breezes from the Gulf -Stream, and to leave rock-climbing to those agile spirits who affect -that sort of exercise. - -Near Audierne is the Church of St. Tuglan, a fine fifteenth and -sixteenth century edifice, with many a legend clinging to the name of -its patron saint. It is all very vague, but there is hidden superstition -in abundance, if one only had the patience to work it out. All that can -be learned is, that the holy man was the Abb of Primelin, near by, and -that his feast is celebrated throughout all the Point of Raz. His statue -represents him with a key in the hand, and there is a great iron key -preserved in the church said to have once belonged to him. On the day -of the pardon great quantities of little loaves are stamped with this -key and, according to a popular belief, they will cure a mad dog of his -madness, if he be given a morsel to eat, and possess many other virtues -of a similar nature. In the sacristy of the church are preserved the -teeth of St. Tuglan. The inhabitants of Primelin are known as _paotret -ar alc'houez_, or servants of the key. - -Audierne is a busy little Breton port of perhaps four thousand -inhabitants, and opposite is the fishing village of Poulgoazec, with -sardine factories and all the equipment of the trade. Up to the -sixteenth century, Audierne was even more flourishing than it is to-day, -for the codfish, which were its riches, had not left for other shores. - -The vast Bay of Audierne has a wild and deeply embayed coast-line, -with nothing but a population of sea-birds to add to the gaiety of the -landscape. - -Northward, toward Douarnenez, is Pont Croix, built in the form of an -amphitheatre on the bank of the river Goayen. - -Our Lady of Roscudon is an ancient collegiate church now turned into a -little seminary. The peasant folk round about call it only the Virgin's -church. It is in many respects a remarkable fifteenth-century work. - -[Illustration: <u>_Cape de la Chvre_</u>] - -From the Point of Raz in the south to Cape de la Chvre in the north -extends the great gulf known as the Bay of Douarnenez. Along its shores -are innumerable little fishing villages, which seem almost of another -world. Certainly they have not much in common with other sections of -Brittany, to say nothing of the rest of Europe. - -Douarnenez disputes with Concarneau the privilege of being considered -the centre of the sardine industry, and, like it, has all the -picturesque attributes of brown-sailed boats and of blue and brown nets -hung masthead high for drying, as the craft lie at the quayside, after -having unloaded their catch. - -The delicate blues and purple-browns of these nets are irresistible -to the artist, but few have caught the real tone; indeed, more than -one painter of repute has given it up as a bad job, saying that it was -impossible to transfer it to canvas. - -The beauty of the Bay of Douarnenez has a fascination for artists and -holds one spellbound under certain aspects of the westering sun, when -lights and shadows intermingle in truly heavenly fashion. - -During the civil wars of the sixteenth centuries, Douarnenez was -taken by Jacques de Guengat, but was retaken by Fontenelle in 1595 -and its houses for the most part demolished, and used to build up the -fortifications of the Ile Tristan. - -Douarnenez signifies, literally, the land of the isle. The Ile Tristan -once contained a priory dedicated to St. Tutarn, but now the chief -sights are the lighthouse and a sardine factory. An ancient tradition -recounts that the Ile Tristan received its name from the valiant Tristan -of Lonais, one of the knights of the Round Table. - -Except for the view from the gallery of the great lighthouse, the -trip to the island is hardly worth the making. The view from this -vantage-point is, however, remarkable; indeed, it is unique, the writer -is inclined to think, in all the world. Suffice to say of it that it is -unworldly, and yet gay with the workaday coming and going of the sardine -fleets, as such a paradoxical description will permit one to imagine. -All is peaceful, and yet there is a steady inflow of industry that is in -no wise detrimental to its unspoiled tranquillity. Perhaps if an artist -lived by the shores of the deep blue and purple waters of this bay for a -matter of two score of years, he might do it justice; until then--never. - -Concarneau as a port is more interesting than Douarnenez, but the bay of -Concarneau, delightful as it is, has not a tithe of the variations that -are played upon the gently flowing waters of the bay of Douarnenez by -the setting sun. - -The peninsula of Crozon shelters the bay of Douarnenez on the north. At -one pronged extremity is Roscanvel, jutting out into the roads of Brest, -and at the other is Cape de la Chvre. Between the two is a wonderful -country of rock-strewn coast-line and poppy-covered inland fields. - -[Illustration: <u>_Woman of Chateaulin_</u>] - -Chateaulin, situated on the river Aulne, a little beyond the head of -the peninsula, is the metropolis of these parts. It owes its name to -an ancient hermitage of St. Idunet. Its present name grew from Nin or -Castel Nin, then Castelin, and finally Chateaulin. The hermitage, in -time, was succeeded by the priory of Locquidunet, and that in its turn -became the parish church of the present town. - -Hol, Count of Cornouaille, who became Duke of Brittany, incorporated -the town with the ducal domain, from which time on its history was one -of partisan strife. - -The Revolution elevated it to the rank of a market-town, and changed -its name to "Cit sur Aulne" in an attempt to suppress the supposedly -aristocratic prefix of Chteau. Ultimately, it reverted to its former -name. - -Near by are the Black Mountains, of which Men Hom is the chief -eminence, its summit rising to a height of 330 metres, with other peaks -at the height of 299, 272, and 248 metres. The heights are not so very -considerable, but their proximity to the sea exaggerates them, and -travellers by road--bicycle riders and travellers in motor-cars--will -think the process of crossing the Black Mountains, on the way from North -to South Finistre, as formidable as the task of Hannibal. - -Crozon is a much larger place than Chateaulin, isolated though it is -from all direct communication with other parts. It is situated some -250 feet above the sea, on what the French call a wild table-land, and -dominates the Bay of Douarnenez from the north. All around Crozon are -innumerable grottoes and rock-cut caves and excavations, which always -have a certain fascination for some folk, but will hardly interest the -devotee to the beauties of landscape. - -Camaret, at the very tip of the peninsula, is another safe port for -artists. Here are fishing-boats and all the accessories, like those -seen at Douarnenez and Concarneau, and with a landscape background and -a foreground of blue water that many whose names are great in the world -of art have painted and many more will paint. Cottets's "Fishing-boats -at Camaret," in the Luxembourg Gallery, is perhaps the best known of -these pictures, but the composition is always the same. The background -never changes,--the tiny chapel with its dwindling spire, the beacon, -and the tall, gaunt stone house on the little mole running seaward and -protecting the port, group themselves willingly enough into the most -charming view in all the town. - -The fishing-boats of the foreground change their positions, but -kaleidoscopically only, and one may return year after year and see -practically the same groupings, with only trifling differences. - -One makes his way from Camaret to the great military port and trading -town of Brest--if one need to go there at all, which is doubtful--either -by boat across the Goulet and the roads of Brest, some sixteen -kilometres by a puffy little excursion-boat, which, on a Sunday or a -feast-day, is anything but comfortable, or by road by way of Faou, which -is a great fruit and vegetable market for Brest, and not much more. - -There is a considerable display of costume here on market-days,--which -appear to be every day,--and the town is picturesque enough of itself, -though, strange to say, it smacks of suburbia,--a place where one gets -his news second-hand from some neighbouring city. - -[Illustration: <u>_Camaret_</u>] - - - - -CHAPTER VII. - -FINISTRE--NORTH - - -The northernmost part of the peninsula of Finistre has not the -abounding or varied interests of the south. Its monuments of other days -are not so many or so remarkable, and the sterner conditions of life -seem to have had a sobering effect upon manners and customs. - -Brest and its wonderfully ample harbour has by no means the attractions -of Vannes or of Nantes for the bird of passage, though its commercial -and strategic value is great, and its history vivid and eventful. In -spite of all this, there is little that is interesting to-day in its -straight streets and rectangular blocks. - -This fortified and exceedingly animated town owns to eighty odd thousand -inhabitants, and is so pervaded by military and naval organization that -there is very little local colour, very little atmosphere of the past -hanging about it to-day. To find this, one has to go back to Faou, to -Plougastel or Landerneau or Landivisiau, all within a radius of twenty -kilometres or so. - -The great bay of Brest is a swarming waterway, upon which the little -excursion steamers, tugboats, great cruisers and battle-ships, -torpedo-boats and torpedo-boat destroyers, and yet other craft built to -catch torpedo-boat destroyers, are all apparently entangled inexplicably -each in the wakes of all the others. - -The entrance to this harbour is known as the Goulet, and is lighted -by five lighthouses, which at night send out their twinkling rays of -red, green, and white in most kaleidoscopic fashion,--all Greek to a -landsman, but as clear as day to the Breton pilots who bring the great -ships in and out of this narrow waterway. In the ninth century, Brest -was already in existence, in spite of its modern aspect to-day, and -belonged to the Counts of Lon. Its future was as varied as the history -of Brittany. - -It opened its ports to the army of Charles VIII. in 1489, in spite of -the efforts of Duchess Anne to prevent such a proceeding. How far she -succumbed will be recalled when one realizes that two years later her -marriage with this prince was the first step which united the province -of Brittany for ever with France. Brest from this time took on a new -importance, until Cardinal Richelieu came to designate it as one of the -principal arsenals of France, and then, in 1631, came the creation of -the great dockyards. - -Of architectural monuments, Brest still has the Church of St. Louis -(1688-1778) and the twelfth and thirteenth century castle. As an -ecclesiastical monument, the church is quite unworthy of attention, -though it has some interesting tombs and monuments. - -The castle is an admirable example of medival fortification, with some -remarkable accessory details in its construction. The isolated donjon -tower was in other days a sort of independent citadel, and formed a -last refuge for the besieged occupants of the castle, should its outer -walls give way to the invaders. The Tower of Azenor and the Tower of -Anne of Brittany, so named for the respective princesses, are admirably -preserved parts. - -The local museum and library have fine collections. There are fifty-six -thousand volumes in the library, and the collection of paintings -contains many Breton subjects by modern masters. - -The dockyard--navy-yard in the language of the United States, _port -militaire_ in French--is closed to the general public, but a marvellous -detailed bird's-eye view of the city, the docks, and the roads is -obtained from the platform of the Pont Tournant. - -Nineteen kilometres from Brest is Landerneau, and the junction of the -railway lines to Kerlouan and Folgot in the north, and to Quimper -and Concarneau in the south. Landerneau from the twelfth to sixteenth -centuries had a distinct feudal administration. - -The folk of Landerneau have opinions of their own, as witness the -remark, made at Versailles under the regency by a Breton noble hailing -from this place: "The Landerneau moon is larger than that at Versailles." - -Again there is a Breton proverb which runs thus: "There will always be -something to talk about in Landerneau." Mostly this is used when a widow -marries again, which may be taken to mean much or little, as one chooses. - -Landerneau has a fine little tidal harbour, and its streets and wharfs -are busy with the hum of coastwise traffic and river life, and, with its -Church of St. Thomas of Canterbury and its "best and cleanest inn in the -bishopric" (Htel de l'Univers), as a traveller of a century or more ago -once wrote, it has no lack of interest for travellers. - -[Illustration: <u>_Landerneau_</u>] - -One is not likely to be met with a statement by his host, as was the -century-old traveller, that a respectable man begs to know if he may eat -at the same table, and accordingly one will not have to reply, "With all -my heart," for most likely there will be twenty at the common table, and -all will sit down to a meal of all the good things of life, "sea food" -and golden cider and apple sweetmeats predominating. - -It is all excellent, however, and the abundance of deliciously cooked -fish will make one think it were no hardship to make a lenten sojourn -here. A great church and a good hotel are indeed all-sufficient -attractions for a market-town of perhaps eight thousand souls. - -The town borders upon a picturesque little river, the Elorn, which -finally flows into the harbour of Brest. From the fifth century until -the sixteenth, it was far and away a more important place than its now -more opulent neighbour at the river's mouth. Then it was the chief town -of Lon, the domain of the De Rohans, one of the ancient Breton baronies. - -At the entrance of one of the principal streets--Rue Plouedern--are -two curious ancient pieces of sculpture,--a lion and a man armed with -a sword, bearing the inscription "Tire Tve." They came from an old -house which existed here in the sixteen hundreds, and are fitting -examples of that curious medival symbolism which so often crops out in -domestic and religious architecture. Although the chief of Landerneau's -ecclesiastical monuments is the sixteenth-century edifice dedicated to -St. Thomas of Canterbury, the Church of St. Houardon is a contemporary -work of some pretension; its base Renaissance portico was added at a -later time. The arms and emblems of the De Rohans are conspicuous in -both edifices. - -July fifteenth is the great fte-day hereabout, when the horse-races, -boat-races, and illuminations attract the peasantry from the inland -country and the workmen from the dockyards at Brest. - -Five kilometres away is the Chapel of St. Eloi of the sixteenth century. -This sainted personage is represented throughout Finistre with the -attributes of a bishop and of a horseshoer. Horses are placed under his -protection, and the Pardon of St. Eloi is celebrated in various parts -with much merrymaking, and always with much firing of guns. A motor-car -is not beloved here, and if one incidentally or accidentally come upon -a festival of St. Eloi, he had best forthwith make tracks in retreat. -The actual religious ceremony consists of a mounted cavalier riding -up to the chapel door and making a sort of salute or obeisance three -times from the saddle without putting foot to the ground, after which -he deposits on the altar a packet of horse-hair, or even the tail of a -horse. - -In the Forest of Landerneau, six kilometres southwest, is the Chteau of -"La Joyeuse Garde," celebrated in the romance of the chivalry of King -Arthur's time, wherein King Arthur, Lancelot of the Lake, and Tristan of -Lyonnesse played so great a part. - -Landivisiau, on the main railway line from Paris to Brest, has a -remarkable church under the protection of St. Turiaff,--which in Breton -is Tivisian,--who was Archbishop of Dol in the eighth century. - -This fine church is a sixteenth-century work, and exhibits all the notes -of the early period of the Renaissance, but, in spite of this, the -richness of its portal, its bell-tower, its fine spire, and its nave -and choir rebuilt in the best of late Gothic, make it a building to be -remarked among the churches of Brittany, which, as a rule, have not the -ornateness and luxuriance of ornament of those of Normandy and other -parts of France. - -The cemetery of Landivisiau has a remarkable ossuary, supported by most -fantastic shapes, among them a skeleton armed with two arrows, a woman -in an unmistakably Spanish costume, and a most diabolical Satan. - -The fair-day at Landivisiau is the great celebration of these parts. It -is not so ambitious as many of those held elsewhere, but it will give -the visitor the opportunity of making an intimate acquaintance with the -Bas Bretons in a manner not possible in the larger towns. - -The dress of the people is peculiar, with the great baggy trousers of -the men, the coifs of the women, and the general display and love of the -finery of bright colours which seem inherent with a people living upon -the seacoast. - -In general, their features are heavy and their expression more or less -sullen, although this does not often indicate bad temper. Unquestionably -their carriage indicates hard labour, and the furrows and ridges of -their countenances come only from continuous contact with the open air. -Still, their bodies are stout and broad, and men and women alike have -none of the softness and languor of the southern provinces, albeit the -Armorican climate is mild throughout the year. - -[Illustration: <u>_Calvary, Plougastel_</u>] - -Opposite Brest, just across the estuary of the Elorn, is Plougastel, -famous for its melons and its green peas, and, above all, for its -picturesque calvary. - -The whole peninsula of Plougastel-Daoulas is a vast market-garden for -Brest, and, for that matter, for the hotels at Paris. The verdure and -vegetable growth is in striking contrast to the barren fringe of rocky -coast-line, and therein lies one of the charms of the whole aspect of -nature as it is seen here. - -Nothing in Brittany is more picturesque than the little villages of -Kerrault, Roc'hqurezen, Roc'huivlen, and Roc'hquillion. This is a -commonplace perhaps to those who know the region well, but it will not -be to strangers, and so it is reiterated here. - -The Chapel St. John of Plougastel is perhaps two kilometres away. It is -here, on the twenty-fourth of June of each year, that its pardon brings -so great a throng of visitors that they really have to bring their -eatables with them or starve, thus making a fast-day of a feast. - -In the cemetery is that great calvary which has so often been pictured, -the most considerable work of its kind in existence. - -It was erected 1602-04, in memory of a plague which fell upon the land -in 1598. - -In recent times it has been restored. On the front is an altar -ornamented with statues of St. Sebastien, St. Pierre, and St. Roch. The -frieze shows a multitude of bas-reliefs, illustrating the life of Jesus, -and the risers of the steps are a series of quaintly carved little -people, over two hundred in number. On the plinth is a risen Christ and -a tablet bearing the date of erection of the work. It is a marvellous -expression of religious devotion, and far surpasses other wayside -shrines in Brittany, and indeed in all the world. - -The inhabitants of Plougastel have preserved their ancient costumes with -little or no modern interpolation. Particularly is this to be noted -among the young girls, on a Sunday, as they come from the mass, and also -on the fifteenth of August, when there is a great religious procession. -The "Pardon of Plougastel" is known also as the "Birds' Pardon," for a -great bird fair is opened St. John's Day. - -On the same side of the Goulet of Brest, that narrow inlet which is the -entrance from the sea to the bay, is Le Conquet. It sits at the very tip -of Finistre, just above the Pte. St. Mathieu, and its great lighthouse, -which, with a thirty-second eclipse, sends its rays some twenty miles -out to sea. - -Le Conquet has but fifteen hundred inhabitants, and its isolated -population apparently has not many friends, else the place would -be filled to overflowing in the summer months, which it is not. Its -two hotels, St. Barbara and Htel de Bretagne, are all that could be -expected, and more, hence the paucity of visitors to this charming bit -of "land's end" is the more remarkable. - -Anciently Le Conquet was a strong fortified place, and it underwent a -great number of sieges, and was burned by the English in 1558. Eight -houses alone of the present habitations of the town survived the flames. - -The port is frequented only by the fishing-smacks, which land vast -quantities of lobsters and shrimps. - -There is also an ancient pottery here, the most ancient in all -Finistre. Its pots and pans are found in all the homesteads hereabouts, -and such tourists from all parts as actually do come here carry -numberless specimens away with them. - -The modern church, after the ogival manner, is far more satisfactory -than most modern ecclesiastical monuments. There is a fifteenth-century -portal, however, and some contemporary statues, which save it from being -wholly a modern work. - -The coast-line round about is the rough, abrupt ending of the Lon -plateau, jagged and deeply serrated like the jaws of a shark, as the -native tells one with respect to about all of the Breton coast-line. -Fine beaches do exist here and there, but in the main it is a stern and -rock-bound shore that buffets the Atlantic's waves in Finistre. - -Three times a week one can make the journey by steamboat to Ouessant, -which English sailor-folk--those who go down to the sea in great -liners--know as Ushant. The le Molne and the le Ouessant are the -principal members of the group, and are even more stern and rock-bound -than the mainland. - -"Very little comfort on the boat," you will be told at the port-office, -where you make inquiry as to the hour of departure. Any but good sailors -and true vagabond travellers had best leave the journey out of their -itinerary, although it has unique interest. - -There are numerous isles and islets to pass on the way, and the Chausse -des Pierres Noires is a roughly strewn ledge which breathes danger in -the very spray continually flying over it. Molne is a kilometre long -and rather more than half as wide. If ever the population of a sea-girt -isle had to take in one another's washing in order to make a living, -this is the place, for nearly six hundred men, women, and children make -their habitation upon the isle. - -Needless to say there are some things of the twentieth-century -civilization of which they know not, such as automobiles, tram-cars, or -locomotives. There is not even a donkey engine on the island, and there -are no bicycles or perambulators, hence there is something for which to -be thankful. Considerable quantities of vegetables are exported, the -population living apparently on fish, and the "farms" are divided into -plots so small as to be almost infinitesimal. - -The island is sadly remembered for the part it played in the wreck of -the great South African liner, the _Drummond Castle_, in recent years. -The inhabitants of the isle, poor in this world's goods though they -were, did much to succour the survivors, an act which is writ large in -the history of life-saving. - -The isle of Ouessant itself has nearly three thousand population, and -boasts a market and a hotel, besides numerous hamlets or suburbs. The -isle is eight kilometres long, and perhaps three and a half wide, and is -known to the government authorities both as a canton and as a commune. - -Pliny knew of this rock-bound isle, the foremost outpost of France, -and called it Uxantos, though it was known to the ancient Bretons as -Enez Heussa. Practically, the island is a table-land with an abundance -of pure water, and the soil very productive so far as new potatoes and -an early crop of barley go. The cultivation is mostly in the hands of -the women, the men being nearly all engaged in the fisheries, or as -sailors. Ouessant is a little land of windmills, though in no way does -it resemble Holland. For the most part, they are sturdy stone buildings, -and work but lazily, many of them being dismantled, as if there were -not enough for them to do. Some years ago a fort was erected here, and -a garrison of colonial troops billeted upon the island. It is a sad job -at best to be a soldier in a colonial outpost such as this, and whether -the observation is just or not, it is made, nevertheless, that the -appearance of the garrison of Ouessant is as though it were made up, -literally, of the scum of the earth. - -As for history, the le d'Ouessant is by no means entirely lacking. It -was evangelized in the sixth century by St. Pol Aurelian, who built a -chapel here at a spot known as Portz Pol. - -In 1388, the English ravaged the island, and the former seigniory was -made a marquisate in 1597, in favour of Rn de Rieux, the governor of -Brest, whose descendants sold their birthright to the king in 1764. - -The glorious battle of Ouessant--at least, the French call it "_la -glorieuse bataille_," and so it really was--took place in 1778 in the -neighbouring waters between a French fleet under the Comte d'Orvilliers -and the English Admiral Keppel. - -As may be supposed, these far-jutting, rocky islands have been the scene -of many shipwrecks. There is a proverb known to mariners which classes -these Breton isles as follows: - - "Who sights Belle le sights his refuge, - Who sights le Groix sights joy, - Who sights Ouessant sights blood." - -When a sailorman of Ouessant is lost at sea, his parents or friends -bring to his former dwelling a little cross of wood, which serves the -purpose of a corpse, and the clergy officiate over it, and his friends -weep over it as if it were his true body. - -Finally a procession forms, and, with much solemnity, this little cross -of wood, after having been placed in a casket, is deposited at the foot -of a statue of St. Pol, a sad and glorious symbol of grief and also of -hope. - -The women of Ouessant, whether in mourning or not--and they mostly are -in mourning--wear a costume of black cloth, cut their hair short and -wear a square sort of cap. For the most part, the inhabitants--all -those, in fact, who are natives, and there are but few mainlanders -here--speak only Breton. - -The Lighthouse de Crac'h, a white and black painted tower, with a -magnificent light flashing its rays twenty-four miles out at sea, is a -monument to the parental French government, which neglects nothing in -the way of guarding its coasts by modern search-lights, quite the best -of their kind in all the known world. There is another light here known -as the Stiff Lighthouse, which carries eighteen miles. - -Near the lighthouse is the tiny chapel of Our Lady of Farewells, a place -of pilgrimage on the day of the local pardon (1st September). - -On the mainland, just north of Brest and Le Conquet, on the way to the -Channel, is St. Rnan, the site of an ancient hermitage founded by an -anchorite who came from Ireland some time in the eighth century. There -are many quaint sixteenth-century houses here, and a large market-house -of the spectacular order. - -[Illustration: <u>_Lighthouse of Crac'h, Ouessant_</u>] - -Ploudalmzeau is an important town of Lower Lon with a Htel -Bretagne--as might be expected--also most excellent--also as might be -expected--except for its sanitary conveniences, which, to say nothing -of not being up to date, are practically non-existent. It is very -disconcerting of a rainy autumn morning to have to go down to the back -yard _puits_--as a pump or well is variously known--in order to perform -one's ablutions. - -The comparatively modern church is far more magnificent than one would -expect to find in so small a town. It contains a curious statue of -the Virgin with a Breton coif, and also a fine modern fresco by Yan -d'Argent. A thirteenth-century sculptured cross is to be seen in the -churchyard. - -Folgot has an important local fair, and is celebrated throughout all -Brittany for the pilgrimage to its magnificent shrine of Our Lady of -Folgot, one of the most beautiful ecclesiastical monuments of the -province. - -Toward the middle of the fourteenth century there lived in the -neighbouring forest a poor idiot named Salaun, better known as the -forest fool; in Breton, Folgot. After his death, there appeared written -on the leaves of a great white lily, in letters of gold, the admonition -to the people to build a great church here to the glory of Our Lady, and -this was begun in 1409, and consecrated in 1419; it became a collegiate -church in 1423. It has neither transepts nor apse, but is in every -other particular a remarkably beautiful work. There are many interior -furnishings of great value. - -Folgot is at its best on the great day of the pardon, on the eighth of -September. - -St. Pol de Lon, Roscoff, and Morlaix call the hurried tourist off to -the northward, though why a tourist ever should be hurried is something -the true vagabond never can understand. - -Roscoff has much to endear it to any one. It has not the loneliness or -even the quaintness of some of the daintily set seacoast towns of the -South, but its unique attractions are so many and varied that one loves -it for itself alone, quite as much as if it were a celebrated artists' -sketching-ground, and far more than one would were it a really "popular" -resort. - -First of all, it is celebrated for its early vegetables, due principally -to the excellence of its soil, and secondly to the mildness of its -climate. - -Because of its temperate climate, Roscoff might be called the Mentone -of the North, though it is not yet overrun by invalids and bath-chairs. -Summer and winter, it is a watering-place, with fir-trees replacing the -palms of the South. The visitor should remark the enormous fig-tree in -the Capuchins' enclosure, the grounds of an ancient convent (1621), -which is now private property, and costs the sum of twenty-five -centimes to see. - -The Church of Our Lady of Croaz-Baz, with its fine domed tower dating -from 1550, is one of the chief ecclesiastical monuments of Brittany. - -[Illustration: <u>_Roscoff_</u>] - -Among the many quaint and curious houses of the town is one known as the -house of Mary Stuart. In its interior court are seven arcades supported -by columns, quite like a convent cloister, a disposition of parts which -must be purely local, as other examples are to be seen elsewhere in the -town. Another memory of the Scottish queen, whose last, long, sad adieu -to France is one of the links that never breaks, is the Chapel of St. -Ninian, built in 1548 as a souvenir of her landing when she first came -to France as the betrothed of the Dauphin. It is a most romantically -disposed structure, though with no architectural details of worth except -a small turret at an angle jutting over the lapping waves. - -Roscoff has a Chapel des Adieux, where the wives and mothers of the -fishermen go to pray as the men embark for the fishing. - -Offshore, a quarter-hour distant by boat, is the Isle of Batz, separated -from Roscoff only by a narrow strait, with a current so swift that the -passage is only possible in the best of weather. It does not look so -very perilous an undertaking at other times, but the Roscoff sailorman -certainly does know how to handle a boat, and when he says "No," it's -best not to attempt to persuade him to the contrary. He will not mind a -wetting himself,--if you pay him a fair price for the undertaking,--but -he will probably want, and be entitled to, a good, fat fee for rescuing -his passenger from drowning. - -The Isle of Batz, like most places in Brittany, has its own legend. -It is to the effect that St. Pol, coming in 530 from Britain to this -low, gray, melancholy islet, met a dragon, which, having ravaged the -neighbouring mainland country, had fled hither in order to escape the -fury of the peasant-folk. - -St. Pol, as became one who had the interests of his fellow men at heart, -forthwith killed the monster, and conveyed the news to the people -awaiting his return by rapping on the ground with his baton (_batz_). - -The rise and fall of the tide at the Isle of Batz shows remarkable -fluctuations, ten metres, something more than thirty feet, being noted -between high and low water. - -Its coast-line has great banks of sand, a delight to the bather in -salt water, but the rock formations are by no means so remarkable as -those on most of the Breton isles. The soil is arid and there is not -much luxuriant vegetation. There is a population of over twelve hundred -souls, but few apparently have any ambition to migrate to the mainland, -scarce a rifle-shot distant. In the island church is preserved the -stole of St. Pol, of Byzantine silk. If genuine, it has attained a -greater age than most confections of its class. An ancient Roman chapel -or temple existed here in former times, and was succeeded by a monastery -founded by St. Pol, now in ruins and mostly buried in the sands. - -St. Pol's renown became such that a Breton king made him Archbishop -of Lon, giving him special care and control of the city bearing his -name. These rights came down to the holy man's successors, and the -place became more religious than politic, as one reads in the old-time -chronicles. The riches which had been acquired attracted the Normans, -who devastated the cathedral church in 875. In the fourteenth century, -Duguesclin occupied the town in the name of Charles V. The religious -wars of the sixteenth century diminished the prosperity of the town, and -a bloody submission was forced upon the Revolutionary rebels here in -1793. - -St. Pol is somewhat doubtfully claimed as the native place of the -celebrated sixteenth-century sculptor, Michel Colomb (1512). - -The Chapel of Creizker or Creis-ker, with its astonishing bell-tower -piercing the sky at a height of nearly 250 feet, owes its origin to -a young girl of Lon, whom St. Kirec, Archdeacon of Lon in the sixth -century, had cured of paralysis. The present structure is, of course, -more modern. Albert le Grand fixes the date in the fourteenth century, -and this is probably correct. There are innumerable evidences of the -best of Gothic workmen, and there is much decorative embellishment -which, though not according to the accepted Gothic forms, is certainly -not Renaissance. - -The ancient cathedral merits rank with the Chapel of Creizker, and is -perhaps even a more consistent piece of work, though it represents three -distinct epochs. The two towers are considerably less in height than -that of the Creizker, but they are beautifully spired. The interior -contains innumerable decorative accessories, making it rank with those -cathedrals of France making up that third series, of which Nantes, -Coutances, Narbonne, and Angers are the best examples. - -In the choir is the tomb of St. Pol, and his skull, an arm bone, and a -finger are encased in a little coffer for the veneration of the devout. - -There is a series of sixty-nine delicately sculptured choir-stalls -dating from 1512, and, although not rivalling such great works of their -kind as one sees at their best at Amiens, Albi, or Rodez, they are -sufficiently elaborate to deserve attention. - -Innumerable tombs are set about the choir, many of them curiously and -characteristically sculptured. - -There is also a tiny bell which passes for having belonged to St. Pol. -On the days of pardon the notes of this ancient bell still ring out over -the heads of the faithful, who believe that they will cure any malady of -the head or hearing. - -[Illustration: MA DOUEZ] - -In one of the chapels of the Cathedral of St. Pol de Lon is an ancient -painting. It depicts a head with three visages, with the legend in -Gothic-Breton characters, "_Ma Douez_" (_Mon Dieu_). It represents, of -course, the Trinity, but, like many religious symbols, is more grotesque -than devout. - -Morlaix, the ancient Mons Relaxus of Roman times, is the metropolis of -the northwestern Breton coast. It achieved no great importance, until -it came under the sway of the Breton dukes, and became one of their -principal residences. The inhabitants of Morlaix declared for the League -in the period of the religious wars, and the castle was besieged and -carried by the troops of the king under Marshal d'Aumont, in 1594. - -Being at the head of the great bay of Morlaix, or, rather, just above -it, at the juncture of the rivers Jarlot and Quefflent, the city enjoys -a novel situation, and contains many curious contrasting effects of the -old and new order of things. - -The Viaduct of Morlaix, by which the railway traverses the town, is -really an imposing sight, and is reckoned as the chief of its class -in all France. The natives show an astonishing vagueness or ignorance -with regard thereto. You will be told that it was the work of the -Romans,--"very ancient, look you,"--and again that it was one of the -works of the indefatigable Vauban, who must really have worked in his -sleep, or through understudies, if all the works attributed to him -throughout France be genuine. Vauban must have been to France what -Michelangelo was to the universe,--according to the genial, though -skeptical, Mark Twain. - -The Church of St. Martin in the Fields is the chief ecclesiastical -monument of Morlaix, in point of antiquity at least, as it dates from -the ancient priory foundation of 1128, by Herv, Count of Lon. - -The Church of St. Melaine originated also in the fifteenth-century -priory of the same name, founded by Guyormarc'h de Lon. - -The local museum, which is an unusually splendid establishment for a -town the size of Morlaix, possesses a collection of modern paintings, -including a great number of Breton scenes, forming a wonderfully -interesting exposition of Breton manners and customs. - -There are innumerable old houses in wood and stone here, and they put -Morlaix in the rank with Lisieux, in Normandy, for its picturesque and -tumble-down effects of the domestic architecture of other days. - -One of the finest examples of a great house of its time is that called -Pouliguen, which has a fine carved wood staircase that no one can afford -to miss seeing. - -[Illustration: <u>_Carved Wood Staircase, Morlaix_</u>] - -The harbour of Morlaix opens out widely into the channel, and is -commanded by the Chteau du Taureau, in reality a granite fortress, -one of the military defences of the north coast. St. Jean du Doigt -and the Point of Primel lie some twenty kilometres north of Morlaix, -directly on the coast. The former is the scene of one of the most -picturesque of pardons and is celebrated throughout Brittany. - -[Illustration: <u>_Procession of Sailors, St. Jean du Doigt_</u>] - -Its name comes from its church (1440-1513), in which the index finger -of the right hand of St. John the Baptist is kept. The churchyard has -a fine Gothic entrance gateway and a funeral chapel of the sixteenth -century. Within the same enclosure is also an elaborate fountain -surrounded by a Renaissance construction of much beauty. It was planned -by Anne of Brittany, who brought an artist from Italy to design the -work. The Pardon of St. Jean du Doigt takes place on the twenty-fourth -of June of each year. Decidedly it is not to be omitted from one's -itinerary, if it be possible to include it. - -It is one of the strangest survivals of the belief in an ancient holy -relique yet existing in France, and annually attracts great hordes of -the devout from all parts of Brittany and France, to say nothing of -strangers from oversea. - -A good motor-car is indispensable to enable one to flee from the throng -after it is all over, for the railway lies at least a dozen miles away, -and local conveyances are scarce, poor, and expensive. - - - - -CHAPTER VIII. - -THE CTES DU NORD - - -The north coast of Brittany, the present-day Department of the Ctes -du Nord, is the great stretch of coast-line between Morlaix on the -west to the Bay of Mont St. Michel at Dol. Its large towns are few in -number, but the whole region is unusually prolific in the memory of -deeds of a historic past, and accordingly it has become the favourite -touring-ground of a great number of French and English summer visitors -who, it is regretfully stated, have become responsible for a good deal -of the claptrap and many of the catchpenny devices. - -It is possible to avoid casinos, tea-rooms, and golf-links, but they are -more abundant here in the neighbourhood of Dinan, St. Malo, and Dinard -than in most other parts of Continental Europe. This is a pity, for the -region is one of the most delightfully picturesque anywhere, although -there is little of the grandeur of desolation about it. - -A great national road runs northwesterly from Guingamp to Lannion and -Trguier, two outposts of the Ctes du Nord so far off the beaten track -that they are not as yet overrun with the conventional tourists. There -is little at either place to amuse one, except the local manners and -customs, but they are quaint and interesting beyond belief, and the -wonderful combinations of sea and sky, which will make the artist's -heart leap for joy. - -Lannion boasts of six thousand inhabitants, most of whom play at bowls -on Sunday or a feast-day, and other days engage in the sundry humble -pursuits of the usual Breton large town. - -The name Lannion first appeared in the twelfth century, when the -seigniory of Lannion formed a part of the domain of the house of -Penthivre, which was united with that of Brittany in 1199. - -There are three quaint and charming hotels at Lannion, at any of which -you will get the best of local fare at prices ranging from 120 to 220 -francs per month--all found. One will not go wrong at any of them, and -one does not differ greatly from another, in spite of the difference in -price. There is an abundance of what is commonly known as good cheer, -by which is really meant good fare, and there are comfortable beds, a -sound roof over one's head, and genial hosts, of course. - -This estimable person is literally everywhere at once, showing the -guests to their rooms, presiding at the table, or, at least, at the -serving of it, and generally overseeing everything that goes on. - -"_Allons, messieurs, table_," is called, in a melodious voice, -instead of the ringing of the usual brain-racking bell, and one by -one travelling salesmen, the permanent guests, and the mere tourists -seat themselves at the long table, which literally groans--like those -in the historical novels--with the best of country cookery. There is -nothing Parisian about it; there are no ices, no forced fruit, and no -savoury messes with mushrooms and truffles, but there is the abundant -and excellent local fare of sea food, hung mutton, new potatoes and -asparagus, and little wood strawberries in heaps, and that delightful -golden cider, which, if it be not an improvement on the Norman variety, -is just as good, and a delightful summer drink. - -The fine location of Lannion, on the right bank of the estuary of the -little river Leguer, accounts for much of the local charm, and the habit -that the population has of grouping itself picturesquely about the -quay-side--without the least provocation--accounts for a good deal more. - -There are many old houses in the town, and other more pretentious -architectural monuments, offering enough variety to the artist or lover -of architecture to occupy him a long time. - -The port is a harbour of refuge, of which there are not many on the -north coast of Brittany, and the traffic in salmon and sardines is -considerable, though not rivalling in bulk that of the greater ports in -the southwest. - -Trguier has much the same attractions as Lannion, though its population -is but half as large. Its origin was some huts which anciently grouped -themselves around the monastery of Trecar, founded by St. Tugdal in the -sixth century. It has an imposing cathedral, a really great religious -edifice, and one which for the beauty of its parts is scarcely excelled -by that of Quimper itself. - -The history of Trguier was very lively, from the time of the Norman -invasion of Brittany down through the troublous days of the Revolution. - -The men of Trguier, one learns from history, accepted the law of -the "rights of man" but coldly, and indeed M. le Mintier, Bishop of -Trguier, was one of those churchmen barred from the National Assembly -by the manifesto. He fled to Jersey. - -[Illustration: OLD HOUSE TRGUIER] - -Trguier is the native place of Ernest Renan (1823-92), and his quaint, -timbered house may well be considered a literary shrine of the very -first rank. - -[Illustration: <u>_House of Ernest Renan, Trguier_</u>] - -Convents, where women may find a quiet refuge away from the world, are -not so numerous as they once were in France. "Boarding-houses kept for -unprotected women by nuns, with a supposed Christian devotion and a -profound appreciation of ready money," was the way in which an English -writer once spoke of them, and it was most unfair. Certainly, the -writer of those lines never knew--and she professed to know France--the -Convent of the Cross at Trguier, where women can live in quiet -seclusion, "all found," for a matter of seventy-five francs a month. To -those interested, the above may be worth investigation. - -Not far off is the Manor of Kermartin, where, in 1255, St. Yves, the -patron saint of advocates, was born. - -On the nineteenth of May a procession sets out from the Trguier -cathedral for this shrine, to render homage to the patron of the men -of law. On the eve of the nineteenth all mendicants and vagabonds -presenting themselves at the manor are fed and lodged, which makes the -perpetuation of the ceremony one of real benefit to humanity, though its -endurance is brief. - -St. Yves is the only canonized Breton saint. He was born on the seventh -of October, 1253, and accompanied Peter of Dreux, reigning duke, to the -seventh crusade. - -In the Breton tongue his praises are sung as follows: - - "N'hen eus ket en Breiz, n'hen eus ket unan, - N'hen eus ket eur Zant evel Sant Erwan." - -This in French comes to the following: - - "Il n'y a pas en Bretagne, il n'y en a pas un, - Il n'y a pas un Saint comme St. Yves." - -The last will and testament of St. Yves is preserved in the sacristy -of the Church de Minihy, and also his breviary. His tomb is in the -cemetery, surmounted by an arcade through which the faithful pass, -crawling upon their knees when they seek his aid. - -[Illustration: <u>_Shrine of St. Yves, Trguier_</u>] - -Not many travellers in France have ever even heard of Seven Isles, -situated five kilometres or more off the coast near Trguier. The -corsairs of Jersey and Guernsey took refuge upon this little -archipelago in the olden time, and long maintained a form of government -quite of their own making, and even erected fortifications, of which -that on the le aux Moines has still some suggestion of strength. - -Usually quite deserted, there are two seasons of the year when the -isles take on a population of residents from the mainland entirely -out of keeping with their size and number: in February for seaweed -gathering, and from June to September for the gathering of sea-mosses, -or _jargot_, as the natives call it. One who would experience something -out of the ordinary could not do better than make this little excursion. -The passage from the mainland does not look so very terrible to the -stranger, but not even the hardy fishermen will attempt it if the sky -is the least threatening. He says simply, "Only go out in very fine -weather," and sits tight and prays and whistles for that same fine -weather, though he evidently does not expect it to come very soon, for -with every bit of fleecy cloud that crosses his vision, he exclaims: -"Big storm soon!" - -Paimpol is situated at the head of a well-sheltered bay on the banks -of an infinitesimal little river known as Quinic. There is nothing to -mark Paimpol as a tourist resort, and accordingly it is almost an ideal -resting-place for one wearied with the onrush of the world. It is not -even a bathing-place, as it well might be. Its long Rue de l'glise is -its principal thoroughfare, and through it all the small traffic of the -town circulates at a most sedate pace. - -The church dates from the thirteenth century, and is a lovely old -structure with admirable Gothic pillars and arches in its nave, and a -fine fourteenth-century rose window. - -The port of Paimpol has a most interesting rise and fall of life, -particularly at the season of the setting out and the return of the -Iceland fishermen. In the trade in codfish caught off the Icelandic -coasts, this place occupies the first rank, being the home port of -those who fish in Icelandic waters, and all along the quays of the -sad little town of Paimpol (sad, because there are so many widows -there,--the lone partners of those who have lost their lives at sea) -are to be seen the Iceland schooners. Everything in the town smacks of -the memory of Iceland: the schooners, the _ex-votos_ in the churches, -the widows, the sturdy but gloomy fisherfolk themselves, and the stones -in the churchyard. "The Iceland fog enshrouds everything," the native -tells you, but still the work goes on, and each year, with the coming -of the spring days, the exodus begins, after a winter's hard work at -refurbishing and refitting of the little two-masters and three-masters -of the fishers. It is here that one may hear that Breton sailor's -prayer, which is so devout and full of faith: "_Mon Dieu protge nous, -car la mer est si grand et nos bateaux si petits._" - -Cod, whale, mackerel, and herring are all marketable products to the -nets of the Paimpolans. - -The Isle of Brhat is near Paimpol, lying just off the coast. If one -seek to arrange a passage, thereto, he goes by public carriage, and -not by boat, until he gets to the tip of the Pointe Arcouest, when he -transfers himself and his luggage to a sailboat, and travels as one did -before the age of steam. - -The Isle of Brhat is another of those rocky islets which dot the coast -of Brittany, and look not only as if they were barren and uncultivated, -but as if they were also uninhabited. All the same, their appearance -from a distance is misleading. There are close upon a thousand -inhabitants on the parent isle and the attendant flock of little islets -sheltered under its wing. In the olden time, the island was a strong -place of war, with batteries and fortifications against which the -English, the Leaguers, and the Royalists tried their strength in turn. - -The isle is what the sailor-folk roundabout call "a good port of -refuge," for there are divers little sheltered harbours to which ships -of all classes can run from the storms of the open sea. - -The principal town is known as Brhat, and possesses a church dating -from 1700, a tiny hotel, and an inn or two, mostly catering to local -customers. If one would leave the mainland, and its questionable -attractions of civilization behind, and live the simple life to the -full, he can do it here to the most exquisite degree,--if he does not -mind the sea-fogs of the winter. - -Guingamp, lying inland in the rich valley of the Trieux, is the -market-town of the arrondissement of the same name. It is of feudal -origin, and was the ancient capital of the countship, later the duchy, -of Penthivre, and of the ancient Gollo land. - -Guingamp Castle is a great square building, flanked by four massive -towers, of which one has been practically destroyed. - -The Church of Our Lady of Good Help, of the fourteenth to sixteenth -centuries, is a magnificent work of its era, with an elaborately -furnished interior. - -[Illustration: A BINOU PLAYER] - -The Pardon of Bon Secours is Guingamp's gayest event of all the year. -In numbers, it is one of the largest in Brittany, and is held on the -Saturday before the first Sunday in July. On this occasion the statue -of Our Lady, within the porch of the church, is clad in a silken robe, -and receives the pilgrims, who refresh themselves with water previously -consecrated at its source. With the fall of the sun commences a -continual round of national dances, inspired by the lonesome, sharp, -shrill wail of the _binious_, played in much the same way as are the -Scotch bagpipes, except that their music is even more shrill and -heartrending--if possible. At nine o'clock the statue of the Virgin -is brought to the public square, solemnly conveyed by an immense -procession, and three great bonfires are lighted. At midnight a high -mass terminates the celebration, and some of the pilgrims depart, and -others remain for the banquet which invariably follows. - -On the eighth of September, 1857, the Madonna of Guingamp received the -crown of gold from the chapter of St. Peter's at Rome, on behalf of the -Pope, a distinction offered to images of the Virgin uniting the three -traits of antiquity, popularity, and miracle-working. - -"La Pompe," or the Fontaine, in hammered lead, is one of the chief -artistic curiosities of Guingamp. It is a remarkable work in every way, -and dates from 1588, since which time it has only been repaired--not -reconstructed. Its preservation is wonderful, and it is an embellishment -of which even a greater town might well be proud. - -Aside from the fragment of the castle, there are no medival gateways or -walls to remind one of the military importance of the place in former -days. A century and a quarter ago, a traveller wrote: "Enter Guingamp by -gateways, towers, and battlements of the oldest military architecture, -every part denoting antiquity, and in the best preservation." All this, -unhappily, has disappeared, and one has to go to Vitr and Fougres to -see military architecture in Brittany. - -Eastward from Guingamp toward St. Brieuc, one passes--the traveller by -road or rail seldom stops--Chatelaudren. It is a conventional Breton -small town, but it is a market-town, nevertheless. It has not much -of interest for any one unless he be a keen observer of manners and -customs, hence it is but a way station between the two larger towns. - -St. Brieuc is a city, although it has no tram-cars to dodge and no -restaurants or Htels trangers, which is a good thing for the native -and the tourist alike. - -In reality its half-dozen hotels rise to the distinction of being known -as "establishments," yet they have lost none of their local flavour. St. -Brieuc is the metropolis where the summer visitors--Parisians all--of -the beaches come to buy the little necessaries and luxuries which a -mere watering-place fails to supply. Then, too, one who is rusticating, -even in a delightful spot like Val Andr, lacks notably the inspiration -coming from a more or less frequent contact with a large centre, and -so he hies himself to a market-town, gets the fare of the country at a -hotel for travelling salesmen, and has a bit of the transmitted gossip -of the capital over a bock at the principal caf; after this--_voil!_ -the seaside again for a time. - -This may not be the Anglo-Saxon way of treating a similar situation, -but it is exactly after the French method. - -St. Brieuc is the seat of a bishopric, suffragan of the metropolitan -see of Brittany at Rennes. Its origin is due to a missionary who came -with eight disciples at the end of the fifth century to evangelize -Armorica. As a place of pilgrimage,--the tomb of St. Brieuc having -become a shrine,--it soon began to draw throngs from all parts, and the -importance of the city which grew up around the memory of the missionary -was soon assured. - -The cathedral of St. Brieuc was begun by St. William Pinchon before the -middle of the thirteenth century, and was soon finished. - -Its exterior presents the severe and austere, though beautiful, -Gothic of its time, but the accessories of its interior arrangements -show plainly the debasement of the later interpolations, although -there are some really excellent details hidden away amid a profusion -of mediocrities, notably the tomb of St. William, a fine Way of the -Cross by a local sculptor, and a low, hanging gallery at the base of -the choir, which is a remarkably beautiful and effective adjunct to a -great church. The exterior is more impressive, though its two principal -doorways have been badly restored or rebuilt at some time since the -completion of the edifice. The great, gaunt, donjon-like towers are the -chief features of beauty and distinction, and tell the story of the -whole fabric in quite an unassailable manner. - -At the town hall is a museum which has some good modern art works, -including a fragment of Rodin's Portes de l'Enfer and some notable -paintings of Breton subjects. - -In the Rue St. Jacques and the Rue Fardel are many old houses, one of -the most notable being the hotel of the Dukes of Brittany, begun in 1572 -by Yvon Collou. James II. of England lodged here when he came to St. -Brieuc in 1689. - -The carved and decorated fronts of these old wooden houses lend a -quaintness and charm to the streets of St. Brieuc, in strong contrast to -the modernity of its hotels and cafs. There is considerable and varied -local industry at St. Brieuc, and this gives the city some importance as -a manufacturing centre, but the chief events of its commercial life are -the great fairs held in July and September, the latter founded in the -fifteenth century by Marguerite of Clisson. - -The environs of St. Brieuc are charmingly diversified, from the wide -open stretches of farming country at the south to the wastes of rock -and sand flanking the great Bay of St. Brieuc. - -Le Lgu is the port of St. Brieuc, and the coastwise traffic is -considerable. The quays and docks, ship-houses and careening wharfs -lend a novel and interesting aspect to a background of thickly wooded -river-banks. The seaward entrance of the channel is protected by a -fifth-class light. The port is the first in rank in the Ctes du Nord -for the fitting out of the Newfoundland and Iceland fishing-boats. - -The Tower of Cesson, three kilometres or more from St. Brieuc, is a -simple circular tower, surrounded by a double protecting fosse cut -perpendicularly into the rock. The walls are quite twelve feet in -thickness on the lower of its four floors. It was built by Duke Jean -IV. in 1395, and, after much strife and bloodshed, extending over two -centuries, was laid in ruins by Henry IV. in 1598. - -On the shores of the Bay of St. Brieuc are innumerable little beaches -which are healthful breathing-spots for large numbers of Parisian folk, -who come thither between June and September of each year. - -These are not exactly riotous resorts of fashion, but still there are -some evidences of the distractions of the world that make most of them -appear as little parochial Parises. There are two spots on the western -shore of the bay to which this does not apply, however, Etables and -Binic. - -[Illustration: <u>_Binic_</u>] - -Binic, a small fishing port of Brittany, has all the attractions of -an unworldly seaside village, for it is not much more even to-day. -After Binic, Etables, and after Etables, Binic. Each is much the same -as the other. Binic has been a great-little port for the fitting out -of ships for the Newfoundland fisheries ever since the beginning of -the seventeenth century, and things go on in much the same way as of -old, except that the master of the craft now has a megaphone and a -patent log in his equipment, whereas formerly he went without these -refinements of navigation. To the Newfoundland fishermen of Binic is due -a special preparation of the codfish known as _bnicasser_, of which the -dictionaries will tell one nothing, but which is simply a species of -cured codfish. - -The high altar of Binic church was bought with funds contributed as -a result of the Sunday fishing on the Newfoundland banks. It can, -therefore, be said to have a real reason for being, and, as it is an -unusually ornate affair, one infers that the Sunday haul must be of -goodly proportions. - -From St. Brieuc eastward, until one actually comes within the confines -of that delectable land known as the Emerald Coast,--the summer rival -of that winter paradise, the Blue Coast,--is a verdant land of crops -and cultures which would quite change the opinions of any who thought -Brittany a sterile, rock-bound land, where nothing could grow but onions -and new potatoes. - -Lamballe is a sort of a faint shadow of St. Brieuc. It was founded in -feudal times, and from 1134 to 1420 was the capital of the county of -Penthivre. As late as the eighteenth century, the oldest son of the Duc -de Penthivre bore the title of Prince of Lamballe. - -The town is divided into the upper and lower towns. In the latter are -found those old settlers of ducal times, the houses of wood and stone -still standing to delight the eye of the artist and to arouse the wonder -of the general tourist. - -There is a fine Gothic Church of Our Lady, its foundations cut in the -very rock itself, and bearing, from more than one point of view, the -aspect of a fortified edifice, which has a battlemented roof that is -nothing if not an indication that the church of Dol was a truly militant -edifice. As the chapel of the old chteau, this church grew up from a -foundation of St. William Pinchon, Bishop of St. Brieuc in 1220. - -St. Martin's is the church of an ancient priory belonging to the parent -house of Marmoutier. It was founded in 1083 by Geoffrey I., Count of -Lamballe. Its primitive nave shows a remarkable series of horseshoe -arches, and in every way, not excepting the great sixteenth-century -towers, St. Martin's is quite the most interesting architectural -monument of Lamballe. - -North of Lamballe lies Val Andr. A charming watering-place much -frequented by families, is the way the all-powerful Western Railway -advertises this little seaside beach and its attractions, with the added -few lines to the effect that there is a large hotel with a casino, -regattas, nautical celebrations, concerts, etc., which are supposed to -amuse the fastidious summer visitors. - -It is all very delightful, particularly as the coast-line near by is -charming of itself, but Val Andr, with all its attractions, has not -half the charm of the little fishing port of Binic on the opposite shore -of the Bay of St. Brieuc. - - - - -CHAPTER IX. - -THE EMERALD COAST - - -The Emerald Coast is the passion chiefly of those who come to live -during the three summer months of rustication, but the sister cities -of St. Servan, Param and St. Malo, Dinard and Dinan, are lovely spots -and attractive of themselves, were one forced to camp out on one of the -barren, jagged rocks with which the coast hereabouts is strewn, instead -of living at the Hotel of France and Chateaubriand, which encloses the -ancient maison of Chateaubriand, at St. Malo. Starting thence, one -explores the wonderful country round about, and nourishes himself and -makes himself comfortable with all the modern refinements. This hotel -is about the only modern thing in St. Malo, however, for, while highly -interesting to the antiquary or to the student of architecture or of -art, it is commonly thought to be a vile, dirty hole, with a few shops -convenient for the inhabitants of the more aristocratic suburbs of -Param and St. Servan. - -St. Malo is a curious little city, with its ever apparent past not in -the least disturbed by the steamboats and electric trams, which bring -visitors to the base of its ancient fortifications and gateways. Among -its chief reminders of the past are its proud chteau, redolent of the -memory of the beautiful Duchess Anne, its fine cathedral, its quaint old -houses and narrow streets, and its wonderful encircling ramparts. - -Not only is St. Malo a city of the past, but it is above all, to-day, -a _resort_, as that elastic term is known which covers any place where -tourists congregate for pleasure. - -Kiosks, coffee-rooms, and bathing-cabins have taken the place of -whatever may have gone before, and to-day, truly, one may be as -comfortably up to date--if there is any real comfort in being up to -date--as if he were in Budapest, Paris, or San Francisco. St. Malo is -considerably more than this; it is the actual, if not the geographical, -centre of the whole Emerald Coast. - -[Illustration: <u>_Ramparts of St. Malo_</u>] - -The praises of the Emerald Coast have been sung by many poets, and -pictured by many painters. Jean Richepin, that rare vagabond, comes -frequently for his inspiration to St. Jacut-de-la-Mer, and in -his "Honest Folk" there are superb descriptions of this entrancing -combination of sea and shore, which in all France is not elsewhere -equalled, unless it be on the Riviera. - -The Emerald Coast must indeed be the paradise for jaded literary -workers, when work makes its inroads on their holiday, for it may enable -them to accomplish as much as Ferdinand Brunetire admitted during a -recent stay at Dinard-St. nogat: - -"What do I read?" said he. "These: - -"1. The 240 pages which make up the _Revue des deux Mondes_ every -fortnight. - -"2. The manuscripts which may become future pages of the _Review_, and -even some which may not. - -"3. Works which have not appeared in the _Review_, whose authors I may -find it worth while to know and cultivate. - -"4. Journals in which the _Review_ is interested. - -"5. The _Official Journal_, from which one may always pick up something. - -"6. The other papers. - -"7. Works submitted for the approval of the French Academy. - -"8. Proof-sheets of my own works. - -"9. The books necessary for the preparation of my discourses, lectures, -and articles." - -The puzzle is what a man like M. Brunetire will find to do in the -next world. Probably he will go about to all the celebrated writers to -see what they thought of his criticisms in his dearly loved _Review_; -and then perhaps he will regret, as Herbert Spencer is said to have -regretted, that he had not gone fishing oftener. - -The charms of St. Malo's suburban social colony of Param, such as -they are, though they differ greatly from the mere attractions of -nature,--for which society folk really care for only as an accessory -to their more futile pleasures,--are best set forth in the following -stanzas of Jehan Valter: - - "PARAM - - "IDYLLE - - "Quel est de Biarritz Calais - Le seul bain de mer, qui jamais, - Faute de baigneurs, n'a chm? - C'est Param! - - "O le soleil l'horizon - Montre-t-il en chaque saison - Son disque toujours enflamm? - A Param! - - "O le froid est-il inconnu, - O peut-on se promener nu - Sans avoir peur d'tre enrhum? - A Param! - - "Le soir, on danse au Casino, - Non aux sons d'un mauvais piano, - Mais d'un orchestre renomm - A Param! - - "Sur la plage on rve d'amour, - La nuit aussi bien que le jour - Que de baigneuses ont aim! - A Param! - - "Est-ce l'air qui porte la peau; - Est-ce le soleil, est-ce l'eau? - Chacun sort du bain ranim - A Param! - - "Et c'est un miracle constant, - Le plus chtif, en un instant, - Est en athlte transform - A Param! - - "Du reste, miracle plus fort, - Jamais personne ici n'est mort, - On ne connat pas d'inhum - A Param! - - "A vous tous, gandins rabougris - Qui dprissez Paris, - Venez humer l'air embaum - De Param! - - "Vous ne le regretterez pas: - On y fait d'excellents repas, - Et le cidre est fort estim - A Param! - - "Donc, sur l'honneur, je vous le dis, - A dfaut du vrai paradis, - Il n'est sur terre, en rsum, - Que Param!" - -That is about the sort of round that one gets at Param, with -motor-cars, golf, and bridge parties thrown in, but a wonderful aspect -of nature to be seen at every turn, and it is perhaps small wonder that -the little summer colony has now grown to huge proportions. - -Americans should have a special interest in, and a fondness for, St. -Malo, "the city of the corsairs." - -St. Malo is the chief town of the province of Jacques Cartier, the -discoverer of Canada. "_It is a city of great men and the chief place of -the Breton middle class_," said the Abb Jalobert in his curious work on -St. Malo and St. Servan. - -There is some truth in calling St. Malo the "corsair stronghold," for it -was the cradle of Mah de la Bourdonnais, Duguay-Trouin, Surcouf, and -their followers, all "sea-rovers" if they were not something more. - -To-day St. Malo's "sea-rovers" are the sailors of the Newfoundland -fishing-fleet, the humble _"terre-neuvas_," as they are known, who go -in large numbers to fish for cod on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland. - - "I's sont partis de Saint-Malo, - I's sont partis de Saint-Malo, - Tous ben portants, vaillants et biaux. - In' troun' drin tra lonlaire! - In' troun' drin' tra lonla!" - -sings Yann Nibor in his "Sea Songs and Stories." - -The city's older reputation as the city of the corsairs gave quite a -different interpretation, however: - - "LA CIT DES CORSAIRES - - "Si dans son aire, aujourd'hui tombe, - Elle ouit de rudes chansons! - Dont le souvenir donne au monde - Des frissons. - - "La gothique flche de pierre - De son clocher audacieux - S'lance comme un rapire - Vers les cieux." - --_Dabouchet._ - -Duguay-Trouin is an almost mythical character, but many of his -legendary exploits sound plausible. He took an English ship mounting -forty guns when he owned to but sixteen years, and in a following -campaign--practically on his own account it would seem--he captured -two vessels of war and twelve merchant-ships from under the guns of -a British squadron. This, at least, is the French version, and since -all of us, in our agile days, love a daring hero,--even if he be a -bloodthirsty one,--it seems a pity to probe the assertion too deeply. - -Such a man as Duguay-Trouin was, of course, popular, and his sailors -sang his praises in the street in lines which came to be taken up by -the "stay-at-homes" and incorporated into a kind of folk-lore. Indeed, -gentle mothers sang their infants to sleep with them, much as did old -Mother Goose of the nursery rhymes: - - "Monsieur Duguay t'envoy - Un tambour de l'Achille - Pour demander ces braves guerriers - S'ils veulent capituler. - - "Les dames du chteau - S'sont mis la fentre, - Monsieur Duguay apaisez vos canons, - Avec vous je composerez." - -Not always does the stranger to St. Malo hear exactly this offhand, but -invariably he is met with a singsong of sailors' chanteys which at once -call up memories of seafarers of other days. - -One enters St. Malo, whether by boat or train, through the city walls. -The boat lands you directly under the frowning ramparts, and a worthy -porter will take your portmanteau and carry it twenty steps to the door -of your hotel, just within the gateway of the city--and charge you -twenty sous for the job. "A franc, really," the man with the brass badge -tied on his right arm will reply to your query as to whether you have -heard aright. - -"Twenty cents for twenty steps is a little high," says the hostess of -your hotel, but it is the tariff from outside. - -St. Malo is still a walled city, much as it was in the days when Francis -I., in 1518, and Charles IX., in 1570, held court here. - -Charles IX., his mother Catharine, and his sister Margaret spent a part -of the month of May here in this city by the sea. The Malouins gave the -court a spectacle of an imitation naval combat, in which a galleon was -sunk; too realistically, one thinks, for its occupants were drowned. - -At one time, it is said by the chronicles, St. Malo was guarded by -fierce mastiffs, the descendants, it is to be presumed, of the Gallic -dogs of war. These municipal watch-dogs were suppressed in 1770, because -of their having bitten the "calves of gentlemen." Presumably there was a -complaint of some sort, but the only record of the incident is one in -verse sung by Dsaugiers as follows: - - "Bon voyage, - Cher du Mollet, - A Saint-Malo dbarquez sans naufrage, - Et revenez si ce pays vous plait." - -The disappearance of the watch-dogs in 1770 made necessary the adoption -of a new coat of arms for the town, when the blazoning of argent, a dog -gules, gave way to a "portcullis surmounted by an ermine passant." - -One has heard before now the phrase, "I like St. Malo in spite of its -smell," and, in spite of the truth of it,--and there is a very apparent -justification of the word,--the old city is one of the most lovable in -all Brittany. - -The House of Duguay-Trouin at St. Malo is one of its chief romantic -shrines before which strangers are wont to linger. It is simply an old -wooden-fronted house, sombre and austere in its upper stories, but -resplendent in white paint below. A shoe-shop and a coffee-room occupy -the lower floor, and if one would conjure up the days of the past, when -pirates bold discussed their venturesome plans in the very same room, -let him enter and drink his after-dinner coffee by the pale light of -a guttering candle in this old abode of romance. There is nothing of -luxury about it; in fact, most worshippers are content to bow before the -shrine from without; but to awaken the liveliest emotions, one must -really enter and see it from the inside. - -[Illustration: <u>_House of Duguay-Trouin, St. Malo_</u>] - -St. Malo, besides its stock sights of romance and history situated -within the city itself, has a literary shrine of the first rank in the -island of Grand B just offshore. Here is the tomb of Chateaubriand, -ambassador, minister, journalist, and author. One need not inscribe the -dates and titles of his works here; it is enough to mention his name. -Suffice to recall that, as a conclusion to his labours, he wrote the -"Mmoires d'Outre-Tomb," which, like the simple, rough-hewn cross which -crowns the summit of Grand B, is a fitting monument to the genius of -the man whose theories, it is to be feared, have now become somewhat out -of date. - -Chateaubriand's verses on his native land give an ample proof of his -love for her, and, moreover, so well express the regard which nearly -every one has for the Emerald Coast, that it is certainly pardonable to -quote them here: - - "MON PAYS - - "Combien j'ai douce souvenance - Du joli lieu de ma naissance! - Ma soeur, qu'ils taient beaux, les jours - De France! - O mon pays, sois mes amours, - Toujours! - - "Te souvient-il que notre mre, - Au foyer de notre chaumire, - Nous pressait sur son coeur joyeux, - Ma chre, - Et nous baisions ses blancs cheveux - Tous deux? - - "Ma soeur, te souvient-il encore - Du chteau que baignait la Dore? - Et de cette tant vieille tour - Du Maure, - Ou l'airain sonnait le retour - Du jour? - - "Te souvient-il du lac tranquille - Qu'effleurait l'hirondelle agile, - Du vent qui courbait le roseau - Mobile, - Et du soleil couchant sur l'eau, - Si beau? - - "Oh! qui me rendra mon Hlne, - Et ma montagne et le grand chne? - Leur souvenir fait tous les jours - Ma peine: - Mon pays sera mes amours - Toujours!" - -St. Servan, like St. Malo, is steeped in antiquity; practically they -form one town, although separated by the narrow strait which forms an -entrance to the outer harbour of St. Malo. St. Servan registers over a -hundred St. Malo craft engaged in fishing and in the coast trade. As the -ancient Gallo-Roman town of Alethum, St. Servan, from very early times -an archbishopric, was ravaged by barbarians and by floods and had a -varied career, but at last the steady growth of the comparatively modern -St. Servan made it a prosperous town of perhaps twelve thousand souls. - -The chief of St. Servan's architectural monuments is the great Tower -of Solidor, built far out upon the rocks at the mouth of the Rance. It -was built in 1384 by Duke John IV., at the epoch when he was combating -the pretensions of Josselin of Rohan, Bishop of St. Malo, for the -sovereignty of the town. - -It is a great triangular hold with a cylindrical tower at each corner. -Within is a stone staircase winding spirally upward and giving access to -various vaulted chambers. It could oppose no great strength to modern -artillery, and even in the olden time could not have been very secure, -could the besiegers but get to the base of its walls. At the same time, -from its isolated position, it served admirably as an outpost which at -least offered a superior vantage against an attacking force, and it is -unlikely that it could have been taken except by siege or by the fall of -the supporting city at its back. - -[Illustration: <u>_Tower of Solidor, St. Servan_</u>] - -The Chapel St. Peter of Aleth has built into its fabric some fragments -of the ancient ninth and tenth century cathedral of the same name. - -[Illustration: <u>_Plans of the Tower of Solidor_</u>] - -There are many remains of the old city walls, and St. Servan ranks with -St. Malo as a vivid reminder of other days. - -There is one popular sight of Brittany near St. Malo, which cannot be -ignored,--the rock-carved tomb of St. Budoc. This holy man lived in the -days when Celtic was a living tongue, and Irish, Scots, Welshmen, and -Bretons, one and all, used the same speech. - -Many a year has passed, and St. Budoc has been all but forgotten. -Besides his religious fervour, the memory of which exists but vaguely, -there is left as a reminder of his existence his tomb and a prophecy -which has come down by word of mouth through the natives. - -To-day there is a modern hermit who lives near the tomb of the saint, -and carves a sort of symbolical prophecy in stone for his own amusement -and the marvel of tourists. - -It is rather a cheap sort of a shrine, and one that is wholly visionary -so far as its real significance goes, but it is a very satisfying one -to most who view it, like the "Blarney Stone" and St. Patrick's grave, -which are frauds of the first water. - -One comes to Rothneuf--a little Breton coast village--by road, tramway, -or carriage from Param, if he comes at all. Here just beyond the -village itself the cliffs are curiously carved into all manner of human -shapes,--the work of the aforesaid hermit, who, although he be not a -young man, certainly is not so old as to have carved all the stones -which here exist; at least they look much older, though the stress of -weather may account for that. - -Evidently there is a devotion for St. Budoc, and belief in his prophecy -of the downfall of France is one day or another to become true. The old -monk or priest--for in reality this hermit of to-day is a churchman--is -evidently the chief disciple of the cult, for he perpetuates his version -of this long-lost legend in his modern carvings. - -The text of this old prophecy was vague and visionary, but enough has -come down to place definitely the fact that a Napoleon was to rise and -fall in the beginning of the nineteenth century, and that the Church was -to be parted from its children,--referring presumably to the Concordat -of 1802. - -No version of the prophecy exists in Celtic literature, but the monk -Olivarius published, in Luxembourg in 1544, a version which was supposed -to have been handed down from the old Celtic monk himself. Since that -time contemporary literature has had various references thereto, the -last apparently in 1904, when one appeared in Gaston Medy's "Echo of the -Marvellous." - -This last version, or promulgation, of the Celt's prophecy carries -us even into the future, 432 moons from the foundation of the present -French republic, _i. e._ thirty-six years, which would be in 1906. "Woe -to thee, great city," is a phrase which is supposed to refer to the fall -of Paris; whether as Rome fell, from an excess of glory, or into the -hands of the invader, is not stated. At any rate, the event is to come -to pass in the year of our Lord 1906, 432 moons from the beginning of -the great Republique Franaise. Let all who will be mindful. - -On the opposite bank of the Rance from St. Malo is Dinard-St. nogat, -occupying a magnificent site known in part as the Bec de la Valle. The -country-houses of Dinard are famous, though they are built in that -vague architectural style accepted the world over as being something -appropriate to a species of residence less sumptuous than a palace or a -chteau. - -It is a pity that the word is not better understood by the people, -and a pity, too, that most villas in France--and in England, for that -matter--are abominable, queer chicken-coops, with names like Villa -Napoli, Villa Saint Germain, Villa la Belle-Issue, Villa Belle-Rive, and -Villa Bric--Brac. All these are found at Dinard, and more, and, as may -be imagined, the summer life of this town of country-houses is in many -respects as gay and bizarre as the architecture and names of the villas -themselves. - -The aspect of the waterside of the charming little place--for Dinard is -charming, in spite of it all--belies these strictures somewhat, with -the warm glow of the sinking sun gilding the roof-tops, as the emerald -waters of the great bay ebb and flow beneath their feet. - -Dinard has another and more interesting side in an admirable -architectural monument,--the ruins of an ancient priory, founded in -1324 by Olivier and Geoffroy de Montfort. The fine Gothic chapel is now -ruined and moss-grown, but there are still to be seen the tombs of the -Chevaliers de Montfort, who were mighty chieftains in their day. Within -the grounds also is a curious statue of the Virgin placed beneath the -enormous fig-tree. - -The beach is of course the great attraction of the summer resident, -when he is not drinking cool drinks at the casino or eating at the caf -restaurant on the terrace. - -St. nogat, which is usually linked with the mention of Dinard by a -hyphen, has much the same aspect as its partner,--villas, Swiss chlets, -and cottages. St. nogat bears the name of one of the first bishops of -Aleth, and its proximity to the great cliffs fringing the coast, and -the high rocks just offshore, make its location even more beautiful than -that of Dinard itself. Westward of St. nogat are St. Jacut, St. Cast, -and Cap Frhel, and nearer St. Lunaire and St. Briac. - -All are very popular resorts during the summer months, and are -attractive spots--or would be but that accommodation in all is limited, -and what there is is sadly overcrowded for the three fine months of the -year. - -St. Lunaire has an ancient eleventh-century church, placing it somewhat -on the plane of an artistic shrine. Practically, the edifice is -abandoned to-day, but it contains the tomb of St. Lunaire, a work of the -thirteenth or fourteenth century, made up of some fragmentary sculptures -thought to have come from the primitive church. - -St. Briac has much the same characteristics, though of itself it counts -an all-the-year-round population of two thousand or more souls. - -It owes its name to a Celtic hermit-saint, who came from Ireland in -the early days of the evangelizing missions of the Irish monks, and -has the ruined Chteau of Pontbriant for an attraction. It has not the -misfortune to have become as fashionable as Dinard-St. nogat, and is -therefore the more enjoyable. Truly is it a delightful little corner -of the world, where those who are town-weary may take their ease and -ruminate on the futility of attempting to put order into the universe. - -This whole region is a wonderful galaxy of natural beauties, to be -discovered and appreciated only by oneself. They shall be nameless here -that that pleasure may not be curtailed. - -The route to Dinan from St. Malo by the tidal river Rance is one of -those enjoyable journeys which impress the mind in an indelible fashion. -It is a matter of twenty-four kilometres as the crow flies, and about -the same by the water route of the fishes. - -Dinan is a real medival town, with a wall or rampart something over a -mile in length. It is a most interesting centre for the charming country -round about, and is in itself a typical feudal relic of the days when -cities were enclosed by walls and only entered through fortified gates. - -Originally the thirteenth-century ramparts were defended by twenty-four -towers, of which a dozen, perhaps, still remain. Three great gateways, -the gates of Jerzual, of St. Malo, and St. Louis, still remain in all -their fortified splendour; the fourth, the Porte de Brest, has been -demolished. - -[Illustration: <u>_The Valley of the Rance_</u>] - -The old streets of the medival city still exist, too, much in the same -state as they were in medival times. - -The porches or covered passages are a feature of many of the old-time -houses, and are most quaint and artistic. - -The church of St. Malo dates from 1490, and that of St. Sauveur from -the twelfth to the fifteenth century. The chief historical figure of -Dinan's past was Bertrand Duguesclin, the young Breton noble who so -distinguished himself in the fourteenth century on the side of France -against the English. - -[Illustration: _Duguesclin, from his statue in the Abbey of St. Denis._] - -He was born at Motte-Broons, near Dinan, toward 1320. "He had a -sunburned face, with a snub nose, and green eyes, an awkward gait, and -a rough and untractable nature," one reads in the words of Simeon Luce; -and from the existing portraits of him, all this is true. - -He was a warrior, from his earliest days, of the most thoroughgoing -type. He was the sort of small boy whom mothers find looking for -trouble. He would lead on the village lads to fight, and, when victory -had all but appeared, on one side or the other, he would throw himself -into the breach to start the fight again, just like a wolf, after which -he would lead both sides to a tavern to drink, and heal old sores. - -On the ninth of July, 1812, the heart of the redoubtable Duguesclin was -brought to Dinan and placed in the north transept of the Church of St. -Sauveur amid an imposing assemblage. - -The sarcophagus bears the following inscription, which shows that the -warrior who really was responsible for the banishment of the English -from France "ranked in company with kings," as his French admirers put -it. - - GY : GIST : LE CUEUR : DE - MESSIRE : BERTRAN : DU GUEAQUI - EN : SON VIVAT CONETITABLE DE - FRACE : QUI : TRESPASSA : LE XIIIe - JOUR : DE : JULLET : L'AN : MIL IIIe - IIIIxx : DONT : SON : CORPS : REPOS - AVECQUES : CEULX : DES : ROIS - A SAINCT : DENIS EN FRANCE. - -The great clock-tower, a fine fifteenth-century building with a massive -spire, is found in the Rue de l'Horloge. It was given to the town by -Anne of Brittany in 1507. - -The Chteau of Dinan was built by the Breton dukes (1382-87). Its -history was varied and vivid, as one reads in the pages of M. Gaultier -de Mottay. - -[Illustration: _Rez-de-Chause of Donjon--DINAN_] - -Oliver Clisson, Gilles of Brittany, Viscount Rohan, Duchess Anne, -Laurent Hamon, and many others whose names are famous in the history of -Brittany have walked through these halls, of which only the hold to-day -remains as a tourist "sight." - -The Tower of Cotquen, one of the ancient towers of the city wall, -forms practically a part of the old castle, but the keep, or the Queen -Anne's Tower, a hundred or more feet in height and of four stories,--the -topmost reached by a spiral stairway of 148 steps,--is the most distinct -feature still standing. - -In the interior are a number of obscure cells which were, and indeed are -still, terrible dungeons. The guard-room is on the second floor, with -also a little room, which served as an oratory for the Duchess Anne. The -third floor is occupied by the Constable's Hall, and the fourth by a -Hall of Arms, a fine vaulted apartment. - -To-day the castle is a prison, and the rank and file of visitors may -not enter this fine medival monument, but, if one have a proper -appreciation of the architectural delights of a medival fortress, and -be diplomatic in his request, very likely his wish to enter will be -gratified. - -One of the principal industries of Dinan is the fabrication of -sail-cloth. It is an admirably placed industry, with its market close -at hand, and most of the Breton and Norman fishing-boats of these parts -sport a full suit of Dinan manufacture. - -In the environs of Dinan are innumerable charming excursions mostly -neglected. One such must surely be included in one's itinerary,--a visit -to the old Priory of Lehon, a dependency of the Abbey of Marmoutier. - -It was founded in 850 by Nomino, in honour of St. Magloire, whose -relics were brought from the Isle of Jersey to Dinan. The ruins, -as seen to-day, are most ample and beautiful, showing the best of -thirteenth-century Gothic. - -Besides this, Lehon has the picturesque ruins of a twelfth and -thirteenth century castle perched high upon the summit of an eminence -overlooking the headwaters of the Rance. The castle came to the hands -of the Dukes of Brittany; Charles of Blois stayed there in 1356 after -his return from England, and Raoul Cotquen was made captain in 1402, -since which time its history has been lost or hidden in the pages of the -untranslated chroniclers. - -In 1624 the priory monks robbed the castle for material with which to -construct their beautiful cloister, but enough remains to-day, hidden -away among a mass of ivy and lichen-grown ruins, to indicate its former -prominence. - -Altogether Lehon and its two romantic memories of other days is a -"sight" not to be missed. - -An old custom formerly prevailed here at Pentecost, when the newly -married were supposed to present themselves before the prior of the -monastery for a sort of last blessing, as it would seem. - -They sang the following refrain, and went back to their home, or to the -festival in the neighbouring village, with never a care beyond to-day: - - "Si je suis marie vous le savez bien; - Si je suis mal l'aise vous n'en savez rien. - Ma chanson est dite, je ne vous dois plus rien." - -This seems a philosophical way of looking at things, and shows an easy -conscience and open mind on the part of all concerned. - -Seated upon the western shore of the great Bay of Mont St. Michel is -Cancale, whence come the oysters. The six thousand inhabitants of this -quaintly rock-environed place have a physiognomy so distinctly their own -as to mark them for a type. Feyen-Perrin and his brother have painted -the Cancale people in a manner never to be forgotten by those who are -familiar with their work. - -Anciently Cancale was known as Cancaven, and is a survival among -neighbouring settlements which have succumbed to the encroachments of -the ocean. - -In 1032, it became a dependency of the Abbey of Mont St. Michel. In -1758, it was pillaged by the English under the Duke of Marlborough, and -the English fleet again bombarded it in 1779. - -La Houle is the real port of Cancale, and the centre for the oyster -industry. At low tide the boats of the fishers are drawn up on the -yellow sands, there to remain until the return of the tide. At low -tide all the village comes from the town above and repairs to the -oyster-beds. The general outgoing, which seems to the stranger the -emigration of the whole population, has been described by a Frenchman -as: "_Un dfile, interminable, bruyant, cadenc, le bruit des pas coup -de paroles et de rires._" - -This great outpouring continues until quite all the available help of -the female persuasion has departed, leaving practically only the old and -infirm to guard the houses and shops until the return of the tide. - -Cancale is one of the most celebrated oyster-rearing districts of -the world, but, if the tourist arrive there during the summer months -which lack the "R," he will eat not of them; the natives look upon it -as downright crime even to think of serving them to you; the mussel -will have to be your substitute. It is always in season, though it -looks about as perishable in hot weather as the oyster, and probably -is so. Tradition and superstition account for the upholding of many -institutions in this world, and the oyster season appears to be one of -them. - -The celebrated Rocks of Cancale lie just below the town,--a black mass -of rocks, about which the waves of the ocean fawn and growl like a -parcel of wolves. - -The Point of Grouin is simply an exaggeration of the same rocky -formation as that of Cancale, and the same which unrolls itself all -around the coast up to Cape Frhel. To the west is the Bay of St. Malo, -and to the east the Bay of Mont St. Michel. - -Michelet wrote of this famous mount off the Breton coast as follows: - -"The gigantic rock is an abbey, a cloister, a fortress, and a prison, -with exquisite sublimity and true dignity. It rises like a titanic -tower, rock upon rock, keep upon keep, and century upon century. Below -the monks; higher the iron cage of Louis XI. (who, it seems, left these -details rather numerously about his domain); higher yet the cell of -Louis XIV.; higher yet the prison of to-day. All is in a whirlwind; -Mont St. Michel is a very sepulchre of peace." - -Michelet's was not wholly a cheerful view. He was rather a gloomy man, -it would seem, but it is perhaps proper enough to record his views -here, as most of us will praise this wonderful work to the limit of our -imagination. - -Really Mont St. Michel is not of Brittany. To-day the changing of the -boundary westward to the little river Couesnon brings it just over the -line into Normandy, though both ramblers in Normandy and ramblers in -Brittany may properly enough include it in their itineraries, and should -do so. - -To such spirits as like that sort of thing, there is a way open to the -landing, high up in the tower of the abbey, whence there is a wonderful -view. Michelet wrote of it, on the occasion of a visit, that it was -a place for fools; that he knew no spot more suitable to bring on an -attack of vertigo. - -Michelet's description of the quicksands which surround the mount is -distinctly good. The native will tell you that you must not venture upon -them, but he himself does so, and nothing happens. In spite of this, -let the visitor so much as leave the causeway a dozen yards--to focus -his camera--and a half-dozen burly fellows will hurl themselves upon -him and drag him back, declaring they have saved his life, which means -that one ultimately pays them something; a franc each is about the price -that they apparently consider a life worth. Sometimes some poor soul is -engulfed, but it is a first-class scare in most instances. Michelet says -of these quicksands ("_cendre blanche_"), "It is not land; it is not -sea; I myself only just escaped being engulfed." - -As a sort of side-show to the wonderful Abbey of Mont St. Michel is the -stern and barren Isle of Tombelaine. - -It lies, also amid its own desert of sand or water, according to the -state of the tide, about a mile, or perhaps a little more, to the -north-east of the mount. - -It is a simple islet of granite, uncultivated, and as wild as it always -has been. It rises perhaps 125 feet above the sea-level, like a giant -stepping-stone, between the mount and the neighbouring coast before -Avranches in Normandy. - -Its history is intimately bound with that of the mount itself, but -to-day it has few, if any, visitors. It played a certain minor part in -the war of the Hundred Years, when it served as a sturdy buttress for -the English fleet. - -From the tenth to the seventeenth century it was occupied by a religious -colony from the abbey of the mount, and held a diminutive priory -bearing the vocable of Our Lady la Gisant; "a gentle Madonna," says an -imaginative Frenchman, "standing beside the archangel with the sword." - -In the midst of the Marsh of Dol--the great Bay of Mont St. Michel--is -a granite eminence some two hundred feet above the surrounding plain, -at the summit of which is built the little village of Mont Dol. It is -supposed to be the site of an ancient shrine consecrated to the druids. - -Two kilometres from Mont Dol is the great menhir of Champ Dolent, a -relic of the stone age which was pagan, but is to-day surmounted by a -Christian cross, which seems paradoxical. It has no pretence to beauty -or architectural grandeur, and is to be regarded only as a mysterious -curiosity. - -When one first comes to Dol in Brittany he is in a quandary. Which is -it, city or village? The writer does not know even yet. It has all the -quaintness and rustic picturesqueness of a mere hamlet, and again, -in its station, its hotels, and its tree-lined boulevard, it takes -on the aspect of a city. At any rate, if it belongs to the latter -classification, it is somnolent, and accordingly delightful. - -"Here, my good fellow, can you direct me to the Htel de la Poste," one -says to the first native he meets after leaving the station. "Certainly, -my good man," he replies in an equally patronizing tone, "I will take -you there." He declines all remuneration, of course, and will not be -patronized in any way. Decidedly he is a most independent individual, -but polite withal. - -Stendhal, in his "Traveller's Memories," said of the great frowning -cathedral of the episcopal city of Dol: "It is the most beautiful -example of a Gothic edifice which I have seen." It is not difficult to -follow his reasoning, for the grim walls of its faade, in the simplest -and severest style, are indeed magnificent examples of the undecorated -Gothic of a very early period. Most folk, however, will not call it -beautiful when Chartres, Rheims, Beauvais, or even Ses are in mind. - -Dol, at any rate, forming the gateway to Brittany, from Normandy through -the Cotentin, was a most important centre of Christianity in the sixth -century. - -The foundation of Dol dates from 548, when a colony of Britons coming -from Ireland settled here under the leadership of St. Samson, from -whom the present cathedral is named. This is but another of those links -which bind the history of Brittany with that of the Celts from overseas. -Legend continues the story thus: "Thou goest by the sea" (St. Samson was -told), "and where thou wilt disembark, thou shalt find a well. Over this -thou wilt build a church, and around it will group the houses forming -the city, of which thou wilt be bishop." - -All this came to pass, and for long ages the town has been known as the -episcopal city of Dol. William the Conqueror besieged Dol in 1075, but -retired after forty days, having failed to sustain his attack. Henry II. -of England invaded the city, and Jean Lackland fortified himself here in -1203, but it was retaken by Guy de Thouars in the year following. - -Up to Revolutionary times the career of Dol was unceasingly riotous -and bloody, but little evidences of a part so played remain visible -to-day. All that reminds one of its antiquity is the charmingly severe -and simply outlined Cathedral of St. Samson, and the numerous timbered -houses with their street-front galleries, always a most interesting -feature of a medival town. - -Sixteen kilometres south of Dol is Combourg, not an important town in -many ways, and yet very important, if one demands a sixteenth-century or -earlier label on all he admires. - -As a French visitor to Combourg has said, "La gare de Combourg is -not Combourg; you have yet fifteen hundred metres to go." This is -not a great distance, but, as the town is so completely hidden from -the railway, the sensation is that of alighting far from a centre of -civilization. - -The Chteau of Combourg is one of those indescribable picturesque -fourteenth and fifteenth century structures which owe much to situation -and environment. It has a picturesquely disposed market clustered about -it, so that the cries of porkers and their venders mingle with the -stately pealing of the bell of the great clock, which rings out not only -the hour, but the "quarters" in a most sonorous note. - -The costumes of both the men and women of the region around Combourg -are exceedingly picturesque and novel; the men with blouse and jacket, -and the women in black and the coifs of Becherel, Hd, Tentniac, and -Miniac; all somewhat resembling one another, and that of Miniac looking -more like a great white-winged bishop's mitre than anything else. - -[Illustration: <u>_Coif of Miniac_</u>] - -More anciently Combourg Chteau was a feudal fortress, in an old -building of which, now swallowed up in the surrounding structures, the -infancy of Ren Chateaubriand was spent. There is also an old tower -dating from 1016, built by Gingoneus, a bishop of Dol. The present -chteau belongs to the Countess of Chateaubriand, and is visible to the -curious public on Wednesday afternoons. - -The hall, the library, which contains the writing-table of the author of -the "Genius of Christianity," and his bedroom, where is the little iron -bed on which he died in Paris,--all go to make of this a literary shrine -of prime importance. - -The Chteau of Combourg has a legend, too, but since it concerns -only the skeleton of a cat, which in life was supposed to be the -reincarnation of a former Count of Combourg, it seems unworthy of -repetition here. - - - - -CHAPTER X. - -ON THE ROAD IN BRITTANY--MAYENNE, FOUGRES, LAVAL, AND VITR - - -In general aspect a Breton country-side differs widely from those of -Normandy. Here one comes upon hedgerows and an occasional bit of stone -wall, quite as one sees them in England. - -The towns and communities of Brittany are less numerous and less -populous, too, than those of Normandy, and paving is uncommon in the -towns, and were it not for the steep ascents and descents, by which one -leaves such places as Mayenne, Fougres, Josselin, Auray, or Quimperl, -this would prove quite a blessing to the automobilist. As it is, while -they give variety to one's journey by road, they do not by any means -permit of "plain sailing" at all times. - -The great national road from Paris to Brest crosses mid-Brittany, after -leaving Normandy, at Pr-en-Pail just beyond Alenon. It passes through -the great towns of Mayenne, Fougres, and Rennes, where it joins the -highway from Paris by way of Chartres, Le Mans, Laval, and Vitr. - -From Rennes this road, No. 24, runs straight, almost as the crow -flies, to the tip of Finistre, by Montfort-sur-Meu, Loudac, Carhaix, -Huelgoat, and Landerneau to Brest. - -This takes one through the very heart of Brittany, though by no means -is it the most interesting or the most prosperous. Mayenne, Fougres, -Vitr, and Laval form a quartette of Breton towns which, taken as a -whole, have characteristics quite similar, and yet different from those -in other parts. Virtually, they are all hill-towns, and therein lies -their resemblance, though their careers have been varied indeed. - -The run down into the valley of the river Mayenne, as one comes into the -town of the same name, is a wonderfully delightful and gentle descent -of perhaps a dozen kilometres. There is nothing very terrific about -it, nor is it of the frankly mountainous order, still the eminence to -the eastward is sufficiently elevated to give a singularly spacious -appearance to the landscape above the river valley itself; indeed, next -to that magnificent run down into Rouen--from the height of Bon -Secours--it is one of the most splendidly scenic roads in all North -France. - -[Illustration: <u>_Mayenne_</u>] - -At the bottom flows the Mayenne, joining the Loire at Angers, and on -its banks is nestled snugly the town of Mayenne itself, with a truly -delightful riverside hotel and church. - -Just below it is the ancient castle built on a rocky escarpment -overhanging the river. There are five great towers on the riverside, and -three others on the north, of which one alone has preserved its conical -roof. To-day it serves as a prison, but there are yet to be seen in its -interior some fragments of the ornamentation of the thirteenth century. -The terrace of the chteau forms a delightful promenade overlooking the -river. - -William the Conqueror besieged Geoffrey III. here in 1064, but the most -celebrated siege which the chteau underwent was that by the Count of -Salisbury in 1424. - -The Htel de Ville is an admirable relic of other days, though by no -means pretentious. It is a small, rectangular structure, its front -ornamented with two enormous solar devices, and the whole surmounted -by a graceful bell-tower. Behind the Htel de Ville stands a bronze -statue of Cardinal Cheverus, first Bishop of Boston. The Church of -Notre Dame is really a grand structure, with its fine showing of splayed -buttresses. Its foundation dates from 1110, and it admirably exhibits -the best traditions of its time. - -Five kilometres away are the remains of the old Cistercian Abbey of -Fontaine-Daniel, founded in 1204 by Juhel III. There are some remarkable -fragments of its old foundation still remaining, but a large part of the -present edifice is of the seventeenth century. From Mayenne to Fougres, -still on the highroad to the west, one passes Erne, whose name is not -known to many travellers and which is not marked on every map, though it -is a bustling town of five thousand inhabitants. - -The origin of this place is due to the foundation of a chteau--on the -site of the present quaint church--by the Lords of Mayenne, who were, in -the sixteenth century, of the house of Lorraine. - -Henri of Lorraine was killed by a musket-shot at the siege of Montaubon, -and was brought here to die in 1654. - -Some years later the Seigneury of Mayenne and Erne passed to the hands -of Cardinal Mazarin, who transmitted it to his niece, and gave the old -chteau for transformation into the present church. - -Javron, also on the way to Fougres, is a small town of two thousand -inhabitants, and the former site of a monastery, founded by Clotaire for -an anchorite named Constantin. The present church is built over the tomb -of this saint. - -The situation of Fougres is truly remarkable. It is, moreover, a -remarkable place in itself, and is to be reckoned as one of these -delightful spots to visit, which, if not exactly popular tourist -resorts, are at least as satisfying to the curiously inclined. - -Fougres in all ways is this, and more. It is almost the best example -of a walled and fortified town of the middle ages existing in all North -France. Its situation, on a great hill, with its tower-flanked walls and -gates, is one of surpassing impressiveness, although to-day the general -aspect of the little city of twenty thousand inhabitants is modern -enough. - -Fougres was one of the original nine baronies of Brittany, and owes -its origin to a chteau which Men, the son of Juhel Branger, Count of -Rennes, constructed at the beginning of the ninth century. - -To-day the city walls, the remains of the chteau, and the gates and -watch-towers are admirably preserved. The castle itself is nothing more -than a vast ruin, whose entrance, formed by three towers, plainly shows -it to date from the twelfth century. - -[Illustration: <u>_Plan of the Ancient Walls and Towers of Fougres_</u>] - -There is a great tower yet remaining--one of a twin pair--known as the -Tower of Coigny, from a former governor, and within this tower is an -ancient chapel. - -There are three other celebrated towers, well-nigh as perfect as they -were in the middle ages as far as their general outlines are concerned. -The keep was razed in 1630, but the inner wall which surrounded it, with -its three angular towers, is still to be seen. The Tower of Melusine -encloses a museum in which are many relics and curiosities of a period -contemporary with the castle itself. The ramparts of the town are -more or less ruinous, but are still to be seen throughout its whole -circumference. No part of this feature, however, dates from before the -fifteenth century. - -There are two admirable churches,--relics of the middle ages,--St. -Sulpice and St. Leonard, also the ancient convent of the Urbanists, -dating from 1689, now barracks. - -There are many fine old houses in wood and stone scattered about the -city, and an octagonal tower, in which is a great clock whose bell was -cast in 1304 by Rolland Chaussire. - -North of the town is the Forest of Fougres, composed principally of -great beeches. Within the forest are the ruins of an ancient convent of -the Franciscans, and near the little hamlet of Landeau are the famous -"Caverns of Landeau," constructed, it is said, in 1173 by Raoul II. of -Fougres, to hide his riches and those of his vassals from the rapacity -of the troops of Henry II. of England. - -Dropping down again to the main route from Paris, which joins with that -by the way of Mayenne and Fougres at Rennes, one enters Laval, the -first Breton town of any magnitude on this route, as one comes westward. - -It is a veritable local metropolis, and, like Mayenne, farther up the -river, it spreads itself amply on both sides of the stream which flows -southward to join the Loire at Angers, just below the country. - -The first Chteau of Laval was built by the Count Guidon or Guy to -protect the Bretons from the invasion of Charlemagne or his successors. -The second Guy received a charter from the Bishop of Mans, dated in the -fifth year of the reign of King Robert (1002), and this designates him -as the real founder of the Chteau of Laval. The town became the seat of -a barony, afterward a county, of which the possessors were ever famous -for their personal valour and their high lineage. Among them were the -Montmorencys, the Montforts, and the Colignys. - -When, in the fifteenth century, the English had become virtual masters -of Maine, Laval alone resisted their efforts, thanks to the energy of a -certain Anne of Laval. - -The historical records of the town and the chteau are ample and -eventful, even down to as late a day as 1871, when, after the battle of -Mans, General Chanzy retreated upon Laval. - -It was in the environs of Laval that the four ancient smugglers, the -brothers Jean, Franois, Pierre, and Ren Cottereau, known as the -Chouans (because of their owl signal, as the French give it), first -rallied and organized the bands of partisans which gradually adopted the -name. - -The keep of the chteau is a great cylindrical tower of the twelfth -century, remarkable for its height, its size, and the wonderful -carpentry of its roof. The great interior court is bordered on two sides -with a magnificent Renaissance structure attributed to Guy XVI., Count -of Laval and Governor of Brittany in 1525. The chapel has now been given -up to the prisoners sheltered within the castle. It is the masterpiece -of the whole work, and dates from the eleventh century. - -The Church of the Trinity, made a cathedral in 1855, was in 1790 the -seat of the Assemble, but in its most ancient parts dates from the -episcopate of Hildebert of Lavardin (1110). - -There are some remains of the town's ancient fortifications yet to -be seen, such as the Renaise Tower and the Spur Tower, which are in -every way as suggestive of former importance as the remains of the -castle itself. The Beucheresse Gate is another fragment of these same -fortifications. - -In Laval are ten thousand workmen engaged in the production of tent -and awning cloth. Laval is a great wheat market for the prolific -wheat-growing region round about, so its commercial importance of to-day -is quite as firmly established as is its historic past. - -Laval was the birthplace of Ambroise Par, the founder of French -surgery. It was he who drew the spear-head from the cheek of Balafr, -and he who declared the malady of Francis I. to be incurable. - -His statue bears the following inscription, "I dressed the wound, and -God healed it." - -One cannot say too much in praise of Vitr, though it does smack of -the popular tourist resort, with hotels whose runners tout for your -patronage, and picture post-card sellers, who seem to think that you -prefer their wares to viewing the sights themselves; but the hotels are -amply endowed with those creature comforts that most of us value highly, -and, if you wish, you will be put to sleep in a hygienic bedroom, -which is something like a prison-cell, but which must truly be hygienic, -judging from its get-up. - -[Illustration: <u>_Beucheresse Gate, Laval_</u>] - -These rooms, installed by the "Touring Club of France," are now to -be found sprinkled here and there throughout the land, and, if white -lacquered walls and ceilings and iron beds, and simple draperies and no -carpets,--but highly waxed floors instead,--can ensure a superlative -cleanliness and airiness, why, so much the more welcome they are; -and surely the weary tourist ought not to mind whether he sleeps -in a cubicle or not. Again, the fare of this particular hotel (the -Travellers') is so excellent that he ought to be willing to sleep on the -proverbial plank. - -Vitr, in spite of all novelty, is a true city of the past, and one -literally walks the by-paths of history when he traverses its streets. -All at once one comes to the ancient and theatrical-looking Chteau of -the Tremoilles, Vitr's most noble family of other days. - -The town has undergone many sieges. Charles VIII. captured it, and in -1488 sojourned in it for some days. During the wars of the League, the -Rieux and the Colignys led the revolt, and it served for some years as a -strong place of resort for the Huguenots. Within the two hundred years -following, the Breton Parliament, alternately presided over by the Dukes -of Vitr and of Rohan, met here many times, always amid a great and -joyous festival given by the town. - -[Illustration: <u>_Plan of Vitr in 1811 Showing City Walls_</u> - - A--Chteau - B--Place du Chteau - C--Fosses - D--Dependencies of Chteau (non-existent to-day) - F--Porte d'Enhayt - G--Porte de Gastesel - H--Eglise Notre Dame -] - -All the activity in the past has worked for the preservation of many -ancient memorials. - -The aspect of the town is not so ruinously picturesque as Fougres, nor -again so trim and neat as Mayenne or Laval, but more than either of -these it preserves to-day its ancient outlook at every turn. - -"_II n'est plus que Vitr en Bretagne, Avignon dans le Midi, qui -conservent au milieu de notre poque leur intacte configuration du -moyen-ge_" (Victor Hugo). - -The chteau itself has been recently restored, and ranks as one of the -most perfectly preserved specimens of military architecture in all -Brittany. One may visit the interior of this old fortress-chteau in the -care of a painstaking porter. - -The principal mass, known as the chtelet, is the best preserved, -and, flanking it on both sides, are series of crenelated towers and -machicolated walls. In the courtyard is the eleventh-century chteau, -now incorporated in the later work. - -On the same side is a charming Renaissance tower, built by Guy XVI., and -known as the "Tribune of Tremoille." The five sides of this admirable -architectural detail are charmingly decorated in sculptured stone, and -on one is the inscription taken from the Book of Job: "POST TENEBRAS -SPERO LUCEM," the Tremoille motto. - -[Illustration: <u>_Chteau de Vitr_</u>] - -Within is a museum with divers collections of many things of an era -contemporary with the structure itself. - -[Illustration: <u>_Tower of St. Martin, Vitr_</u>] - -Opposite the great entrance gateway to the castle is a modest little -house, once the residence (or temporary abode) of Madame de Svign, and -now occupied by the "Cercle Militaire." - -In the environs--five kilometres to the south--is the Chteau of -Rochers, better known as the domicile of Madame de Svign, and one of -the stock "sights." It was from the Chteau of Rochers that she dated so -large a number of her letters in 1670-71. - -In a letter bearing date of the twenty-second of July, 1671, she writes -thus to Madame de Grignan: - -"Madame de Chaulnes arrived on Sunday, but in what manner think you? On -her beautiful feet, between eleven and twelve at night. One might think -that Vitr was in Bohemia. - -"She made no ceremony of her coming.... She had come from Nantes by La -Guerche, and her carriage stuck fast between two rocks half a league -from Vitr." - -[Illustration: CHATEAU de ROCHERS] - -It was from the Chteau of Rochers that Madame de Svign wrote to her -daughter: "On Sunday last, just as I had sealed my former letter, I saw -enter our courtyard four chariots with six horses, with fifty mounted -guards, many led horses, and many mounted pages." - -These were gallant days at Madame de Svign's Breton home, and to read -all of her letters from Rochers--mainly to her daughter--is to get a -wonderful epitome of the seventeenth-century social life in this part of -France. - -On the above occasion the company included M. de Chaulnes, M. de Rohan, -M. de Lavardin, M. de Cotlegon, and M. de Locmaria, the Baron de Guais, -the Bishops of Rennes and St. Malo, "and eight or ten I knew not," she -continued. - -Throughout the chteau and its dependencies, the illusion of Madame de -Svign's time has been well kept up unto to-day. One learns that the -chteau became the property of the Svigns upon the marriage of Anne of -Mathefelon, "Lady of Rochers," with William of Svign, chamberlain to -the Duke of Brittany. - -The kindly and well-meaning concierge, or cicerone, or whatever one -chooses to call him or her who conducts him over the chteau and its -grounds, is somewhat of a bore, though one has not the courage to cut -off the prattle for fear he may lose something which may not have been -offered to others. - -[Illustration: <u>_Arms of Madame de Svign_</u>] - -It is somewhat disconcerting and even annoying to be told, -however,--when about to stroll down a tree-alleyed path,--that "the -marchioness never went there." Of course it's pure conjecture on the -part of this twentieth-century guide, since the noble marchioness -has been dead some two hundred years or more, but, as aforesaid, the -interruption fascinates one with its coolness. - -At the right of the chteau are the gardens traced by the famous -Lentre. In the "Letters" one reads frequent references to these great -gardens with their vast and ancient forests of tall timber. - - - - -CHAPTER XI. - -RENNES AND BEYOND - - -Rennes was once a great provincial capital, as great politically, -perhaps, as Rouen, but it has not a tithe of the fascination or wealth -of attraction of the Norman metropolis, and never had. Its Cathedral of -St. Pierre is a cold, unfeeling thing, and its eighteenth-century town -hall, its great military barracks, and its palace of a university are in -no way great or lovable architectural monuments. As an offset against -the mediocrity, is the somewhat bare exterior of the court-house, built -in 1618 for the Breton Parliament, and furnished now, as then, in most -luxurious fashion. - -The Salle des Pas-Perdus is a vast apartment, most delightfully planned -and decorated, and of the Grand Parliamentary Chamber the same may be -said. Above the floor of this chamber are still to be seen the tribunes -where the dames of other days, of the days of Madame de Svign, -assisted at the sessions. - -The town hall contains a library of eighty thousand volumes, of which -one hundred or more are first editions, and six hundred manuscripts. - -The museums of the university palace are exceedingly rich in treasure, -and are in every way worthy of a great provincial capital. - -For the rest, Rennes is a most ordinary, uninteresting town, though it -does possess two medival monuments of remark: the Porte Mordelaise, -a historic souvenir of the military architecture of the middle -ages, and Church of Our Lady, the ancient chapel and cloister of an -eleventh-century monastery founded by the Bishop St. Mlaine. - -There are many fine old Renaissance houses scattered here and there -about the town, but the general aspect is modern, and mediocre at that. -Rennes would have been called by century-ago travellers "a well-built -town," and such it certainly is, as becomes the ancient capital of the -duchy of Brittany. - -In later days it is mostly known to the general reader as the scene -of the famous Dreyfus trial, and its only liveliness comes from the -officers of the tenth army corps, who, of a summer's night, frequent the -coffee-rooms opposite the court-house or the theatre, or promenade in -the Thabor and the flower-garden, the old gardens of the Benedictine -convent. - -[Illustration: <u>_Monastery of St. Melaine, Rennes_</u>] - -Just previous to the Revolution, there were stirring times in Rennes, -when a marshal of France commanded the troops camped within the city. -The discontent of the people had arisen from two distinct causes, the -price of bread and the abolition of its ancient parliament. The former -seems a good enough excuse, but the latter is inexplicable, except, -perhaps, as the snuffing out of an ancient source of local pride. It was -to Rennes that Pre Caussin, the father confessor of Louis XIII., was -sent by Richelieu, when he proved himself incapable of becoming the tool -of the cardinal. The prison of state at Rennes was a terrible place in -those days, but the true churchman preferred it to exile as a missionary -in the wilds. - -All this and much more of political history made Rennes a famous centre -in times past, but to-day it is so much like a bad imitation of Paris, -that in desperation the stranger within the gates finally takes his -departure for more idyllic parts, with the vow that never again will he -seek to learn of present-day Brittany from the cafs and boulevards of -Rennes. - -One other comment may be made on the unloveliness of Rennes as a place -of temporary sojourn; and that is on its cab-drivers. The driver of a -fiacre in the average Breton large town is like his fellows of Paris. -He drives with a loose rein, and rushes helter-skelter down narrow -streets with never a care for other traffic, or for foot-passengers, -save a shouted, "_He, la-bas!_" which is so sudden and unforeseen that -it is quite useless as a warning. There have been those who have said -that the hoot of an automobile's horn would drive even the "_sense of -traffic_"--a new sense recently discovered by the Parisian medical -journals--from out of the brain of even the most careful of persons! -This is as naught compared to the Breton cab-driver's stentorian "_He, -la-bas!_" - -As one comes to the open country again, he leaves all these distractions -behind, and revels in nature, and if he be travelling by road, in the -stubbornness of cows and sheep and the aggressiveness of geese and -ducks, all road-users like himself. - -Westward of Rennes, twenty kilometres by road, is Montfort-sur-Meu, -a charming small town, situated upon the banks of two tiny rivers. -Its origin dates back to an ancient eleventh-century fortress, which -remains to-day in the form of a great cylindrical machicolated tower. -The Seigneury of Montfort, since the fifteenth century, has passed -successively, by marriage or by heritage, through the houses of Laval, -Rieux, Coligny, and La Trmouille. - -Next is Montauban, with a fine, moss-grown ruin of a chteau, dating -from the fifteenth century; the town itself numbers three thousand -inhabitants, but it does not look it. - -St. Men, a dozen kilometres farther on, was born of a monastery founded -in the tenth century by a holy man of its name. It was destroyed and -rebuilt many times in the years to follow, but its old abbatial church -still exists, one tower coifed by a dome, and another smaller and flat. -But no one comes here to see this fine old monkish relic but the farming -folk from round about, though St. Men is a town of three thousand souls -and an idyllic artists' sketching-ground. No colony of painters has yet -settled here, leaving it a wholly new field to exploit by any painter -looking for new worlds to conquer. - -Loudac and Pontivy, the one in the Ctes du Nord, and the other in -the Morbihan, are two characteristically Breton towns bearing no -relation whatever to the outside world. It seems doubtful indeed if the -inhabitants of these two centres are aware that there is any outside -world, so taken up are they with their own little affairs. - -Loudac has some six thousand inhabitants, but it has no apparent -industries to hold all these people together, and it seems as if they -had simply grouped themselves at the crossing of five great routes and -built a town. Its foundation does not go very far back into antiquity; -its parish church is only 150 years old, but the Chapel of Notre Dame -Vertus dates from the thirteenth century. - -In October, November, and December are held great cider-apple markets, -which, from their magnitude, would seem to be the chief source of income -of the population. - -The ancient slogan of Pontivy, born of Revolutionary times, was "Freedom -or Death," which is not far different from the battle-cry of socialists -the world over to-day. The condition of the inhabitants of Pontivy, -however, does not differ from most folk elsewhere, and the frowning -walls of its old castle ironically point to the fact that the time has -not yet come when a successful social revolution can be steered through -the breakers ahead--not even in France, where indeed there are even -more advanced ideas on the subject than in Germany itself. - -The memory of this event, though the "Treaty of Pontivy" was sent -broadcast through all the communes of France, has quite died out, and -the serenity of a little Breton market-town long ago settled upon -Pontivy, with nothing but a dim memory existing to neutralize the -admiration one is bound to have for the town's wonderfully picturesque -castle. It is a grand ruin with crumbled roof and walls, but its -outlines are as clear as ever they were, and if it has not the magnitude -or magnificence of many others of its class, it looks far more imposing, -and forms an exquisite stage setting for any medival romance one is -able to conjure up. The history of Pontivy and its castle is this: - -The town owes its origin to a monastery built here in the seventh -century by St. Ivy, an English monk. The castle, however, was a -foundation of seven hundred years later, by John of Rohan, in 1485. At -the creation of the duchy of Rohan, in 1663, Pontivy became the first -seat of this jurisdiction. - -At the Revolution the famous Pontivy treaty mentioned came into -being, with the result that in 1802 a consuls' decree prescribed the -construction of a vast barrack at Pontivy, and the canalization of the -river Blavet, upon which it sits, down to the sea. - -Napoleon, however, by a decree given at Milan, sought to create a new -town south of the present city, whose name should be Napoleonville. -All this because Pontivy had declared for the rights of man. When the -Revolutionists sought power Pontivy had every chance, but with Napoleon -his desire was to efface it. - -Pontivy is distinctly Breton in every aspect; its manners, customs, and -above all its costumes. Decidedly one's itinerary in Brittany should be -made to include it. - -Rostrenen is a delightful old town banked high upon a hillside some -six hundred feet above the valley. The old-time collegiate church is a -thirteenth-century foundation, which, though restored in our day, has -all the loveliness of the era of its foundation well preserved. - -Like the church at Josselin it is called Our Lady of the -Blackberry-bush, from a miraculous Virgin found beneath a -blackberry-bush. The great day of pilgrimage to this shrine is the -fifteenth of August. - -Carhaix is a little Breton town now all but shorn of its former -importance, though its breed of cattle is prized above all others in -Brittany,--as if that were enough to keep its memory alive. Anciently -Carhaix was the capital of the Vorganium, whose peoples took an active -part in the wars against Csar. Seven Roman ways centred here, and there -are yet to be seen the remains of an ancient Roman aqueduct. - -Vorganium ultimately lost its rank, and was made a part of the realm -of Cornouaille founded by King Grollo, who gave Carhaix its present -name--then Ker-Ahs. - -Carhaix is the birthplace of La Tour d'Auvergne, "the first Grenadier of -France." His career was almost legendary, and after his famous infernal -column which went up against the Spaniards in the Pyrenees, he retired -to the city of his birth, and took up the study of the Celtic tongue. In -1796, when the Terror broke out, at the age of fifty-two, he took the -haversack and cartridge-box of a simple soldier, to replace the son of -an old friend who had been drawn by conscription. He would never advance -a single grade, but remained in the ranks from this time forward, -and was killed at the battle of Oberhausen in Bavaria. His heart is -enshrined in the Htel des Invalides at Paris, having been brought -there and buried with great pomp in 1904. - -Carhaix has a real novelty in its horse-market, held before the Church -of St. Trmeur. There is nothing actually profane or sacrilegious -about this perhaps; but yet again, perhaps there is. Certainly it is -incongruous to see a long string of horses tethered to the very church -door-knob itself, with the breeders seated back against the church wall -smoking tobacco and eating and drinking. - -Huelgoat is in the very heart of Finistre. It is as typical in the -manners and customs of these parts as is Pont l'Abb in Cornouaille or -Auray in Morbihan. It has one of the finest sites given to a town in all -Brittany, and abounds in quaintness and beauty. - -There are various ecclesiastical monuments and religious shrines in and -near the town, of which the guide-books tell, and all are well worth -visiting. - -The market-place of Huelgoat does not differ greatly from other -market-places in Brittany. The costumes are brilliant in magpie -colours,--if white coifs flashing in the sunlight can be said to make -colour,--and the little life and the little affairs of the peasant -people scintillate and fluctuate from day to day as if they were the -most serious and momentous things in all the world. - -Above, on the right, rises the quaint bell-tower of the -sixteenth-century church, not beautiful of itself, perhaps, but grouping -wonderfully with the moving foreground. - -Huelgoat is a great place for ducks, evidently, for ducks big, little, -and of all colours of the rainbow are apparently the chief and staple -article of trade. What the value may be to-day, as compared with what it -was last market-day, no one can prognosticate. Two francs is certainly -not much for a nice fat duck, just waiting to be plucked and garnished -with green peas, but two francs for a brace is cheaper still, and two -francs for a whole flock or bevy, or whatever formation ducks group -themselves in, is a still better bargain, and on occasions you may -buy a whole duck and drake family--father and mother and two or three -youngsters--for a matter of _une pice_, which is the Breton's way of -counting a hundred sous or five francs. - -From Huelgoat the highroad branches to Morlaix in the northwest, and -Landerneau, directly to the west, when one comes once more on the -national road, running westward from Alenon by way of Fougres and the -north to Brest. - -[Illustration: <u>_Huelgoat_</u>] - - - - -CHAPTER XII. - -RELIGIOUS FESTIVALS AND PARDONS - - -Brittany has been called "the Land of Calvaries and Pardons." This does -not mean much to one who has never come under the spell of these strange -sights and survivals, but it means a great deal to those who realize to -the full the real significance of the devoutness and religious motives -which inspire the Breton folk to worship God in a manner which, in the -present age of disregard for the Christian religion of our forefathers, -seems to be playing less and less a foremost part. - - "Venez donc un tour au Pays de St. Yves. - - * * * - - Au pays du Creizker finement dentel. - Venez donc faire un tour au Pays de Calvaires, - Au Pays des Pardons mystiques et joyeux." - -So sang Theodore Botrl in a charming series of verses written as an -invitation to his fellow Frenchmen to know more of the ancient province -of Brittany. Since Brittany is so very religious, the most devout of -all the provinces of the France of to-day, the following account of -the disposition of certain observances under the care of the state is -apropos. - -France is said to be Catholic, because the majority of the people -profess Catholicism, which apparently answers their wants better than -any other. As a matter of fact, however, there is the costablishment -of four religions, all of which are recognized by the state and their -ministers paid by the state. So, virtually, there are four state -religions, if they can be so called. In truth, there is no religious -head in France; neither the chief of state, the Archbishop of Paris -(there are three other heads of religions, so manifestly one could not -be chosen), nor the minister of public worship can be called upon to -fill the office, hence there is no national religion, though the Roman -Catholic faith predominates to-day as in the past. - -Since we are concerned herein with Brittany alone, and since the Breton -is accounted the most devoutly Catholic of all Frenchmen, it is enough -to define the organization of the Roman Catholic religion alone, leaving -the question of the Calvinists, the Lutherans, and the Israelites quite -apart, as they exist not at all in Brittany as a factor of the local -conditions of life. - -The parish is the unit in the Catholic Church organization in France, -as the _commune_ is the unit in civil administration; the parishes are -divided into _curs_ and _succursales_. - -The first class, which number forty-five hundred throughout France, have -for their pastor a priest who is immovable, nominated by the bishop with -the approval of the government. The second class have a pastor who is -nominated by the bishop, but who can be removed or replaced. The parish -priest may have one or more assistants. Above the parish priest in rank -is the bishop. - -In general the bishoprics correspond with the departments, though there -are eighty-four dioceses and but sixty-seven bishops, the archbishops of -the "ecclesiastical provinces"--which often include several departments -and dioceses--making up the number. - -In Brittany the Departments of Ille-et-Vilaine, Ctes du Nord, -Finistre, Morbihan, and Loire-Infrieure have a bishopric, with an -archbishopric at Rennes. - -The bishops are nominated by the chief of the state, but are invested -canonically by the Pope. They are assisted by vicars-general, who -undertake the administrative functions of the diocese. The canonical -chapter of the cathedral, the diocesan seminary, and all other -seminaries are under the authority of the vicar-general. - -Above the bishops are the archbishops, who administer to the wants of -their diocese in the same way as the bishops, and, in addition, preside -at all provincial councils, ordain the bishops, and in general have a -certain jurisdiction over the bishoprics of their sees. - -The ecclesiastical provinces, as the great administrative districts of -the Church are known, correspond to-day, in a great part, to the ancient -provinces of the Roman epoch in Gaul, as the bishoprics themselves -correspond with the ancient cities and towns. - -Higher up even than the archbishops are the cardinals, nominated by the -Pope with the concurrence of the head of the French nation. To-day there -are five cardinals in France, all being titularies of one of the Roman -churches and members of the Sacred College which elects the Pope. - -Those who know Brittany will recognize as the foremost trait and -characteristic of the people their devotion to religious forms and -ceremonies. - -It has been said that by nature the Bretons are conservative. This is -indeed true enough, but they are something more, they are superstitious, -not only with regard to certain phases of their religion, but also -with respect to many of their local customs, which have naught to do -with religion. It is said that belief in witchcraft still endures, and -certain it is that folk-lore and fairy-lore are, in some parts, quite as -much of the life of the people as is the case in the bogs of Ireland. -The Celtic imagination, which is the same in both instances, doubtless -accounts for this. What the Bretons really are, or have been, though -they have not often been accused of it, is pagan,--at least some of them -are. It was only in the seventeenth century that the pagan cult--as a -body of magnitude--was suppressed. This again was a survival, of course, -from the barbarous rites and practices of the druids, which indeed were -the same elsewhere, so it need not be laid up against the Bretons alone. - -Probably those vast colonies of megalithic monuments at Carnac, and -their orphaned brothers and sisters scattered elsewhere throughout -Brittany, did much to keep the flames aglow on pagan altars, and -even to-day it is easy to perceive with what awe and veneration the -simple-minded Breton peasant regards these weird survivals of other -days. At any rate, Breton religion to-day is a devotion to many forms -and ceremonies. - -Brittany has been called the land of pardons (_pays des pardons_). Every -one knows of these great Breton festivals and of their significance. If -one travel between May and October, scarcely a week will pass without -his falling unawares upon one or another of these great sacred ftes. - -All Bretons do not give to these rites the sacred regard with which -they were originally intended to be endowed. Decidedly they have been -profaned only too often, and at times there is a little too much -license. The Breton pardon is by no means to be thought of in the same -manner as the kermess of Flanders, which is a merrymaking pure and -simple, with not even a side-light of religion thrown upon it. - -The five great pardons of Brittany are held each year as follows: - -"The Pardon of the Poor," at St. Yves; "The Pardon of the Singers," at -Rumengol; "The Pardon of the Fire," at St. Jean du Doigt; "The Pardon -of the Mountain," at Tromnie de St. Ronan; "The Pardon of the Sea," at -Ste. Anne de la Palude. - -It is a moot question as to just how much of romance is in the make-up -of the Breton character. Emotional the people are, but the emotion -that leads them into the enthusiasm which they exhibit at their great -religious festivals and pardons is more superstitious than romantic. - -The druidism, or paganism, or whatever the religion (_sic_) of the -ancient peoples of the Armorican peninsula may have been, bears not the -least traditional resemblance to the fervour of the devotees of the -pardons of to-day, but one can readily believe that the same spirit, if -with a different motive, does exist even now. - -The blessing of the boats, the birds, the cows, and what not, which -takes place periodically at different points along the Breton -coast,--for it is mostly along the coast that these observances take -place,--smacks not a little of something that is of more psychological -purport than mere religious devotion. - -From whatever tradition these great religious observances have -descended, there is no question of the sincerity of the participants, -though there is a wide difference between the "sacred" and "profane" -elements which meet on these occasions. - -Brittany, perhaps as much as any other of the ancient provinces of -France, has preserved its local customs and traditions, unblushingly -indifferent to the changing conditions round about them. Of course there -is no reason why religion and its observances should change with the -march of time, but they do, nevertheless, in France as much as in any -other land. Only in Brittany, apparently, do the congregations of men -and women--for elsewhere the congregations are mostly women--of great -churches approach to anything like the numbers that the churches were -built to contain. - -Throughout this land of calvaries, too, there will be found at all times -of the day, and often at night, a tiny congregation of one, two, or -perhaps a half a dozen, peasant or fisher folk kneeling before one of -these wayside crosses, and invoking their God after the manner they have -been taught, in a truly devout and sincere fashion, which is more than -can be said of some parts, where the peasant, when on a visit to town on -the market-day, rushes in and out of a church with hardly time enough -devoted to the whole process even to have used the holy water. - -Brittany may be a poor and impoverished province, and in many respects -it has not the abundance of the good things of life which one finds -in Touraine, Burgundy, or the Midi, but there is a general air of -prosperity in the gay accoutrements of the men and women who shine forth -on the occasions of the great pardons, showing a snug wardrobe stowed -away somewhere. - -As one leaves Normandy, at Pontorson, he enters Brittany--the land of -calvaries. These fine monuments are not the calvaries which have made -the old province famous,--the great stone crosses of Finistre,--but are -for the most part unpretentious pieces of wood put together in the form -of a cross, or a like symbol, rudely hammered out of a piece of iron by -the local blacksmith. - -One notes many of these simple crosses throughout Brittany; simple as -compared with the more elaborate calvaries, though they may have one, -two, or even more sculptured figures in the arms or branches of the -cross. One of the most ancient of these, dating from the fourteenth or -fifteenth century, is at Scar in Finistre. - -It is a question as to whether any of the great monumental calvaries of -Brittany can be considered really artistic. They are imposing,--some of -them even terrifying in their strange grandeur,--but all of them seem -theatrical, however sincere and devout the motive for their erection -may have been. The chief and most elaborate examples are those at -Plougastel, near Brest, and St. Thgonnec in Finistre (dating from -1610). - -Besides these really great and celebrated functions are many others -of minor purport, such as the "Benediction of the Boats" and the -"Benediction of the Fields." The latter occurs when the caterpillars and -earthworms fall upon and ravage the land. The local _cur_, with the -permission of the bishop, then blesses the fields. In the midst of the -fields the _cur_ takes up his position on some slight eminence, clad -in a white surplice, with a violet stole, and begs God to exterminate -the noxious insects, the prayers meanwhile being accompanied with the -sprinkling of holy water and burning of incense. - -The Pardon of St. Jean du Doigt, on the twenty-second of June, is -perhaps the most solemn of all its species, and for that reason is -described here. - -The Pardon of St. Yves, in the Tregarris, of Rumengol and Ste. Anne de -la Palude, in Finistre, are especially religious and severe, while that -of Notre Dame de la Clart, in the Morbihan, has the double purpose of -homage to Our Lady and the facilitating of marriage. - -Here the young peasants in search of a spouse promenade around the -church, and when they have made their choice they address the young lady -and ask her if she will accept the gift; the boy having meanwhile bought -a large round cake. "Will mademoiselle break the cake with me?" says he. -If she accept, they consider themselves as engaged, after which their -families meet together and discuss the conditions of the marriage. - -At Creac'higuel, near Rosporden, the pardon endures for three days, and -here one sees the wonderful 'broidered waistcoats and collarettes and -beribboned hats of the young men of Pont Aven, Quimperl, and Scar, -unique in all Brittany. - -In July, at Guingamp, is the procession to Our Lady of Good Help, with -the inevitable salute of firearms, and a torchlight procession of ten -or twelve thousand pilgrims--and some others who are merely profane -lookers-on. - -The "Benediction of the Sea" at Concarneau, Douarnenez, Trbone, -and many other seacoast villages and hamlets, is another religious -manifestation which is always attractive to the curious. - -At the pardon of St. Jean du Doigt the precious relic of the saint is -guarded before the high altar of the church by an abb clad in his -surplice and holding in his hand the precious finger enveloped in fine -linen. One by one the faithful pass before the abb and touch, for an -instant, the sainted relic. - -Near the choir, another cleric holds aloft the skull of St. Mriadec, -before which the pilgrims bow their heads as they pass. Before leaving -the church, in response to the call, "_Dour ar bis! Dour ar bis!_" sung -in a strident Celtic voice, the pilgrims repair to a fountain attached -to the side wall, in which the finger has previously been bathed at the -end of a gold chain. Immediately this operation is over, the devout -plunge their palms deep into the sanctified water and vehemently rub -their eyes. Then the pardon is finished, and the profane festivity -begins. - -"Whence come you?" was asked of a happy family of three at St. Jean du -Doigt. "From St. Jean-Brevelay," they replied, mentioning a village -a hundred kilometres away, in Morbihan. "We have walked three suns -and three moons,"--which sounds like the American Indian's method of -reckoning by moons, but which in this case meant merely that they had -been on the road three days and three nights. - -[Illustration: _<u>Pardon of St. Jean du Doigt</u>_] - -The little Church of St. Jean du Doigt offers complete and perfect -example of what a village church should be. The building itself is -surrounded by the churchyard, with its monumental portal, or triumphal -arch, as it is always called hereabouts, its sacred fountain, its -calvary, its ossuary, and its open-air oratory for the celebration of -the mass for the pilgrims. - -The triumphal arch is a great fifteenth-century gateway surmounted by -two niches containing two ancient Gothic statues, one of St. John the -Baptist, and the other of St. Roch. - -With the coming of twilight, when the mists roll in from the sea, the -silhouetted couples (lovers), following the ancient custom, promenade -arm in arm, or rather hand in hand, each holding the other by the little -finger, in deference to the finger of St. John. - -When the darkness has actually fallen, the bonfires flame out on the -far-away sands, the light reflected in the waves in truly eerie fashion, -and so the great day of pardon and festival departs into the past. - -Chant and song play a great part in all these religious festivals, not -only the officiating priests, but the public singing. These religious -chants seem to give rise to others less devout, of which the two -following are typical. - -If one is in South Finistre on the occasion of the celebration of -the "Pardon of the Singers," he will hear the following lines sung -tumultuously by the local swains: - - "Entre Brest et Lorient - Leste, leste, - Entre Brest et Lorient - Lestement. - - "Les gabiers de la misaine - Sont des filles de quinze ans. - Entre Brest et Lorient - Leste, leste." - -At the "Pardon of the Sea," in the Paimpol country, one hears these -sombre words: - - "Tais-toi! tais-toi! matresse exquise! - Je vois ma mort dans l'eau." - -The great extent to which the Breton people carry their respect and -devotion to religious ceremony of all sorts is no better exemplified -than in the observance of the Miz-dus (the black months, or the mourning -months) by those who have banded themselves together and formed a sort -of "cult of the dead." In reality, however, it is merely a mourning for -the departed, by the widows or mothers of the fishermen and sailors. - -In November, when the Miz-dus begin, widows in most picturesque, though -sombre, costumes are continually met with in the Morbihan, and such -seacoast towns as Ploubazlanec, Portz--even (where there is a "widows' -cross," quite the most frequented shrine of all) Saint Cast, on the -coast of the Channel, or at Pontivy. - -Anatole le Braz, in the "Legend of the Dead," has written a complete -history of the funeral superstitions which obtain in Brittany at this -season. - -The "Cult of the Dead," as it is known, is unique among similar -observances in all France. Virtually it is a display of devotion and -respect for one's ancestors. In the rural and seacoast parishes of -Morbihan, Finistre, and the Ctes du Nord the custom is found most -highly developed. - -The little cemeteries of Brittany are better than mere formal gardens -with rectangular walks and well-clipt trees and hedges. Mostly, they -have winding little alleys, and are set out with apple-trees and -wild-flowers. - -In downright bad taste, these cemeteries, in common with most others in -France, have an abundance of wire and bead memorial wreaths and crowns. -Why it is that the French, with their usually highly developed artistic -sense, affect these artificialities, is a question to which no one has -had the temerity to devise an answer. - -At Ploubazlanec, a tiny village settled upon a cliff overlooking the Bay -of Paimpol, are the funeral monuments of many who have lost their lives -by drowning in a frozen sea, as you will be told. - -In 1901, three ships from these parts disappeared, crew and cargo, -following the sinister local expression, in the cold waters off Iceland, -whither the little fleet had gone for the fishing. In the cemetery, in -the side of the mortuary chapel, is a section known as "the wall of -those who disappeared," and here you may read, many times repeated, such -inscriptions as the following: - - "En Mmoire de Gilles Brzellec, 17 ans, dcd Islande. - En Mmoire de Jean-Marie Brzellec, 16 ans, dcd - Islande. - En Mmoire de Yves Brzellec, 37 ans, dcd Islande. - Priez Dieu pour eux!" - -A whole family shattered and broken up, leaving perhaps a wife and an -old mother dependent upon charity, or such a scanty living as can be -picked up intermittently. - -At Krity, also, is an Icelanders' cemetery, and here one may read the -names, beginning with that of the captain, of the crew of twenty, all -hailing from the home port of Krity, who were lost in the white fiords -of Iceland in another catastrophe. - -Nowhere in the known world is there anything like the wholesale risk of -life which goes on yearly from the ports of Finistre and the Ctes du -Nord, unless it be that among the American fishermen on the Grand Banks, -hailing from Gloucester, on Massachusetts Bay. - -If the visitor to Brittany has not yet made the acquaintance of the -heroes of Loti's "Iceland Fishermen," he should do so forthwith, for it -was at Ploubazlanec that the great Yann Gaos was interred, and near him -reposed his father and little Sylvestre. - -The Celtic spirit of the modern Breton has preserved the legend or -superstition of "An-Ankou," the spirit of death. In many villages one -may interrogate a peasant or a fisherman, who will affirm that it is -"Ankou" who leads the way for the funeral-car and who waits at the grave -to carry the soul of the departed away with him after the others have -left. - -Among the superstitious signs which presage the coming of the "Ankou" -are, a ball of fire, which rests upon the tiles of the roof over the -stricken one,--a most unlikely thing, one would think,--the theft of -grain by crows, the tapping of a window-pane by the beak of a sea-bird, -the prolonged bellowing of cattle by the light of the moon, a candle -which will not light, or for a peasant to split or cleave two pairs of -wooden shoes in one week. - - -THE END. - - - - -APPENDICES - - - - -I. - -THE PROVINCES OF FRANCE - - -Up to 1789, there were thirty-three great governments making up modern -France, the twelve governments created by Francis I. being the chief, -and seven _petits gouvernements_ as well. - -[Illustration: <u>_The Provinces of France_</u>] - -In the following table the _grands gouvernements_ of the first -foundation are indicated in heavy-faced type, those which were taken -from the first in italics, and those which were acquired by conquest in -ordinary characters. - - NAMES OF GOVERNMENTS CAPITALS - 1. Ile-de-France Paris. - 2. Picardie Amiens. - 3. Normandie Rouen. - 4. Bretagne Rennes. - 5. Champagne et Brie Troyes. - 6. Orlanais Orlans. - 7. _Maine et Perche_ Le Mans. - 8. _Anjou_ Augers. - 9. _Touraine_ Tours. - 10. _Nivernais_ Nevers. - 11. _Berri_ Bourges. - 12. _Poitou_ Poitiers. - 13. _Aunis_ La Rochelle. - 14. Bourgogne (duch de) Dijon. - 15. Lyonnais, Forez et Beaujolais Lyon. - 16. _Auvergne_ Clermont. - 17. _Bourbonnais_ Moulins. - 18. _Marche_ Guret. - 19. Guyenne et Gascogne Bordeaux. - 20. _Saintonge et Angoumois_[A] Saintes. - 21. _Limousin_ Limoges. - 22. _Barn et Basse Navarre_ Pau. - 23. Languedoc Toulouse. - 24. _Comt de Foix_ Foix. - 25. Provence Aix. - 26. Dauphin Grenoble. - 27. _Flandre et Hainaut_ Lille. - 28. Artois Arras. - 29. Lorraine et Barrois Nancy. - 30. Alsace Strasbourg. - 31. Franche-Comt ou Comt de Bourgogne Besanon. - 32. Roussilon Perpignan. - 33. Corse Bastia. - -[A] Under Francis I. the Angoumois was comprised in the Orlanais. - -The seven _petits gouvernements_ were: - - 1. The ville, prvt and vicomt of Paris. - 2. Havre de Grce. - 3. Boulonnais. - 4. Principality of Sedan. - 5. Metz and Verdun, the pays Messin and Verdunois. - 6. Toul and Toulois. - 7. Saumur and Saumurois. - - - - -II. - -THE ANCIENT PROVINCES OF FRANCE - - -[Illustration: map of France divided into provinces] - - - - -III. - - -THE PRINCIPAL PAYS AND PAGI OF BRITTANY - - Pays d'Alet Ille et Vilaine - Pays de Briere Loire Infr. - Cornouailles Finistre. - Le Desert Ille et Vilaine. - Dinannois Ctes du Nord. - Pays de Dol Ctes du Nord. - Pays de Grve Ctes du Nord. - Lonais Finistre. - Nantais Loire Infr. - Rennois Ille et Vilaine. - Pays de Vannes Morbihan. - - - - -IV. - - -COUNTS AND DUKES OF BRITTANY - - Nomino 824 - Erispo 851 - Salomon 857 - Pasqueten and Gurvaud 874 - Alain I. 877 - Gurmailhon 907 - Juhael Branger 930 - Alain II. (Barbe Torte) 937 - Drogon 952 - Hol I. 953 - Guerech 980 - Conan I. 987 - Geoffroy I. 992 - Alain III. 1008 - Conan II. 1040 - Hol II. 1066 - Alain Fergent 1084 - Conan III. 1112 - Eudes and Hol III. 1148 - Geoffroy II. 1156 - Constance and Arthur 1171 - Pierre Mauclerc and - Alix 1186 - Jean I. 1213 - Jean II. 1237 - Arthur II. 1286 - Jean III. 1305 - Charles de Blois 1312 - Jean IV. de Montfort 1341 - Jean V. 1365 - Franois I. 1399 - Pierre II. 1450 - Arthur III. 1457 - Franois II. 1458 - Duchess Anne, who - married Charles - VIII. and afterward - Louis XI. of France, 1488-1513 - - - - -V. - -THE METRIC SYSTEM - - -METRICAL AND ENGLISH WEIGHTS AND MEASURES - - Mtre = 39.3708 in. = 3.231. 3 ft. 3 1-2 in. = 1.0936 yard. - Square Mtre (mtre carr) = 1 1-5th square yards (1.196). - Are (or 100 sq. mtres) = 119.6 square yards. - Cubic Mtre (or Stere) = 35 1-2 cubic feet. - Centimtre = 2-5ths inch. - Kilomtre = 1,093 yards = 5-8 mile. - 10 Kilomtres = 6 1-4 miles. - 100 Kilomtres = 62 1-10th miles. - Square Kilomtre = 2-5ths square mile. - Hectare = 2 1-2 acres (2.471). - 100 Hectares = 247.1 acres. - Gramme = 15 1-2 grains (15.432). - 10 Grammes = 1-3d oz. Avoirdupois. - 15 Grammes = 1-2 oz. Avoirdupois. - Kilogramme =2 1-5th lbs. (2.204) Avoirdupois. - 10 Kilogrammes = 22 lbs. Avoirdupois. - Metrical Quintal = 220 1-2 lbs. Avoirdupois. - Tonneau = 2,200 lbs. Avoirdupois. - Litre = 0.22 gal. = 1 3-4 pint. - Hectolitre = 22 gallons. - -[Illustration: <u>_Comparative Metric Scale_</u>] - - -ENGLISH AND METRICAL WEIGHTS AND MEASURES - - Inch = 2.539 centimtres = 25.39 millimtres. - 2 inches = 5 centimtres nearly. - Foot = 30.47 centimtres. - Yard = 0.9141 mtre. - 12 yards = 11 mtres nearly. - Mile =1.609 kilomtre. - Square foot = 0.093 mtre carr. - Square yard = 0.836 mtre carr. - Acre = 0.4046 hectare = 4,003 sq. mtres nearly. - 2 1-2 acres = 1 hectare nearly. - Pint = 0.5679 litre. - 1 3-4 pint = 1 litre nearly. - Gallon = 4.5434 litres = 4 nearly. - Bushel = 36.347 litres. - Oz. Troy = 31.103 grammes. - Pound Troy (5,760 grains) = 373.121 grammes. - Oz. Avoirdupois = 8.349 grammes. - Pound Avoirdupois (7,000 grains) = 453.592 grammes. - 2 lbs. 3 oz. = kilogramme nearly. - 100 lbs. = 45.359 kilogrammes. - Cwt. = 50.802 kilogrammes. - Ton = 1,018.048 kilogrammes. - - - - -VI. - - -Sketch Map of Circular Tour in Brittany. Fares from Rennes, 65 francs, -1st class; 50 francs, 2d class. - -[Illustration: Map of Brittany showing routes] - -Itinerary: Rennes, Saint-Malo-Saint-Servan, Dinard, Saint-Brieuc, -Guingamp, Lannion, Morlaix, Roscoff, Brest, Quimper, Douarnenez, -Pont-l'Abb, Concarneau, Lorient, Auray, Quiberon, Vannes, Savenay, Le -Croisic, Gurande, Saint-Nazaire, Pont-Chteau, Redon, Rennes. - - - - -VII. - - -[Illustration: <u>_Architectural Names of the Various Parts of a Feudal -Chteau_</u>] - - - - -VIII. - - -[Illustration: <u>_Tide and Weather Signals in the Ports of -Brittany_</u>] - -By day the signals showing the depth of water--in mtres--at the harbour -entrance are shown by balls or small balloons; at night these are -replaced by lanterns. (See top diagram.) The flag signals of the other -diagrams explain themselves. - - - - -IX. - - -THE PRINCIPAL PARDONS OF BRITTANY - -DEPARTMENT OF FINISTRE - -PLOUGASTEL-DAOULAS.--Easter Monday, the Monday of Pentecte, -29th June, and 15th August. - -PONT L'ABB.--25th March, Monday of Pentecte, 3d Sunday of -July, 4th Sunday of September. - -CONCARNEAU.--(Ste. Gunol) First Sunday in May, (Sainte Croix) -14th September, (Pardon du Rosaire) First Sunday in October. - -BANNALEC.--Ascension Day. - -QUIMPERL.--Trinity Sunday, second Sunday of May, last Sunday -of July, third Sunday in September. - -QUIMPERL.--Easter Monday. - -RUMENGAL.--Trinity Sunday. - -LOCTUDY.--Sunday following 11th May, and 2d Sunday of August. - -PONT AVEN.--Second Sunday of May and third Sunday of September. - -SAINT JEAN DU DOIGT.--23d and 24th June. - -ROSCOFF.--Mid-June and 15th August. - -CAMARET (Fte de la Pche et Bndiction de la Mer).--Third -Sunday in June. - -LOCRONAN (Petite Tromnie every year; Grande Tromnie every six -years).--Second Sunday of July. - -ROSPORDEN.--Second Sunday in July. - -LE FOLGOT.--15th August, and 7th and 8th September. - -QUIMPER.--15th, 16th, and 17th August. - -HUELGOAT.--Three days--first Sunday of August. - -STE. ANNE DE LA PALUDE.--Saturday evening and last Sunday of -August. - -SCAR.--Last Sunday of August. - -AUDIERNE.--Last Sunday of August. - -PENMARC'H (Pardon du Rosaire).--First Sunday of October. - - -DEPARTMENT OF THE MORBIHAN - -ST. GILDAS DE RHUIS.--29th of January. - -AURAY.--(Ouverture du Pardon de St. Anne) 7th March, (Principal -Pardon) 25th and 26th of July. - -LOCMIN.--Three days from the Sunday nearest 27th June. - -STE. BARBE EN FAOUT.--Last Sunday of June. - -ST. FIACRE PRS LE FAOUT.--Fourth Sunday in July. - -LOCMARIAQUER.--Second Sunday in September. - -PONTIVY.--Second Sunday in September. - -CARNAC.--Third Sunday in September, (Pardon of St. Cornely) the -Sunday nearest the 14th September. - -PONT SCORFF.--Third Sunday in September. - -LE FAOUT.--First Sunday in October. - - - - -X. - - -A BRIEF LIST OF SOME OF THE MORE IMPORTANT PREFIXES OF PLACE-NAMES IN -BRITTANY, WITH THEIR DEFINITIONS - -_Bod, Bot._--A place surrounded by a wood. Bodilis, Botsorhel. - -_Bras, Br._--High, elevated. Braspart, Breleven. - -_Conc._--A harbour or bay. Concarneau, le Conquet. - -_Car._--A manor or chteau. Carhaix. - -_Coat._--A wood or forest. Coatascorn, Coatreven. - -_Crug._--Amid the rocks. Cruguel. - -_Faou._--A place planted with oaks. Le Faout. - -_Guic._--Bourg. Guichen (old bourg). - -_Hen._--Old. Henvie, Henpont. - -_Ker or Kaer._--Manor, chteau. Kerlouan, Kervignac. - -_Lan._--Church or consecrated spot. Lannion, Lanildut. - -_Les, Lis._--Court or jurisdiction. Lesneven, Lezardrieux. - -_Loc._--Oratoire or hermitage. Locmaria. - -_Mn._--Mountain. Mn Br. - -_Mor._--The sea. Morbihan (_la petite mer_). - -_Pen._--Promontory summit or extremity. Penmarc'h, Paimboeuf (_par -corruption_). - -_Pl, Pleu, Plo, Plou, Plu._--Parish. Plhdel, Pleudihen, Plouha. - -_Poul._--Hole or basin. Pouldergat. - -_Ros._--Hill or slope. Roscoff, Rosporden. - -_Tref, Tr._--Part of a parish. Trgastel, Trmelior. - - - - -XI. - - -THE BRETON TONGUE IN BRITTANY TO-DAY[B] - - ---------------+---------------+--------------- - | INDIVIDUALS | INDIVIDUALS - DPARTEMENT | UNDERSTANDING | UNDERSTANDING - | ONLY BRETON | BRETON AND - | | FRENCH - ---------------+---------------+--------------- - Ctes du Nord | 145,000 | 150,000 - Finistre | 352,000 | 302,000 - Morbihan | 182,700 | 190,000 - ---------------+---------------+--------------- - - [B] This table takes no cognizance of those speaking French only - and not Breton, whilst the three departments given are those - only in which the knowledge of the Breton tongue is in excess - of that in other parts. - -It is a regrettable fact that the Morbihan has the greatest number -of illiterates of any of the departments of France. Among a hundred -conscripts for the army, often thirty or forty are classed as -illiterate, while in Finistre and the Ctes du Nord, the number falls -to thirty or less, and in Ille et Vilaine to less than twenty. - - - - -INDEX OF PLACES - - -Alre, 158. - -Ancenis (and chteau), 99-101. - -Angers (and castle), 24, 30, 108, 119, 146, 243, 311, 316. - -Audierne, 89, 212, 213-214, 370. - -Auray, 32, 157, 158, 159-167, 172, 175, 178, 192, 309, 370. - - -Bannelec, 194-195, 369. - -Batz, Isle of, 121, 240-242. - -Baud, 157, 158. - -Baule, 127. - -Becherel, 306. - -Beg-Meil, 201. - -Belle Ile en Mer, 27, 34, 36, 171, 173-175. - -Benzec Capcaval, 211. - -Br, Fair of, 129-130. - -Binic, 267-268, 270. - -Black Mountains, 218. - -Bourg de Batz, 111, 121, 127. - -Brhat, 43, 259-260. - -Brest, 26, 32, 39, 41, 43, 44, 47, 51, 54, 56, 72, 87, 150, 212, 220, -221-224, 225, 227, 228, 229, 230, 236, 309, 310, 340, 350. - - -Camaret, 89, 219-220, 369. - -Cancale, 298-300. - -Cape de la Chvre, 214, 217. - -Cap Frhel, 290. - -Carhaix, 54, 310, 337-339. - -Carnac, 159, 163, 167, 168-171, 345, 370. - -Cesson, Tower of, 266. - -Cezon, 44. - -Champ Dolent, 303. - -Champtoceaux (and chteau), 104-105. - -Chteaubriant (and chteau), 128-132. - -Chateaulin, 27, 217-218, 219. - -Chatelaudren, 263. - -Clisson (and chteau), 42, 111, 114-115. - -Combourg (and chteau), 305-308. - -Concarneau, 43, 89, 197-201, 202, 205, 212, 215, 216, 219, 224, 351, 369. - -Corseul, 146. - -Creac'higuel, 351. - -Croisic, 42, 111, 121, 127. - -Crozon, 217, 219. - - -Daoulas, 229, 369. - -Dinan (and chteau), 24, 54, 249, 271, 291-297. - -Dinard, 39, 249, 271, 273, 288-289, 290. - -Dol, 19, 39, 43, 54, 249, 303-305. - -Douarnenez (and bay), 32, 38, 43, 51, 89, 187, 212, 214-216, 217, 219, -351. - - -Elven, 138. - -Erne (and chteau), 312. - -Etables, 267. - - -Falaise, 130. - -Faou, 220, 221. - -Faout (Finistre), 192-194. - -Folgot, 224, 237-238, 369. - -Fontaine-Daniel, Abbey of, 312. - -Fougres (and forest), 54, 262, 309, 310, 312, 313-315, 316, 321, 340. - -Fouquet, Chteau, 27, 174. - - -Grand Brire, 125. - -Gurande, 121, 125-127. - -Guibray, Fair of, 130. - -Guingamp (and castle), 54, 86, 87, 250, 260-262, 351. - - -Hd, 306. - -Hennebont, 146, 179, 182-185. - -Huelgoat, 310, 339-340, 370. - - -Javron, 313. - -Joie, Abbaye de la, 185. - -Josselin (and chteau), 150, 152-157, 309, 337. - - -Kerrault, 229. - -Krity, 357. - -Kerlean, Manoir of, 138. - -Kerlescan, 169. - -Kerlouan, 224. - -Kermario, 169. - -Kermartin, Manor of, 255. - - -Lacroix, 44. - -La Houle, 299. - -"La Joyeuse Garde," Chteau of, 227. - -Lamballe, 268-269. - -Landeau, 315-316. - -Landerneau, 221, 224-227, 310, 340. - -Landivisiau, 221, 227-228. - -Lannion, 24, 74, 89, 250-252. - -Largoet, Fortress of, 138. - -La Roche-Bernard, 128. - -La Trinit, 177-178. - -Laval (and chteau), 54, 56, 310, 316-318, 322. - -Le Conquet, 230-231, 236. - -Lehon, 297-298. - -Le Lgu, 266. - -Le Mans, 54, 310. - -Locmariaquer, 146, 159, 167, 175-176, 370. - -Locmin, 157-158, 370. - -Lorient, 43, 44, 54, 89, 144, 175, 179-181, 182. - -Loudac, 310, 334-335. - - -Mayenne (and chteau), 54, 309, 310, 311-312, 316, 322. - -Mnac, 169. - -Minden, Fort, 44. - -Miniac, 306. - -Molne, Ile, 232-233. - -Montauban, 334. - -Mont Dol, 303. - -Montfort-sur-Meu, 310, 333-334. - -Mont St. Michel (and bay), 34, 39, 43, 46, 54, 60, 249, 298, 300-302, -303. - -Morlaix, 43, 54, 63, 94, 238, 244-247, 249, 340. - -Motte-Broons, 293. - - -Nantes (and castle), 4, 7, 19, 22, 24, 26, 30, 36, 38, 39, 54, 56, 57, -67, 102, 104, 105-110, 111, 112, 115, 116-121, 124, 127, 146, 174, 211, -221, 243. - -Notre Dame de la Clart, 350-351. - - -Oudon, 104. - -Ouessant, Ile, 43, 44, 232, 233-236. - -Our Lady of Langonnet, Abbey of, 194. - - -Paimboeuf, 42, 111, 112. - -Paimpol, 257-259. - -Palais, 44, 173, 175. - -Param, 39, 271, 272, 274-276. - -Penmarc'h, 31, 208, 210-211, 370. - -Penthivre, 7, 44, 171. - -Pilier, 44. - -Plormel, 54, 150-152. - -Ploubazlanec, 355, 356, 357. - -Ploudalmzeau, 236-237. - -Plougasnou, 25, 64. - -Plougastel, 221, 228-230, 350, 369. - -Plouharnel, 167, 171. - -Pointe de Kerpenhir, 145. - -Point of Primel, 247. - -Point of Raz, 212, 213, 214. - -Point Sizun, 212. - -Point St. Mathieu, 212. - -Pont Aven, 82, 187, 201, 202-205, 351, 369. - -Pont Croix, 214. - -Pontivy (and castle), 54, 334-337, 355, 370. - -Pont l'Abb, 27, 82, 187, 208-210, 369. - -Pont Scorff, 179, 185-186, 370. - -Pornic (and chteau), 42, 111, 112-114. - -Port Haliguen, 172. - -Port Louis, 44, 181-182. - -Port Maria, 172. - -Port Navalo, 43, 145. - -Portz, 355. - -Pouldu, 190. - -Poulgoazec, 214. - -Pr-en-Pail, 309. - -Primelin, 214. - - -Questembert, 136. - -Quiberon, 44, 163, 167, 170, 171-173, 175. - -Quimper, 19, 27, 32, 38, 41, 53, 54, 60, 72, 75, 82, 93, 128, 205-208, -212, 224, 370. - -Quimperl, 187-190, 191, 309, 351, 369. - - -Redon, 24, 128, 132-136. - -Rennes, 19, 22, 24, 25, 41, 54, 57, 75, 118, 128, 146, 150, 310, 316, -329-333, 343. - -Rimains, Fort des, 44. - -Rochefort-en-Terre (and chteau), 27, 136-138. - -Rochers, Chteau of, 324-328. - -Roc'hqurezen, 229. - -Roc'hquillion, 229. - -Roc'huivlen, 229. - -Roscanvel, 217. - -Roscoff, 43, 75, 238-240, 369. - -Rosporden, 31, 194, 195-196, 201, 351, 369. - -Rostrenen, 337. - -Rothneuf, 286-287. - -Rumengal, 346, 350, 369. - - -Sauzon, 175. - -Savenay, 41, 124-125, 128, 130. - -Scar, 349, 351, 370. - -Seven Isles, 256-257. - -St. Briac, 27, 290-291. - -St. Brieuc, 19, 29, 60, 262, 263-266, 268, 270. - -St. Cast, 26, 67, 290, 355. - -Ste. Anne de la Palude, 346, 350, 370. - -Ste. Marguerite, 127. - -St. nogat, 273, 288, 289-290. - -St. Fiacre, 26, 191-192, 370. - -St. Gildas de Rhuis, 27, 148, 370. - -St. Gunol, 211. - -St. Jacut, 27, 272-273, 290. - -St. Jean-Brevelay, 352. - -St. Jean du Doigt, 247-248, 346, 350, 352-353, 369. - -St. Lunaire, 27, 290. - -St. Malo (and bay), 9, 19, 27, 39, 43, 44, 54, 56, 57, 61, 63, 67, 94, -249, 271-274, 276-283, 285, 288, 291, 300. - -St. Maurice, Abbey of, 190-191. - -St. Men, 334. - -St. Nazaire, 39, 109-111, 112, 121, 122-124, 128, 144. - -St. Nicolas, 205. - -St. Pol de Lon, 19, 27, 60, 206, 238, 242-244. - -St. Rnan, 236. - -St. Servan, 27, 271, 272, 276, 283-285. - -St. Thgonnec, 350. - -St. Yves, 346, 350. - -Suscino, Chteau of, 148-150. - - -Taureau, Chteau du, 44. - -Tentniac, 306. - -Tombelaine, Isle of, 34, 302-303. - -Trbone, 351. - -Trguier, 19, 24, 60, 94, 206, 250, 252-256. - -Trlaze, 29. - -Tristan, Ile, 215-216. - -Tromnie de St. Ronan, 346. - - -Val Andr, 263, 269-270. - -Vannes, 19, 24, 43, 54, 60, 75, 128, 134, 136, 138, 139, 140-148, 150, -175, 187, 221. - -Ville Martin, 44. - -Vitr (and chteau), 24, 54, 262, 310, 318-324. - - * * * * * - -Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber: - -Le trente-un du mois d'aut=> Le trente-un du mois d'aot {pg 68} - -is by no mean inexplicable=> is by no means inexplicable {pg 3} - -must known these principal provinces by name=> must know these principal -provinces by name {pg 7} - -general eerie espect=> general eerie aspect {pg 138} - -busy litle Breton port=> busy little Breton port {pg 214} - -religious architecure.=> religious architecture. {pg 226} - -in the sixth entury=> in the sixth century {pg 304} - - - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Rambles in Brittany, by Francis Miltoun - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RAMBLES IN BRITTANY *** - -***** This file should be named 42866-8.txt or 42866-8.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/4/2/8/6/42866/ - -Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive) - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license - - -Title: Rambles in Brittany - -Author: Francis Miltoun - -Illustrator: Blanche McManus - -Release Date: June 3, 2013 [EBook #42866] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RAMBLES IN BRITTANY *** - - - - -Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive) - - - - - - -Every attempt has been made to replicate the original book as printed. -Some typographical errors have been corrected. No attempt has been made -to correct or normalize the printed accentuation or spelling of French -names or words. The images have been moved from the middle of a -paragraph to the closest paragraph break. (etext transcriber’s note) - - - - - -RAMBLES IN BRITTANY - -_WORKS OF FRANCIS MILTOUN_ - -_The following, each 1 vol., library 12mo, cloth, gilt top, profusely -illustrated. Net, $2.00; postpaid, $2.16_ - -_Rambles in Normandy_ - -_Rambles in Brittany_ - -_The Cathedrals and Churches of the Rhine_ - -_The following, each 1 vol., library 12mo, cloth, gilt top, profusely -illustrated. Postpaid, $2.50_ - -_The Cathedrals of Northern France_ - -_The Cathedrals of Southern France_ - -_L. C. PAGE & COMPANY_ - -_New England Building, Boston, Mass._ - -[Illustration: _<u>Constable’s Tower, Vannes</u>_ - -(_See page 147_)] - - - - -Rambles - -in - -BRITTANY - -BY FRANCIS MILTOUN - -_With Many Illustrations_ - -BY BLANCHE MCMANUS - -[Illustration: colophon] - -BOSTON - -L. C. PAGE & COMPANY - -1906 - -_Copyright, 1905_ -BY L. C. PAGE & COMPANY -(INCORPORATED) - -_All rights reserved_ - -Published October, 1905 - -_COLONIAL PRESS -Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds & Co. -Boston, U. S. A._ - - - - -APOLOGIA - - -No promise given to the hostess of one’s inn is alleged as an excuse -for writing this book, but it is true that rosy, busy Madame X of the -Soleil d’Or, in the fishing village in which the work received its -final collation and revision, watched its growth for many a week, daily -declaring her hope of some day receiving a volume containing “your -impressions.” And, indeed, her hope shall not be vain, for one of the -first copies shall be most speedily despatched to her. Moreover, the -author and artist hope that it may be acceptable to her critical mind, -for she is not likely to be lenient, though she knows full well that to -the many authors and artists who make a refuge of her modest inn for -months she owes her livelihood. - -The book is a record of many journeys and many rambles by road and rail -around the coast, and in no sense is it put forth either as a special or -as a complete survey of things and matters Breton. - -Many lights and shadows have been thrown upon the screen from various -points, but the effort has been made to blend them all into a pleasing -whole, which shall supplement the guide-books of convention. - -It were not possible to do more than has been attempted within the -limits of a volume such as this, and therefore many details of routes, -and historical data of a relative sort, and a certain amount of -topographical information have been scattered through the volume or -placed in the appendix, in the belief that such information is greatly -needed in a work attempting to purvey “travel talk” even in small -measure. - -Some of this knowledge is so little subject to change that it may well -stand for all time, and, in these days of well-nigh universal travel, -may be not thought out of place in a volume intended both for the -armchair traveller and also for him who journeys by road and rail. That -only a very limited quantity of such information can be included is a -misfortune, inasmuch as such a handbook is often used when no other aid -is accessible to the traveller. - -Finally, the illustrative material, the large number of drawings of -sights and scenes, of great architectural monuments, and of the dress -of the people, is offered less as a complete pictorial survey than as a -panorama of impressions received on and off the beaten track,--and more -satisfying and truthful than the mere snap-shots of hurried travel. - -In addition, many maps, plans, and diagrams should give many of the -itineraries a lucidity often lacking in the usual railway maps. - - - - -CONTENTS - - -CHAPTER PAGE - -APOLOGIA v - - -PART I. - -I. INTRODUCTORY 3 - -II. THE PROVINCE AND THE PEOPLE 11 - -III. THE TOPOGRAPHY OF THE PROVINCE 33 - -IV. TRAVEL ROUTES IN BRITTANY 45 - -V. THE BRETON TONGUE AND LEGEND 59 - -VI. MANNERS AND CUSTOMS 70 - -VII. THE FISHERIES 88 - - -PART II. - -I. THE LOIRE IN BRITTANY 99 - -II. NANTES TO VANNES 116 - -III. THE MORBIHAN--VANNES AND THE “GOLFE” 140 - -IV. AURAY AND THE MEGALITHIC MONUMENTS OF -MORBIHAN 159 - -V. MORBIHAN--LORIENT AND ITS NEIGHBOURHOOD 179 - -VI. FINISTÈRE--SOUTH 187 - -VII. FINISTÈRE--NORTH 221 - -VIII. THE CÔTES DU NORD 249 - -IX. THE EMERALD COAST 271 - -X. ON THE ROAD IN BRITTANY--MAYENNE, -FOUGÈRES, LAVAL, AND VITRÉ 309 - -XI. RENNES AND BEYOND 329 - -XII. RELIGIOUS FESTIVALS AND PARDONS 341 - -APPENDICES 359 - -INDEX 373 - - - - -LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS - - - PAGE - -CONSTABLE’S TOWER, VANNES (_See page 147_) _Frontispiece_ - -THE LOIRE AT NANTES facing 4 - -DEVICE OF ANNE OF BRITTANY 17 - -ANNE OF BRITTANY 18 - -BRETON POST-CARD 21 - -ST. BRIEUC facing 30 - -CROISIC facing 42 - -MAP OF BRITTANY facing 44 - -THE MAIN ROADS OF BRITTANY 48 - -TRAVEL ROUTES IN BRITTANY 55 - -ST. POL DE LÉON facing 60 - -THE BRETON TONGUE 62 - -GILLES DE LAVAL 66 - -YOUNG BRETONS 78 - -FROM THE ARTIST’S SKETCH BOOK 80 - -LA COIFFE POLKA 81 - -IRONING COIFS 83 - -BRETON TYPES 85 - -DOUARNENEZ facing 88 - -PORNIC 113 - -DONJON OF CLISSON facing 114 - -ST. NAZAIRE 123 - -ANCIENT FORTIFICATIONS OF GUÉRANDE (DIAGRAM) 126 - -CHÂTEAUBRIANT facing 128 - -CHILDREN OF REDON 133 - -TOUR D’ELVEN facing 138 - -MARKET-WOMAN, VANNES 142 - -THE COUNTRY NEAR VANNES 143 - -ANCIENT CITY WALLS, VANNES (DIAGRAM) 147 - -CHÂTEAU OF SUSCINO facing 148 - -GENERAL PLAN OF CHÂTEAU OF SUSCINO (DIAGRAM) 149 - -PLOËRMEL facing 152 - -SHRINE OF ST. ETIENNE, JOSSELIN 154 - -CHÂTEAU DE JOSSELIN facing 156 - -INTERIOR OF MARKET-HOUSE, AURAY facing 160 - -SHRINE OF ST. ROCH, AURAY 162 - -THE LINES OF CARNAC 168 - -THE LINES OF CARNAC facing 168 - -MAP OF CARNAC AND THE SURROUNDING COUNTRY 170 - -QUIBERON facing 172 - -HENNEBONT facing 182 - -QUIMPERLÉ facing 188 - -MARKET-HOUSE, FAOUËT facing 192 - -MARKET-DAY 193 - -ROSPORDEN 196 - -STONE CRUCIFIX, CONCARNEAU facing 198 - -CONCARNEAU 199 - -PONT AVEN facing 202 - -ENVIRONS OF PONT AVEN (MAP) 204 - -FROM THE MUSEUM AT QUIMPER 207 - -CAPE DE LA CHÈVRE facing 214 - -WOMAN OF CHATEAULIN 217 - -CAMARET facing 220 - -LANDERNEAU facing 224 - -CALVARY, PLOUGASTEL facing 228 - -LIGHTHOUSE OF CRÉAC’H, OUESSANT facing 236 - -ROSCOFF 239 - -MA DOUEZ 244 - -CARVED WOOD STAIRCASE, MORLAIX facing 246 - -PROCESSION OF SAILORS, ST. JEAN DU DOIGT 247 - -OLD HOUSE, TRÉGUIER 253 - -HOUSE OF ERNEST RENAN, TRÉGUIER 254 - -SHRINE OF ST. YVES, TRÉGUIER 256 - -A BINOU PLAYER 261 - -BINIC 267 - -RAMPARTS OF ST. MALO facing 272 - -HOUSE OF DUGUAY-TROUIN, ST. MALO 281 - -TOWER OF SOLIDOR, ST. SERVAN facing 284 - -PLANS OF THE TOWER OF SOLIDOR 285 - -THE VALLEY OF THE RANCE (MAP) 292 - -DUGUESCLIN 293 - -REZ-DE-CHAUSSÉE OF DONJON, DINAN (DIAGRAM) 295 - -COIF OF MINIAC 307 - -MAYENNE facing 310 - -PLAN OF THE ANCIENT WALLS AND TOWERS OF -FOUGÈRES 314 - -BEUCHERESSE GATE, LAVAL 319 - -PLAN OF VITRÉ IN 1811, SHOWING CITY WALLS 321 - -CHÂTEAU DE VITRÉ facing 322 - -TOWER OF ST. MARTIN, VITRÉ 323 - -CHÂTEAU DE ROCHERS 325 - -ARMS OF MADAME DE SÉVIGNÉ 327 - -MONASTERY OF ST. MÉLAINE, RENNES 331 - -HUELGOAT facing 340 - -PARDON OF ST. JEAN DU DOIGT facing 352 - -THE PROVINCES OF FRANCE (MAP) 359 - -THE ANCIENT PROVINCES OF FRANCE (MAP) 361 - -COMPARATIVE METRIC SCALE (DIAGRAM) 364 - -SKETCH MAP OF CIRCULAR TOUR IN BRITTANY 366 - -ARCHITECTURAL NAMES OF THE VARIOUS PARTS OF -A FEUDAL CHÂTEAU (DIAGRAM) 367 - -TIDE AND WEATHER SIGNALS IN THE PORTS OF -BRITTANY (DIAGRAM) 368 - - - - -PART I. - - - - -RAMBLES IN BRITTANY - - - - -CHAPTER I. - -INTRODUCTORY - - -The regard which every one has for the old French provinces is by -no means inexplicable. Out of them grew the present solidarity of -republican France, but in spite of it the old limits of demarcation -are not yet expunged. One and all retain to-day their individual -characteristics, manners, and customs, and also a certain subconscious -atmosphere. - -Many are the casual travellers who know Normandy and Brittany, at least -know them by name and perhaps something more, but how many of those who -annually skim across France, in summer to Switzerland and in winter to -the Riviera or to Italy, there to live in seven-franc-a-day pensions, -and drink a particularly vile brand of tea, know where Brittany leaves -off and Normandy begins, or have more than the vaguest of vague notions -as to whether the charming little provincial capital of Nantes, on the -Loire, is in Brittany or in Poitou. A recollection of their school-day -knowledge of history will help them on the latter point, but geography -will come in and puzzle them still more. - -There are many French writers, and painters for that matter, who have -made these provinces famous. Napoleon, perhaps, set the fashion, when -he wrote, in 1786, that eulogy beginning: “It is now six or seven years -since I left my native country.” More familiar is the “Native Land” of -Lamartine. Camille Flammarion wrote “My Cradle,” meaning Champagne; -Dumas wrote of Villers-Cotterets, and Chateaubriand and Renan of -Brittany; but head and shoulders above them all stand out Frederic -Mistral and his fellows of the Félibres at Avignon and Arles. - -[Illustration: <u>_The Loire at Nantes_</u>] - -All this offers a well-nigh irresistible fascination for those who -love literary and historic shrines,--and who does not in these days of -universal travel, personally conducted or otherwise? Not every one can -follow in the footsteps of Sterne with equal facility and grace, or -bask in the radiance of a Stevenson or a Gautier. Still, it is given -to most of us who know the lay of the land to discover for ourselves -the position of these celebrated shrines, whether the pilgrimage be -historical, literary, or artistic. - -This is what gives a charm to travel, and even where no new thing is -actually discovered, no new pathways broken, there is, after all, a -certain zest in such an exploration rivalling that to be obtained from -an expedition to the uttermost confines of the Dark Continent, to Tibet, -or to Tierra del Fuego. - -Primarily, the ancient provinces of France have a story of historical -and romantic purport not equalled in the chronicles of any other nation. -The distinctive types are but vaguely limned, but the Norman and the -Breton stand out most distinctly, and such figures as the Norman and -Breton dukes of real history live even more vividly in one’s mind than -D’Artagnan and his fellows in the great portrait-gallery of Dumas. - -One need not be of the antiquary species in order to revel in the great -monuments of history abounding in Brittany even as in Normandy. There -are many and beautiful shrines elsewhere,--and doubtless some are more -popularly famous than any in Brittany,--but none have played greater or -more important rôles in the history and development of the France of -to-day than those of the two northwestern provinces. - -As has been said, each of the great provinces into which France -was divided previous to the Revolution possessed characteristics, -unmistakable even to-day. As to the topography of any single one, -the question is so vast in its detail that more than mention of -principal features can hardly be made in a book such as this. It is -then perhaps enough that some slight information concerning Brittany -and its principal places should be recorded here, and that the chief -configurations of its territory should be outlined. - -In addition to the principal old-time governments, there were the -ancient fiefs and local divisions, and these in many cases had names -often encountered in history and literature. Sometimes these were relics -of the still earlier day, of Gaul before the Roman conquest, their -ancient names having come down through the ages with but little change. - -If one would understand the economic or agricultural aspect of France of -to-day, he must know these principal provinces by name at least. - -When one is at Chartres, he must be aware that he is on the edge of the -great plateau of Beauce,--the granary of France,--and that as he crosses -into Brittany--perhaps through Perche, whence come the great-footed -Percherons--he enters the country of the ancient Veneti. Farther west -lies rock-bound Cornouaille, which in every characteristic resembles -Cornwall in Britain; Léon on the north, and finally Penthièvre. - -The traveller remakes his history where he finds it. If he have a good -memory, this is not a difficult process, but, in any case, the French -guide-books, that is to say, those written in French, not the English or -Anglo-German variety, are sufficiently explicit as to dates and events -to set him on the right track. - -The armchair traveller usually desires something more. He likes -his plain stories garnished with a not too elaborate series of -embellishment, both as to text and illustration, giving him some -tangible reminder of things as they are in this enlightened twentieth -century, when tram-cars have taken the place of the diligence, and the -electric light has supplanted the tallow dip, and one may well say with -Sterne: “Since France is so near to England, why not go to France?” - -Here, in spots all but unknown even in Normandy and Brittany, the -traveller finds for himself monuments of a civilization gone before and -of a local history not yet completely erased, and as interesting as -those of any land made famous by antiquaries whose only claim to fame -rests upon their questionable ability in propounding new theories, of -which the chief merit is plausibility,--a process of history-making -sadly overdone of late in some parts. - -Both in Brittany and in Normandy there are innumerable glorious -architectural monuments of a past from which history may be builded -anew. Character counts for a great deal with cities as with individuals. -One can love Rouen as the capital of the ancient Normandy, or Nantes as -the capital of Lower Brittany, but he will no more have the same sort of -affection for Lyons or for Nice than he will have it for Manchester or -for Chicago. - -In the days of old, when each little town had its dignitaries, who may -have been counts or who may have been bishops, there was perhaps more -individuality than in the present age of monotonous prefects and mayors. -Nantes had its dukes, and Rouen had its prelates, and both of them, -even to-day, overshadow the civic dignitaries of their time; hence it is -the memory of the parts played by them which induces an association of -ideas prompting a desire to know personally the ground trodden by them. - -Normandy and Brittany are supposed to be the happy hunting-grounds of -cheap tourists and trippers, but, as a matter of fact, the former do -not go beyond Dieppe, or the latter beyond the Channel Islands,--with -possibly a day excursion to St. Malo,--so no discomfort need really -arise from the fear of their presence. Furthermore, the tourists from -across Channel that one does meet in Normandy or Brittany to-day are not -so outrageous in their dress and manners as the type pictured by _Punch_. - -It is a generally recognized fact that no special hardship is involved -in modern travel; caravansaries have for the most part given way to inns -which, if not exactly palatial, at least furnish creature comforts of a -quality quite as good or a great deal better than those to which most -travellers are accustomed at home. One may, and most likely will, miss -his or her particular brand of tea or tobacco, but will find substitutes -quite as excellent, and as far as the language question is concerned, -why, that lies at one’s own door, unless one wants to go out as a -disciple of Esperanto, the modern successor of Volapuk, dead years ago -of sheer weight of consonants. - -This book, then, is meant to ensure better knowledge on the part of -the casual traveller of that delectable land which may be somewhat -vaguely described as old France, of which Brittany and Normandy are as -representative in their survivals as any other part. - - - - -CHAPTER II. - -THE PROVINCE AND THE PEOPLE - - -Brittany, the ancient province which underwent such a strife of warfare -and bloodshed in the struggle against invaders, and finally against -France, has become one of the most loyal of all the old-time divisions -making up the present republic. Her struggle against a curtailment of -her ancient rights and the attempts to conserve her liberties were -futile, and when the Duchess Anne took Louis XII. for her second -husband, Brittany became a part of the royal domain never to be -separated therefrom. - -It was Duguesclin who saved it for France, Duchess Anne who enriched it, -Chateaubriand, Lamennais, Laennec, and Renan who made it illustrious in -letters, and Duguay-Trouin, Jacques Cartier, Surcouf, Du Couëdic, and -many besides who added to all this the spirit of adventure and romance -with which the chronicles of Brittany have ever abounded. - -Commonly it has been called a land of granite, an expression which has -been consecrated by the usage of many years, but it is also a land most -picturesque, melancholy, and dreamy, with immense horizons of sea and -sky, and a climate strictly temperate throughout all the year. - - “O landes, O forêts, pierres sombres et hautes, - Bois qui couvrez nos champs, mers qui battez nos côtes, - Villages où les morts errent avec les ventes, - Bretagne! d’où te vient l’amour de tes enfants.” - -Brittany in early days had a parliament the most important in France. -Armorica was its more ancient name, which in old Breton signified “near -to the sea,” or “on the sea.” - -From the beginning of the fifth century, for a matter of perhaps a -hundred years, the peninsula was known as Armorique, and its people -as Armoricans. After this time the name disappeared from general -use, and Brittany and Breton came. From the sixth century onward the -change became permanent, and such chroniclers as Gregory of Tours, for -instance, always referred to Britannia, Britanniœ, Britanni, and -Britones, in writing of the peninsula and its people. - -When first peopled from Britain across the Channel, Brittany was the -most thinly populated part of all Gaul. Each wave of immigration, as -the Britons from across the water fled from the invading Saxons, added -to the population of the land, until ultimately it became as a hundred -Britons against ten Armoricans. At least, this is the way the French -historians and antiquaries put it, and so Armorique became Brittany, -and such is the origin of French Brittany, quite independent of the -etymology of the word Breton itself. - -The inhabitants even to-day--more than in any other of the ancient -provinces of France--have preserved the ancient nomenclature of the land -and its people, and everywhere one finds only Bretons whose home is -Brittany. - -Mercator, the map-maker, was more of a success than Mercator, the -historical chronicler. He said of the Bretons, in 1595, that they were -“for the most part avaricious and largely given to making distinctions -between glasses and tumblers.” As a matter of record, this is not so -true of the Bretons as it is of the Normans, or of the Germans, or of -the Spaniards. Up to the time of Cæsar the name Armorica seems to have -been applied to all the coast of Northwestern France of to-day, with a -little strip running as far south as the mouth of the Garonne, but more -particularly it afterward designated the peninsula of Brittany as we -know it to-day. - -The region was early put under the guardianship of a chieftain, who -invariably, here as elsewhere in those days, took advantage of every -opportunity to advance his frontiers. - -This attempted aggrandizement was not so successful here as in other -parts, and by the fifth century Armorica had shrunk to the region lying -entirely between the Seine and the Loire. In the life of St. Germain of -Auxerre one reads: - - “Gens inter geminos notissima clauditur amnes - Armoricana prius veteri cognomine dicta est.” - -Finally, at the close of the sixth century, Armorica merged itself in -Brittany, but the “Concile de Tours” makes a remarkable distinction -between the new settlers and those who had previously been known as -Romans. This distinction was also clearly made by St. Samson, who wrote -in the seventh century that Britannia was the name given to Armorica by -the exiled Britons who had fled from the Saxons and the Angles and had -there taken up their home. - -Before the Roman conquest there were five tribes in the country, named -by Cæsar as the Nannetes, the Veneti, the Osismii, the Curiosolitæ, -and the Rhedones,--names which, with but slight evolution, exist even -to-day. Things went on quietly under Roman control, but when Clovis -became the master of a part of Gaul he was obliged to treat with the -Armoricans. Finally the Britons from across the sea came “like a -torrent,” and established themselves, changing the names of certain -regions to Cornouaille, Léon, Bro-Waroch, etc. Conquered in 799 by a -lieutenant of Charlemagne, the Bretons revolted again some little time -after, and, at the death of the great emperor, successfully withstood -the attacks of the formidable army which Louis the Amiable had sent -against them. For a quarter of a century Brittany now suffered attack -and pillage by the Normans, relieved only when Alain Barbe-Torte drove -the invaders from his territory. Previous to the Norman inroad, the -Bretons lived in petty tribes, of which each formed a “_plou_,” a prefix -still often met with in Breton place-names. The chief of a _plou_ was -known as a _machtiern_. - -Up to this time no foreign customs had been introduced, but, after the -victories of Alain Barbe-Torte, tribal organization was succeeded by -that of the fief. - -By the tenth century feudalism was thoroughly established throughout -most of the ancient provinces of France, and the land was covered with -seigniories, great and small, the one more or less dependent upon the -other. Dukes, counts, and seigneurs, each in his own territory, played -the hereditary sovereign in little, and above them was the suzerain -power of which they were vassals. - -After the expulsion of the Normans, the ancient Breton kingdoms of -Domnonée, Cornouaille, and Bro-Waroch disappeared, and the sovereign of -all Brittany bore the title of duke. - -Historians write of the nine ancient barons of Brittany, among whom -was divided the governmental control of the country, all of them being -virtually subject to the reigning duke. They were: - - I. Seigneur d’Avaugour or De Goëllo. - II. Vicomte de Léon. - III. Seigneur de Fougères. - IV. Sire de Vitré. - V. Sire de Rohan. - VI. Seigneur de Chateaubriand. - VII. Seigneur de Retz. - VIII. Seigneur de la Roche-Bernard. - IX. Seigneur du Pont. - -These original baronies expanded into a round hundred by the fifteenth -century, and the list of them contains the ancestral names of the Breton -nobility. - -Henry II. of England dealt severely with Brittany, but his son Geoffrey -married Constance, the daughter of Duke Conan IV., and this made the -condition of the province more tolerable. - -The first step toward the union of Brittany with the kingdom of France -came when--through the intrigues of Philip Augustus--the daughter of -Geoffrey Plantagenet married Pierre Mauclerc, Count of Dreux, and a -prince of the blood royal of France. Joan of Penthièvre also married the -Count of Blois, another lieutenant of the King of France. - -[Illustration: <u>_Device of Anne of Brittany_</u>] - -The war of succession in Brittany between the ducal houses of Blois and -Montfort was, up to the fourteenth century, the principal event of the -province’s early history. The Montforts achieved final victory at Auray -in 1364. Upon the death of Francis II., his daughter Anne, the chief -figure in all Breton history, so far as existing memorials of her life -are concerned, became duchess. - -[Illustration: <u>_Anne of Brittany_</u>] - -In 1491, she married Charles VIII. of France, and eight years later his -successor, Louis XII. The daughter of this last marriage, the Princess -Claude of France, married the Duke of Angoulême, afterward Francis -the First, and the fortunes of Brittany and France were thenceforth -indissolubly allied, for, upon becoming Queen Claude of France, the -inheritor of Brittany ceded the province to her royal spouse and his -descendants in perpetuity. Queen Claude died in 1524, which event for -ever assured France of this province,--the most beautiful gem in the -royal crown. The union of Brittany and France was celebrated with much -pomp in 1532. - -The ancient county or duchy of Bretagne was bordered on the east by -Anjou and Maine, on the west by the Atlantic, on the north by the -British Channel and Normandy, and on the south by Poitou. The province -had two territorial divisions, Upper and Lower, and Rennes was the -parliamentary capital. - -Upper Brittany comprised the five episcopal dioceses of Dol, Nantes, -Rennes, Saint-Brieuc, and St. Malo, and Lower Brittany counted four -similar divisions, Quimper, St. Pol de Léon, Tréguier, and Vannes. Thus -the political divisions of a former day corresponded exactly with those -of the Church. - -To-day Brittany is divided into five departments: Côtes du Nord, -Finistère, Ille-et-Vilaine, Loire-Inférieure, and the Morbihan. - -The administrative government of Brittany, or rather of its present-day -departments, like that of the rest of France, radiates from the -capital of the department, which is the residence of the prefect, the -tax-collector, the bishop, and, in general, of all heads of departments. -The chief town is also the seat of the General Council and (with few -exceptions) of the assize court. - -The most ancient codified law of Brittany was known as the little book, -but the manuscript copy has been lost. The most ancient work which -recites the “customs” of this great province dates only from 1330. This -curious document is known as the “Very Ancient Law,” and contains 336 -articles. “The Ancient Law” was compiled and published at Nantes in -1549, and contains 779 articles. - -Brittany has been, and perhaps ever will be, considered by Frenchmen -an alien land, where, in its great plains and mountainous regions, in -the valleys of its bubbling rivers, and on its rock-bound shores, the -people, one and all, “speak a tongue so ancient and so strange that he -who hears it dreams of a vanished race.” - -Yes, Brittany is a land of menhirs, of legends and superstitions, but -all this but makes a roundabout journey the more enjoyable, and one -must really cross and recross it to its uttermost confines in order to -realize its great variation of manners and customs, to say nothing of -speech, for, even though the Breton tongue is dying out as a universal -language, one still buys his post-card with a queer legend on its face, -which looks like Dutch at first glance, but really is Breton. - -In Madame de Sévigné’s time the ladies of Lower Brittany were famous -for their beauty. In “Letter XLIV.,” written to her daughter, Madame de -Sévigné said: “Many beauties of Lower Brittany were present at the great -ball, the brilliant Mademoiselle de L----, a fine girl who dances very -well.” - -[Illustration: <u>_Breton Post-card_</u>] - -Things do not seem to have changed greatly to-day, and, although Madame -de Sévigné wrote of court beauties only, in the Lower Province one -frequently meets such beauty of face as one does not see everywhere in -France. It must be owned that the figures, if not exactly found wanting, -are often too ample. The sternness of the land, like the bleakness of -Holland, has, apparently, added no end of grace to the features of the -women, whatever may have been its hardening effect upon the men. - -In Cornouaille, Latin _Cornu-Galliæ_, one finds almost the same name -and the same derivation as in English Cornwall, and the topographical -aspect is much the same in both instances. “The people of Cornuaille are -faithful to tradition, and above all others merit the name of Bretons,” -says J. Guillon. - -The Province of Léon forms the northern part of the Department of -Finistère. The name was a development from Pagus Legionensis, a large -military colony having been quartered there in Roman times. - -In the south the ancient Breton Province of Bro-Waroch became the -county of Vannes, the counts being in reality dependents of the Duke -of Brittany; their people spoke, and retain even to-day, a distinct -dialect, greatly varying from that of the rest of Brittany. - -In the earliest times, both Nantes and Rennes were the seat of important -administrative governments, but the Counts of Nantes ceded their fiefs -to the Bretons in the eleventh century. Chief of these were the fiefs of -the Baron of Retz, the Seigneur de Clisson, who defended the southern -frontier against Poitou, and the Baron of Ancenis, who was the bulwark -between Brittany and Anjou. - -In the north, the ancient Breton kingdom of Domnonée was, in the twelfth -century, divided into two counties, that of Penthièvre and Tréguier. - -It was Duke Geoffrey who introduced feudalism of the Anglo-Norman and -French variety. In earlier times, when a nobleman died, his children -divided his lands and goods in equal parts among them, but in Normandy -and France the estate went to the eldest of the line. - -It was only in the twelfth century that the Bretons went outside their -own domain. Previously, they were decidedly an untravelled race, but -under Philip the Fair Paris came to know Breton well, though chiefly -through the poorer classes. - -They went to the schools and seminaries of Orleans to become clerics; -sold their cattle and horses in the markets of Paris, and their wheat -in Maine and Anjou, and their feudal lords, it is perhaps needless to -say, bought their dress in the capital of fashion, and their wines in -Gascony. From this time, Brittany may be said to have been opened to the -world. - -Not always were the Bretons a peaceful, law-abiding race, at least -they did not always appear in such a light to their contemporaries. -According to Bouchart, Duke Francis II. received a letter wherein his -brother-in-law, the Count of Foix, said: “Monseigneur, I declare to -God, I would rather be the ruler of a million of wild boars than of such -a people as are your Bretons.” - -In 1460, Francis II. founded the University of Nantes, thus doing away -with the necessity of the young Breton’s going to Paris, Orleans, or -Angers for his education. - -Printing was discovered in Germany, and all in good time it appeared -in Brittany, at Lannion, and at Tréguier. There were establishments -devoted to the art even before they existed in such important places as -Lyons or Montpellier. One of the first books printed in Brittany was a -French-Breton dictionary, published in 1499, and known as the Catholicon -of Jean Lagadeuc. - -By this time, a remarkable form of government, unique in all the -world, was established in Brittany. In some respects it was modelled -on the English Parliament, but in no way resembled that of the French -legislative body. - -The Estates met each year at Rennes, at Vannes, at Nantes, at Redon, at -Vitré, or at Dinan, and at last, under Francis II., Parliament came to -be a fixture at Rennes. - -Even after the union of Brittany with France, the ancient rights, -privileges, and liberties were assured to the old province until the -Revolution. These sittings of the Estates at Rennes were sumptuous -affairs, accompanied by a round of feasting and dancing at which -appeared all the aristocracy who could. - -Madame de Sévigné wrote to her daughter of one of the grand affairs as -follows: - -“The good cheer is excessive; the roasts are brought on entire, and the -pyramids of fruit are so huge as to make it necessary to take down the -doors for their entrance.... After dinner, MM. de Locmaria and Coëtlegon -danced with two Breton girls, taking some amazing steps.... Play is -continuous, balls endless, and thrice a week there are comedies.” - -The relations between the nobility and peasantry in seventeenth-century -Brittany were perhaps closer and more affectionate than in any other -part of France. The noblemen frequently visited the peasants on their -farms, and on Sunday the peasants danced in the courts of the castles -and manor-houses. - -“Virtually, under the old system, Brittany was peopled by rural -nobility,” says Cambry, and indeed this must have been so, for within a -small radius of Plougasnou were more than two hundred noblemen’s houses, -“so poor,” says the chronicler, “that their inhabitants might well be -classed with the labourers themselves.” - -Brittany’s part in the Revolution was equivocal. The Republicans really -had beaten the Royalists, but they had also aided the Girondins, and at -Paris the Girondins were as much hated as the Royalists themselves. The -Convention sent its representatives into the province, not to thank the -Bretons for their help in the great struggle, but with the idea of still -further arousing the passions of the people. - -Among these representatives were Geurmer, Prieur de la Marne, -Jean-Bon-St.-Andre, and the rascally and heartless Carrier, who drowned -his hundreds at Nantes, and guillotined twenty-six Bretons in one day at -Brest. - -The Breton feeling and sympathy was in the main with the Republicans, -though manifestly the majority had no sympathy with the rule of -the Terrorists. It is curious to note, however, the change in the -nomenclature of places in the endeavour to eliminate the religious -and aristocratic prefixes and suffixes with which many of the Breton -place-names were endowed. - -St. Cast became Havre-Cast. - -St. Fiacre became Fiacre-les-Bois. - -St. Gildas became Gildas du Chaneau. - -St. Gilles-les-Bois became Bellevue. - -St. Jacut-de-la-Mer became Isle Jacut and Port Jacut. - -Chateaulin became Cité sur Aôn. - -Pont l’Abbé became Pont Marat. - -Quimper became Montagne sur Odet. - -St. Martin des Champs became Unité des Champs. - -St. Pol de Léon became Port Pol. - -Belle Ile en Mer became Ile de l’Unité. - -Château Fouquet became Maison-des-Sans-Culottes. - -Isle aux Moins became Isle du Morbihan. - -Roche-Bernard became La Roche Sauveur. - -Rochefort en Terre became Roche des Trois. - -St. Gildas de Rhuis became Abélard. - -St. Briac became Port Briac. - -St. Lunaire became Port Lunaire. - -St. Malo became Port Malo. - -St. Servan became Port Solidor. - -With the incoming of the Empire, most of these names reverted to their -early form. - -In our day, while many of the old provinces of France have suffered--if -they really do “suffer”--from a decreasing population, Brittany has -augmented her numbers continually. It is a well-worn saying among the -political economists of France that the “fine and healthy race of -Bretons is one of the greatest reserves and hopes of the republic.” -Three-quarters of all those who man French ships come from the Breton -peninsula. - -Hamerton has said that no race, more than the English, had so strong -a tendency to form attachments for places outside their native land. -There may be many reasons for this, and assuredly the subject is too -vast and varied to be more than hinted at here. Brittany, at any rate, -has proved, in and out of season, a haven, as safe as a home-port, -for the Briton and his family, when they would not wander too far. -Possibly it comes after Switzerland, though France as a whole, “the most -architectural country in Europe,” has been sadly neglected, for, as has -been said before, no Englishman ever loved France as Browning loved -Italy. - -The native love of the Frenchman for the land of his birth is, to him, -above all else. It is almost incomprehensible to an outsider; it is -something more than mere patriotism; it is the love of an artist for his -picture, as Balzac said of his love of Touraine. This sentiment goes -deep. After the province comes the immediate environment of his village, -and then the village. “_Rien n’est plus beau que mon village, en verité -je vous le dis._” Thus has written and spoken many a great Frenchman. - -Nowhere in the known world is provincialism so deep and profound a trait -as in France; and the Breton is always a Breton, contemptuous of the -Norman, God-fearing, and peaceful toward all. There is throughout France -always an intense provincial rivalry, though it seldom rises to hatred -or even to jealousy. - -Probably there is no great amount of truth in the following quatrain, -evidently composed by a resident of Finistère, and there first heard -by the writer of this book, but it reflects those little rivalries and -ambitions which have appeared in the daily life-struggle among the -inhabitants of other nations since the world began: - - “Voleur comme un Léonard, - Traitre comme un Trégarrais, - Sot comme un Vannetais, - Brutal comme un Cornouaillais.” - -Sometimes the love of one’s own country may be carried to an extreme. -We read that for long years, and until recently, the inhabitants of -Trélaze positively refused to assimilate with outside conditions of life -to the least degree, and finding a Breton of this little zone or islet -who spoke French was as improbable as to find one who spoke English. -At St. Brieuc there is a special quarter where the Breton-speaking -folk live to the number of two thousand, and this out of a population -of only twenty-two thousand, while at Nantes the Bretons number ten -thousand. At Angers there is a large and apparently growing Breton -colony; likewise at Havre, in Normandy, where they have a special chapel -in which the priest preaches in the Breton tongue. At Paris, too, there -are various Breton colonies, and the Church of St. Paul and St. Louis, -in St. Anthony’s Street, has a Breton priest. It is the same with the -church of Vaugirard. At Havre there are something over three thousand -Breton-speaking persons, and in Paris seven thousand. - -Perhaps Brittany has produced fewer great painters and sculptors than -any other section of France, but all Bretons are artists in no very -small way, as witness their wonderfully picturesque dress and their -charmingly stage-managed fêtes and ceremonies. - -The pioneer painter of Breton subjects was doubtless Adolph Leleux, who, -as one of the romantic school in Paris, found in this province what many -another of his contemporaries was seeking for elsewhere, and discovered -Brittany, as far as making it a popular artists’ sketching-ground is -concerned. His first paintings of this region were exhibited in the -Salons of 1838-39-40, and Paris raved over them. His peasant folk, -with their embroidered waistcoats and broad-brimmed hats, had the very -atmosphere of Brittany. - -[Illustration: <u>_St. Brieuc_</u>] - -Leleux’s success was the signal for a throng of artists to follow in his -footsteps, and to-day their number is countless, and the very names of -even the most famous would form too long a list to catalogue here. - -Among Leleux’s most celebrated canvases were “La Karolle, Danse -Bretonne” 1843; “Les Faneuses,” 1846; “Le Retour du Marché,” 1847; -“Cour de Cabaret,” 1857; “Jour de Fête en Basse Bretagne,” 1865; and -successively the “Foire Bretonne,” “Les Braconniers,” “Le Pêcheur de -Homards,” “Pèlerinage Breton,” and “Le Cri du Chouan.” - -In all these works one finds the true Brittany of Rosporden and -Penmarc’h. - -Fortin’s “Cahute de Mendicant dans le Finistère” (1857), “La -Bénédicité,” and “La Chaumière du Morbihan” follow Leleux as a good -second, then Trayers with “Marché Breton and “Marchande de Crepes à -Quimperlé.” - -Among other noted pictures are Darjours’s “Palaudiers du Bourg de Batz” -and the “Fagotiers Bretons”; Guerard’s “Jour de Fête” and “Messe du -Matin, Ille-et-Vilaine”; Fischer’s “Chemin du Pardon” and “Auberge à -Scaër,” and Roussin’s “Famille Bretonne.” - -Gustave Brion, with his “Bretons à la Porte d’une Eglise”; Yan -Dargent, with his “Sauvetage à Guisseny,” and Jules Noel, with his -“Danse Bretonne,” and various landscapes of Brest, Quimper, Auray, and -Douarnenez, are on the list of names of those who made the Breton region -famous in the mid-nineteenth century. - -Since then, the followers in their footsteps have been almost too many -to number. - -Most folk call to mind with very slight appreciable effort such -masterpieces as Jules Breton’s “Retraite aux Flambeaux” and “Plantation -d’un Calvaire,” now in the museum at Lille, and Charles Cottet’s -“Bateaux de Pêche à Camaret” in the Luxembourg gallery. - -In addition, there have been innumerable “great pictures” painted by -English and American artists whose very names form too long a list to -catalogue here. - - - - -CHAPTER III. - -THE TOPOGRAPHY OF THE PROVINCE - - -One reason for the diversified interests of France and the varying -methods of life is the vastly diversified topographical features. “Great -plains as large as three Irelands,” said Hamerton, “and yet mountainous -districts quite as large as the whole of the British Isles.” This -should have served to disabuse British travellers of some false notions -regarding France, but many of them still hold to the views which are to -be gained by railway journeys across the lowlands of Gaul, forgetting -for a moment that well within the confines of France there are fifty -mountain peaks above eleven thousand feet high, and that majestic Mont -Blanc itself rises on French soil. - -Then there are the two thousand miles of seacoast which introduce -another element of the population, from the dark-skinned sailor of the -Mediterranean to his brother of Finistère, who is brought into the world -chiefly to recruit the French navy. The Norman sailorman is a hardy, -intrepid navigator even to-day, but he is to a great extent of the -longshore and fishing-boat variety, whereas the true Breton is a sailor -through and through. - -Before now, Brittany has been compared, disparagingly, with Provence, -and with some justness perhaps. Provence, however, does not persistently -broil under a “fierce, dry heat,” and Brittany is not by any means -“a wind and wave swept land, where nothing nourishes itself or grows -fat.” Potatoes are even fattening, and Brittany, in all conscience, -grows enough of that useful commodity to feed all France. In three -things Brittany and Provence more than a little resemble one another. -Both preserve, to a very remarkable extent, their ancient language and -their old-time manners and customs, though in all three they are quite -different one from the other. - -The general topographical aspect of the coast of the whole Breton -peninsula is stern and wild, whether one encounters the dreary waste of -sand, in the midst of which sit Mont St. Michel and Tombelaine, or the -cliffs away to the westward, or the bleak and barren Belle Ile en Mer, -where Fouquet built his famous stronghold. - -On the “Emerald Coast” the sea and sky are often of a true Neapolitan -clearness, and, indeed, the climate of the whole peninsula is, even in -winter, as mild as many a popularly fashionable Mediterranean resort; -but it is not always so bright and sunny; there is a deal of rain in -winter, and often a penetrating dampness, whose only brother is the -genuine Scotch mist. - -Still, in all but four months of the year, there is a brilliancy and -softness about the climate of the coast of Brittany which encourages -violets, roses, onions, and potatoes to come to maturity at so early a -date that the Londoner has ceased to raise the question as to whether or -not they may be “best English,” when he sees these products laid out of -an early morning in his beloved Covent Garden. - -To know a country or its people at its best, one should really take one -of its great men for a guide. Hear then what Chateaubriand says of “La -Terre Bretonne”: - -“This long peninsula, of a wild and savage aspect, has much of -singularity about it: its narrow valleys, its non-navigable rivers -bathing the feet of its ruined castle-keeps and châteaux, its old -abbeys, its thatch-covered houses, and its cattle herded together in its -arid pastures. One valley is separated from another by forests of oak, -with holly bushes as large as beech-trees, and druidical stones around -which sea-birds are for ever circling. - -“Of an imagination lively, but nevertheless melancholic, of a humour as -flexible as their character is obstinate, the Bretons are distinguished -for their piety, and none the less for their bravery, their fidelity, -their spirit of independence, and their patriotism. Proud and -susceptible, but without ambition and little suited to the affairs of -court or state, they care nothing for honours or for rank.” - -The picture is not very vivid, but it is wonderfully true, and of this -one meets continual evidence in a journey around the coast, from the Bay -of St. Michel in the north to Belle Ile or Nantes in the south. - -No part of France has a physiognomy more original than Bretagne; none -has been marked by nature in a more emphatic manner than this ancient -home of the Celts. - - “...la terre du granit - Et de l’immense et morne lande.” - -It is indeed a land of contrasts, where ancient, mystical, and weird -menhirs and dolmens, relics of prehistoric times, are mingled with -mediæval monuments and modern forts, arsenals, and viaducts. - -The country is by no means unlovely, but it partakes of none of the -conventional beauties of other parts. It is not sterile, though it is -stern; it is not very fertile, but its product is ample; and it stands -as the most westerly point of the mainland of Northern Europe, open to -all the wild buffetings of the tempestuous Atlantic which has sculptured -its coast-line into such fantastic forms that a shipwrecked mariner must -think himself fallen upon the most stern and rock-bound of coasts. - -The general aspect of Brittany is green and gray. It is, as the Breton -himself says, an austere heath,--the country-side half-effaced in -demi-tints, and the sea boisterous and wicked. - -This, however, is only one of its moods; to-morrow it may be as -brilliantly sunlit as the Bay of Naples, and may have a sea and sky of -gold and turquoise. But this mood passes quickly, and again it settles -down to a misty softness and mildness of climate that has given its name -to one of the five great climatic divisions of France, the Armorican. - -The sunsets of Brittany are always glorious. Nowhere on the rim of great -ocean’s mirror are there more splendid and grandly scenic effects to be -observed. An exceedingly realistic Frenchman once described a sunset in -the Bay of Douarnenez as a “bloody apotheosis,” the real aspect of which -is readily inferred. Of this Breton Cornouaille, Béranger sang: - - “Faisons honte aux hirondelles. - Tu croiras, sur nos essieux, - Que la terre a pris des ailes - Pour passer devant les yeux.” - -The country inland is as original as the coast, and both the peasant on -shore and the sailor on the sea are Breton to the core. Never has -Brittany been called charming or gracious, never lovely or sweet, but -always cold, though not so in climate, which is always terrible and -austere. - -But, for all that, it is delightful, and when one has tired of the -stupid gaieties of Switzerland or the Rhine, let him rough it a bit -among the low hills and valleys of the Côtes du Nord, or the rocky -promontories and inlets of Finistère, or, on the south coast between -Quimper and Nantes, on one of those little tidal rivers such as the -Aven, and let him learn for himself that there is something new under -the sun, even on well-trodden ground. - -Truth to tell, Brittany is not nearly so well known to English-speaking -folk as it should be. There is a fringe of semi-invalid, semi-society -loiterers centred around St. Malo, and enlivened in the summer months by -the advent of a little world of literary and artistic folk from Paris. -Then there is an artist colony or two in Lower Brittany, where the -visitors work hard, dress uncouthly, and live cheaply for four or five -months of the year. At Nantes there is the overflow of tourists of -convention from the châteaux district of Touraine, and up and down the -length and breadth of Brittany, from Mont St. Michel to St. Nazaire, and -from Dol to Brest, are to be found occasional wanderers on bicycles or -in motor-cars. - -The great mass, however, is herded around the conventionally “gay” five -o’clock resorts of Dinard, Paramé, and St. Malo, and in by far the -greater area of the province the seeker for pleasure and true -edification is far more rare than is popularly supposed. The occasional -rather wretched hotel has hitherto kept the fastidious away, and the -terrific hobnails of the Breton wooden shoe have all but driven -travellers in motor-cars and bicycle riders to despair. Both these -deterrents, real and fancied, are disappearing, however. The hygienic -bedrooms of the Touring Club are found here and there, and the peasants, -or, at least, some of them, now wear a sort of cast-iron sole -apparently clamped or riveted to the wooden shoe; at least there are no -big, pointed, mushroom-headed tacks to drop out, point uppermost, in dry -weather. - -The topographical aspect of Brittany is largely due to the two great -zones of granite formation which come together at their western -extremities,--the mountains of Alençon and the jutting rocks that come -to the surface from Poitou northward. - -In general, the whole aspect of Brittany echoes the words of Brizeaux, -the Lorient poet: - - “O terre de granit, recouverte de chênes.” - -One would hardly call Brittany mountainous, but its elevations are -notable, nevertheless, in that they rise, for the most part, abruptly -from the dead level of the ocean. Inland, the topography takes on more -of the nature of a rolling moorland, with granite cropping out here and -there in the elevations. The following quatrain describes it exactly: - - “À MON PAYS - - “O ma chère Bretagne, - Que j’aime tes halliers, - Tes verdoyants graniers, - Et ta noire montagne.” - --_Corbinais._ - -The greatest altitudes in Brittany are: The Sillon de Bretagne (near -Savenay), eighty-nine metres; La Motte (Montagnes Noires between Quimper -and Brest), 289 metres; Menez Hom (Montagnes Noires), 330 metres; Mont -St. Michel (Montagne d’Arrée), 391 metres. - -The Breton rivers are not great rivers as the waterways of the world go, -although they are important indeed to the country which they irrigate. -Chief among them are the Vilaine, navigable to Rennes, the Rance, the -Odet, the Aulne, and of course the Loire, which flanks the southern -boundary of the old province nearly up to its juncture with the Mayenne, -and continues its navigable length in Brittany up to, and a trifle -beyond, the town of the same name. The Couesnon, flowing northward -into the vast Bay of Mont St. Michel, forms the northeastern boundary -separating Brittany from Normandy. - -The great length of irregular coast-line accounts for the continuation -of the generally severe and stern aspect of the interior, the sombre -granite cliffs jutting far out into the open, half-enclosing great bays -and forming promontories and headlands which are characteristically -Breton and nothing else. They might resemble those of the Greek -mainland and archipelago were they but environed with the life and -languor of the South, but, as it is, they are Breton through and -through, and their people have all their hopes and sympathies wrapped up -in the occupations of a colder clime. - -The old territorial limits of the Province of Brittany embraced a small -tract south of the Loire, known as _Le Rais_, or the Retz country. - -Here is Clisson, the feudal castle and estate so constantly recurring in -French history. Pornic, Paimbœuf, and the Lac de Grande Lieu also lie -southward of the Loire in this old appanage, but, in the main, Breton -history was played on the Armorican peninsula north of the Loire. - -The height of the tides on the Breton coast varies considerably. All -this is caused by the flow of the North Sea and the Straits of Calais -meeting the current coming directly from the Atlantic, so that in some -instances the flood-tide rises to a height of from fifty to sixty feet -above “dead water,” as the French call it. - -The immense Bay of Mont St. Michel, at low water, is a stretch of bare -sand more than three hundred square kilometres in extent, but it is -completely covered and converted into a great tranquil gulf by the -rising tide. - -[Illustration: <u>_Croisic_</u>] - -At Croisic, at the mouth of the Loire, there is a 5.16 metre rise of -the tide, which around the Breton coast-line varies as follows: - - Port Navalo, Morbihan 4.72 - Lorient 4.60 - Concarneau 4.68 - Douarnenez 6.16 - Brest 6.42 - Ouessant 6.38 - Roscoff 8.22 - Ile Brehat 9.90 - St. Malo 11.44 - Iles Chausey 11.74 - Mont St. Michel 12.30 - -The aspect of the region round about Dol, in the north, is that of a -little Holland, with its flats and windmills and its cultivated ground -protected from the sea by a rim of downs and dikes. It is not so very -great an expanse that follows these outlines, but the likeness is one -to be remarked. To the westward lie the jutting rocks and capes, beyond -which are the isolated islands of Ouessant and its fellows, and all -around the coast extend landlocked bays and harbours sheltering the -great fishing ports of Douarnenez and Concarneau and the commercial -ports of St. Malo, Morlaix, Brest, Lorient, and Vannes. - -From a military and strategic point of view the whole northwest coast of -France, from the mouth of the Loire through Brittany and Normandy, is -exceedingly well protected, with a great port and base of supplies both -at Brest in Brittany and at Cherbourg in Normandy. - -Forts Minden, Ville Martin, and Penthièvre, Port Louis, Lorient, and -Brest, and the Forts du Pilier, Le Palais, Lacroix, Cezon, and Château -du Taureau, with St. Malo and Fort des Rimains, protect the whole Breton -seashore in practically unassailable fashion, though there are still the -sea fights at Ouessant, in 1778 and 1794, and The Hogue in 1692, to say -nothing of the land engagements at Quiberon in 1795, to remember. - -[Illustration: Map of Bretagne] - - - - -CHAPTER IV. - -TRAVEL ROUTES IN BRITTANY - - -Tourists are commonly supposed to belong to the pleasure-seeking -or invalid class, and so they mostly do, still one may travel for -instruction (which is pleasure, also) and be mindful of the conditions -of life around him, and profit accordingly, unless he absolutely demands -the life of the boulevards of Paris or the homœopathic excitements of -the little horses in some popular watering-place. - -It is undoubtedly true that most tourists are of limited interests, -which may be pleasure, or art, or architecture, or worshipping at -historical shrines. All this is well enough in its way, but if one could -combine a modicum of each he would profit much more largely, to say -nothing of being amused and instructed, too. - -The time has long since passed when travellers reviled Brittany as -a province where “husbandry was no further advanced than among the -Hurons,” as a writer of the eighteenth century said within twenty-four -hours after he had crossed the boundary between Normandy and Brittany, -at Pontorson, where the causeway road branches off to Mont St. Michel. -Evidences of husbandry are still very much to the fore, but it is more -advanced in the interior, at least; on the coast the harvest of the sea -takes its place. - -Brittany, in husbandry, may not be so advanced as some other parts. -There are no such elaborate operations going on here as in the regions -where high farming is practised--in Beauce, or Normandy, or Anjou. -Neither are such numbers of mechanical farming-tools in operation, -but in spite of all this there is a very considerable and prosperous -industry born of the soil of which most strangers to Brittany, and some -who have travelled there, are entirely ignorant. All along the great -highways crossing and recrossing Brittany one sees the little roadside -farms with their attendant small flocks of live stock, sheep, cattle, -geese, ducks, and fowls, which point, at any rate, to the fact that the -peasant need not be as ill-nourished as he is generally supposed to be; -and really he is not. - -The charm of journeying by road in France is indescribable, perhaps, -to its fullest degree. Natural beauties count for much, but in a land -peopled with historic castles, churches, and abbeys, as Normandy and -Brittany are, it is found doubly enjoyable even though one professes no -expert architectural knowledge, or no profound aptitude for historical -research. These, however, are but side-lights, which make the actual -pilgrimage among such shrines greatly to be cherished among one’s -personal experiences. - -It is the whole which pleases, and not fragmentary and piecemeal -beauties and charms; and never was this more true than of a well-beloved -land, be it one’s own or an alien shore. - -Brittany and its travel routes, whether by road or rail, offer as full a -measure of all these attractions as it is possible for one to conceive. - -The great highways of Brittany have not the same favour with travellers -by road as those of other parts of France. They are equally important -and equally well cared for by a paternal government, but their inclines -are steeper--sometimes suicidal--and certainly more frequent than -elsewhere in France, and distances stretch out interminably. - -[Illustration: <u>_The Main Roads of Brittany_</u>] - -The great national road which stretches from Paris to Brest covers a -distance nearly equal to that from Paris to Turin, or from Paris to -Amsterdam. - -There are, however, in Brittany no long stretches of unrolled road -surface, and for the most part the roadways are as smooth as can -anywhere be found. Were it not for the eternal switchbacks, and the -aforementioned hobnail, with its pointed end usually upmost, Brittany -would be a far more popular touring-ground for the automobile than it -is. The hooded cart of Normandy and Brittany, such as one meets going -to and from the market-towns, is another real dread to the man in the -motor-car. - -It is not that the occupant is unwilling to hear one’s horn, but it is -almost impossible that he should against a head-wind, until you are -close upon him. It is useless to point to your ear as you whisk by and -ask him--in a shout--if he is deaf, or to say: “Well, now, you sleep -well.” He will pay little or no attention to you, and anyway, most -likely, he was _not_ asleep, as are so many of his fellows that one -meets on English roads. - -In Brittany the traveller by road often meets an obstruction in the -shape of a flock of sheep slowly making its way toward one, or in the -opposite direction, or even a flock of ducks or geese, which are even -more dreadful. Sheep are stupid, hens and chickens are silly, but geese -are arrogant and obstinate. - -It is very disconcerting, of course, for the motor-car driver at full -speed to have to draw in his ten, or twenty, or thirty horses in order -to avoid decapitating a whole goose and gosling family, but it lends a -charm to the travel, which a badly paved stretch of roadway--in Picardy, -for instance--wholly lacks. - -Here when one does actually run into a flock of geese, such as one sees -on the high-coloured posters advertising a certain make of car, and in -the comic journals, it is one of the real humours of life. The amount of -curiosity an old goose or gander can show in a death-dealing motor-car -as it rushes by, and the chances they take of sudden death, are enough -to give an ordinarily careful driver innumerable heart-leaps. - -This is about all the trouble one is likely to meet on Breton roads, -except, of course, the always present grazing cows, which here, though -they are always attended,--generally by a small boy or girl, who often -is not able to keep them in line as one would wish,--are allowed to -stray freely, and are not tethered as they are throughout Normandy. - -It is not for the aforesaid reasons alone that motor-cars are scarce -in Brittany, for, after all, they form but minor troubles as compared -with the eccentricities of the machinery itself, and the tourist in -a motor-car is usually prepared for most things which are likely to -happen to him _en route_. So really if one likes a hilly country--and -it is not without its charms--Brittany offers much in the way of varied -and natural beauties that certain other provinces lack. Touraine, for -instance, delightful as it is as a touring-ground, is as proverbially -flat as a billiard-table. - -There are, in the first place, not nearly so many motor-cars owned in -Brittany, and accordingly there are astonishingly few shelters and -repairers. Apparently, the Breton does not care for the new-fangled -means of locomotion, not recognizing, perhaps, that it has come to stay. -Still less does the Breton peasant’s brother, the Breton sailor or -fisherman, care for the motor-boat, which ought to have a great vogue in -such great inland seas as Morbihan, the Bay of Douarnenez, or the Goulet -or the roadstead of Brest. - -The sailor of Brest or Lorient and the little fishing villages of the -west will tell you: “I like my boat better, with my sail and my arms -for motors.” - -Often these great stretches of Breton roadway show an aspect of human -nature that is probably the same the world over; a peasant man or woman -is leading a cow,--always on the wrong side of the road, of course,--or -a sleepy farm-hand is drawing his cart to or from market,--still on the -wrong side of the road,--when the whirr and snort of a motor-car does -something more than awaken echoes. - -The cows entangle themselves in their leading ropes, and the usually -placid horses bolt with the cart into the ditch. The native, of course, -reviles the car and its occupants, not because he hates them,--for they -are one of the mainstays of the inns of the countryside,--but merely to -display that untamable spirit of independence, which every mother’s son -of a French peasant has developed to a high degree. - -In Brittany, as in most other lands,--in summer,--the traveller by road -gathers in a fine crop of wingy, stingy things, which project themselves -into one’s eyes with a formidable force when one goes at them with a -swift-moving car. - -Occasionally one thinks he has come upon a vast convention of them, -so many are they in numbers and variety--flies, wasps, bees, and what -not, with a peculiar Gallic species of fly so infinitesimal that one -only stops to clear them out when he feels that his eyes are so full -of them that they may be uncomfortably crowded. The real or fabled -Jersey mosquito would go out of business with his Breton brother as a -competitor. Truly this is a new terror, and one that certainly was not -apparent, to anything like the present extent, before the advent of the -motor-car. - -One comes upon a dull week in Brittany often, even in summer, when the -sky remains overcast, and great clouds roll up from out of the western -ocean. Often it is not cold, but it is bitterly damp and sticky, even -though it does not rain, but the native does not seem to mind it, at -least, he never complains. - -The only objector ever met with by the writer was a Gascon who kept -a pharmacy at Quimper. He discussed it as follows: “Hideous country! -The wind blows here every day in the year, and the rest of the time it -rains,” he continued, enigmatically. “Yes, that abominable wind always -plays the same trick on me! What a country!” He was probably thinking of -his own bright and sunny home in the South, where seldom, if ever, are -conditions other than brilliantly tranquil. - -There are three great highroads which cross Brittany from east to west, -the main road of Brittany from Alençon in Normandy, through Mayenne, -Fougères, Dol, Dinan, Guingamp, and Morlaix to Brest; the southern road -from Paris via Le Mans, or even following the Loire valley down from -Orleans to Nantes, and thence westward via Vannes, Lorient, and Quimper -to Brest, thus making the complete circuit of the Breton coast. A midway -course lies in almost a direct line east and west through Laval, Vitré, -Rennes, Ploërmel, Pontivy, and Carhaix. - -These three highroads cover completely the itinerary of Brittany, in so -far as they follow the north and south coast and the country-side lying -between. - -Cross country, from the Bay of Mont St. Michel to the mouth of the -Loire, one “route nationale” lies directly through Rennes, and another -ends at Vannes, in Morbihan. - -These cover practically all the regular lines of traffic, and include -all the chief points of historical and topographical instances. - -[Illustration: <u>_Travel Routes in Brittany_</u>] - -Distances of themselves are not great in Brittany. From St. Malo to -Nantes is but 180 kilometres; from Laval to Brest but 337 kilometres; -and from Nantes to Brest is but 324 kilometres. - -In these days of motor-cars and even bicycles, these distances are not -great, and so long as they are not taken at a rush,--which forbids -enjoyment,--they form no drawback to the pleasures of travel by road in -Brittany. One has only to add two or three hundred kilometres more, in -order to reach the starting-points of Nantes, Laval, or St. Malo from -Paris. Then the tour may seem a lengthy one; but even this is nothing -to find fault with; the intermediate country is in itself delightful, -whether one journeys down through the Orleanais, Touraine, and Anjou, or -westward through the heart of Normandy. - -The railways in Brittany, except on some of the cross-country routes, -are developed to a high stage of efficiency. The great express lines of -the Western Railroad to St. Malo and to Brest run due west from Paris, -straight almost as the crow flies. Again, one may make his entry via -Nantes and the Loire valley through Touraine and Anjou by the Orleans -line, and have the satisfaction of setting out from Paris by the world’s -finest and most modern railway station, that wonderfully convenient and -artistic structure on the Quay of Orsay. - -Rennes is the great railway centre of Brittany, and accordingly all -roads lead to Rennes. Here one may make up his itinerary at a price -which will include nearly every place west of that point for a matter -of _frcs._ 65 for first-class, and _frcs._ 50, second-class, and if -he tell the clerk of the booking-office at his point of departure for -Rennes that he intends doing this (and agrees with the formalities) he -will get a discount of forty per cent, on the price of first or second -class tickets up to that point. A plan of this itinerary and further -particulars are given in the appendix. - -Third-class railway travel in Brittany ought to form one of the -long-remembered experiences of one’s visit to that province. - -There is much amusement to be got out of a journey across Brittany from -St. Malo to Nantes, with mob-capped peasant-folk and blue-bloused and -picturesque farmers, all laden with huge baskets and bundles, and an -occasional live fowl, or perhaps a rabbit, or even a guinea-pig, though -one must not believe that Frenchmen eat guinea-pigs. The writer, at -least, never saw one being eaten, though what use they are really put to -is an open question. - -Occasionally there will be a want of elbow-room in a third-class -carriage, but this is no great inconvenience, as the Breton mostly -travels short distances only, and at the next station one may be left -alone with only a drowsy Breton sailor--off on a furlough from a -man-of-war--to keep him company, with his red-knobbed tam-o’-shanter -rakishly over one ear. - -Often a _foreigner_ will throw himself into one’s compartment,--an -American or an English artist, with his sketching paraphernalia, white -umbrella and all,--for artist-folk are mostly of the genus who travel -third-class. Good-naturedly enough, if his journey be a long one, he -will tell you much of the country round about, for your artist is one -who knows the byways as well as the highways--and perhaps a little -better. By this procedure, one stands a chance of gathering information -as well as being edified and amused. - - - - -CHAPTER V. - -THE BRETON TONGUE AND LEGEND - - -The speech of Brittany, like its legend and folk-lore, has ever been a -prolific subject with many writers of many opinions. - -The comparison of the speech of the Welshman with that of the Breton -has often been made, but by no one so successfully as by Henri Martin, -the historian, who, in writing of his travels in Wales, told how he had -chatted with the Celtic population there and made himself thoroughly -understood through his knowledge of Breton speech. - -In its earliest phases, the Breton tongue had a literature of its own, -at least a spoken literature, coming from the mouths of its bards -and popular poets. In our own day, too, Brittany has its own songs -and verses, which, though many of them have not known the medium of -printer’s ink, have come down from past generations. - -The three ancient Armorican kingdoms or states, Domnonée, Cornouaille, -and the Bro-Waroch, had their own distinct dialects. - -There is and was a considerable variation in the speech throughout -Brittany, though it is and was all Breton. The dialects of Vannes, -Quimper, and Tréguier are the least known outside their own immediate -neighbourhood; the Léonais of St. Pol de Léon is the regular and common -tongue of all Bas Bretons. - -The old-time limits of the Breton tongue are wavering to-day, and -from time to time have drawn appreciably toward the west, so that the -boundary-line, which once ran from the mouth of the Loire to Mont St. -Michel, now starts at the mouth of the Vilaine, and finishes at a point -on the northern coast, a little to the westward of St. Brieuc. - -It was during the decadence of the Breton tongue--known to philologists -as the third period--that the monk Abelard cried out: “The Breton tongue -makes me blush with shame.” - -The nearer one comes to Finistère, the less liable he is to meet the -French tongue unadulterated. The numbers knowing the Breton tongue alone -more than equal those who know French and Breton, leaving those who know -French alone vastly in the minority. The figures seem astonishing -to one who does not know the country, but they are unassailable, -nevertheless. - -[Illustration: <u>_St. Pol de Léon_</u>] - -Here in this department at least, and to a lesser degree in the Côtes -du Nord and the Morbihan provinces, one is likely enough to hear -lisped out, as if it were the effort of an Englishman: “_Je na sais -pas ce que vous dîtes_,” or “_Je n’entend rien_.” No great hardship or -inconvenience is inflicted upon one by all this, but now and again one -wishes he were a Welshman, for the only foreigners who can understand -the lingo are Taffy’s fellow country-men. - -Breton legend is as weird and varied as that of any land. It is -astonishingly convincing, too, from the story of King Grollo and -his wicked daughter, who came from the Britain across the seas, the -Bluebeard legend, the Arthurian legend, which Bretons claim as their -own, as do Britons, to those less incredible tales of the Corsairs of -St. Malo and the exploits of Duguesclin and Surcouf. - -[Illustration: _The Breton Tongue_] - -There is a quaint Breton saying referring to little worries, which -runs thus: “When the wind blows up from the sea, I turn my barrel to -the north; when it blows down from the hills, I turn my barrel to the -south.” “And when it blows all four ways at once?” “Why, then I crawl -under the barrel.” - -This is exactly the Breton’s attitude toward life to-day, but he finds -a deal of consolation in his legends and songs of the past, and in his -ruffled moments they serve to put him in a good humour again. This is -something more than mere superstition, it is a philosophical turn of -mind, and that is good for a man. The heroes of legend are frequently -those of history. One may cite Joan of Arc with relation to old France, -and Duguesclin in Brittany. There is a difference, of course, and it is -wide, but the comparison will serve, as there is no other character in -all the history of Brittany--unless it be that of Duguay-Trouin, the -Corsair of St. Malo--who stands out so distinctly in the popular mind as -does Duguesclin, “the real Breton.” - -There is none in his own country, however illiterate he may be, and the -Breton peasant, in some parts, is notoriously illiterate, who knows -not this hero’s name and glory. Still more deeply rooted are the old -folk-lore superstitions which have come down through the ages by word of -mouth, no doubt with the accruing additions of time. - -Morlaix is the very centre of a land of mystery, tradition, and -superstition. Among these superstitious legends, “Jan Gant y tan,” as it -is known by its Breton title, stands out grimly. - -Jan, it seems, is a species of demon who carries by night five candles -on the five fingers of each hand, and waves them wildly about, calling -down wrath upon those who may have offended him. - -Another is to the effect that hobgoblins eat the cream which rises on -milk at night. - -Yet another superstition is that the call of the cuckoo announces the -year of one’s marriage or death. - -Another, and perhaps the most curious of all, is that, if an infant by -any chance gets his clothes wet at certain pools or fountains, he will -die within a year, but he will live long years if he fall in, yet is -able to preserve his garments from all dampness. - -When one drinks of the Fountain of De Krignac three times within the -hour, says the peasant of Plougasnou, and is not cured of the fever, let -him abandon all thoughts of a remedy and prepare for death. - -There are two legends associated with Brittany which are little known. -Both relate to Bluebeard. This legend is of Eastern origin, as far as -concerns the story of the man who slew his wives by dragging them about -by the hair, ultimately decapitating them; but the French Academy of -Inscriptions and Polite Learning evolves a sort of modern parallel as -another setting for the same apocryphal story. It concerns a certain -Trophime, the daughter of a Duke of Vannes, in the sixth century. She -was married to the Lord of Gonord, whose castle was situated on Mont -Castanes, and was the eighth wife of her husband. He killed her because -she discovered the bodies of her seven predecessors; but her sister Anne -prayed to St. Gildas, who came with her two brothers to the rescue. St. -Gildas restored Trophime to life, and the Bluebeard of Gonord and his -castle were swallowed up by the earth. - -The origin of the story has always been in doubt, but the generally -accepted theory is that Perrault founded the tale on the history of -Gilles de Laval, Seigneur de Rais. - -The Academy, however, destroys all this early conjecture in favour of -the Gilles de Laval affair. Since Gilles de Laval was a kinsman of the -Dukes of Brittany, the following is given as his claim to having played -the part, though, as the report of the Academy goes on to say, De Laval -proved himself to be but a fanatical sorcerer. - -[Illustration: _Gilles de Laval, after an engraving of the fifteenth -century in the Bibliothèque Nationale._] - -Gilles de Laval was born in 1404, and was a member of the family of -Laval-Montmorency. He was handsome, well born, rich, and a most valiant -soldier, and one of the warmest supporters of Joan of Arc, whom he -defended against all who spoke ill of her, constituting himself her -personal champion. He fought valiantly with the “Maid,” and was made a -marshal of France when twenty-six years of age. He was very wealthy, -and he doubled his possessions when he married at the early age of -sixteen. His extravagances, however, were greater than his riches. He -had a refined taste, and loved illuminated manuscripts, stamped Spanish -leather, Flemish tapestries, Oriental carpets, gold and silver plate, -music, and mystery plays. After peace was made, he and his wife retired -to their castles and lands in the Vendée, where Gilles soon found -himself hopelessly in debt. He had to find money somehow, for he was of -a fine, open-handed disposition, and had never denied himself anything. -It was only natural in that century that he should turn his thoughts -toward alchemy and the philosopher’s stone. - -Francesco Prelati, an Italian with a reputation as a magician and a -maker of gold, was installed, with all his alchemist’s apparatus, in -Gilles’s castle; but when he was asked to make gold, he confided to -his patron that it would be necessary to summon the aid of the devil, -and that for this purpose the blood of young children was absolutely -required. The two then scoured the country round for children, whom -they murdered with horrible rites, until at last their crimes became -so notorious that they were arrested and tried at Nantes. Gilles de -Laval and his accomplice were accused of murdering no fewer than twelve -hundred children, and were tried for sorcery and found guilty. The Lord -of Laval was strangled, and his body was burned; but Francesco Prelati, -as a mere vulgar sorcerer, was burned alive. - -At Saint Cast in the Côtes du Nord, one hears vague and fabulous reports -from the natives, even to-day, of a pirate ship--a veritable sister -ship to those of Duguay-Trouin of St. Malo--named the _Perillon_ and -commanded by one Besnard, known as the terror of the seas. Like other -songs of seafarers of the days gone by, that concerning the terror of -the seas is good enough to incorporate into the text of some rattling -story of pirates and corsairs, such as boys--and some grown-ups--the -world over like. Another popular Breton air was known as “Biron ha -D’Estin” (“Byron and D’Estaing”), and had to do with the war in America. -Another was the “Chant du Pilote,” and had for its subject the combat of -the _Surveillante_ and the forts at Quebec in 1780. - -Of the same period was the “Corsairs’ Song,” which is very well known -throughout Upper Brittany even to-day, beginning thus: - - “Le trente-un du mois d’août.” - -Throughout Upper Brittany also one hears the old housewives still -mumbling the old words and air of the song current in the times of -Francis the First. - -It was when the prince was treating for his release from captivity that -the words first took shape and form: - - “Quand le roi départit de France, - Vive le roi! - À la male heure il départit, - Vive Louis! - À la male heure il départit (bis). - - * * * - - Il départit jour de dimanche. - - * * * - - Je ne suis pas le roi de France. - - * * * - - Je suis un pauvre gentilhomme - Qui va de pays en pays. - - * * * - - Retourne-t-en vite à Paris.” - - - - -CHAPTER VI. - -MANNERS AND CUSTOMS - - -To-day the Bretons are the most loyal of all the citizens of the great -republic of France. In reality they are a most democratic people, though -they often affect a devotion for old institutions now defunct. They may -be a superstitious race, but they are not suspicious, although they have -marked prejudices. When thoroughly understood, they are both likable and -lovable, though their aspect be one of a certain sternness and aloofness -toward the stranger. Their weapons are all in plain view, however, like -the hedgehog’s; there is nothing concealed to thwart one’s desires for -relations with them. - -Their country, their climate, and their environment have much to do -with their character, manners, and customs; and environment--as some -one may have said before--is the greatest influence at work in shaping -the attitude of a people toward an outsider, and every one is still an -outsider to a Breton, be he French, English, or American. - -The Breton is really a gayer person than his expression leads one to -suppose. Madame de Sévigné wrote, with some assurance, as was her wont: -“You make me prefer the gamesomeness of our Bretons to the perfumed -idleness of the Provençals.” - -Certainly, to one who knows both races, the comparison was well made. It -is a case of doing mischief against doing nothing. - -Brittany has not Normandy’s general air of prosperity, and indeed at -times there is a very near approach to poverty and distress, and then it -is bruited abroad in the public prints that the fisheries have proved a -failure. - -The Breton farming peasant, however, is not the poverty-stricken wretch -that he has sometimes been painted. He lives humbly, and eats vast -quantities of potatoes and bread, little meat, some fish, always a -salad, and, usually, a morsel of cheese, but he eats it off a cleanly -scrubbed bare board and from clean and unchipped plates. - -In his stable, such few belongings in the form of live stock as he has -are well fed and contented, and his chickens and ducks and pigs and cows -are as much a pride and profit to him as to the peasant of other parts; -but, after all, Brittany is not a land of milk and honey. The peasant -lives in the atmosphere of dogged, obstinate labour, but he draws a -competence from it, and it is mostly those who live in the seacoast -villages, and those who will huddle themselves in and about the large -towns and ports, such as Quimper and Brest, that are ever in want, and -then only because of some untoward, unexpected circumstance. - -Agriculture and the business of the sea are closely allied in Brittany. -Hundreds upon hundreds of young men work in the winter upon farms far -inland, and come down to the sea with the coming of February and March, -to ship in some longshore fishing-smack, or even to go as far away as -Newfoundland, the Orkneys, or to Iceland. - -This gives not only a peculiar blend of character, but also a peculiar -cast of countenance to the Breton; he is a sort of half-land and -half-sea specimen of humanity, and handy at the business of either. - -In many ports, the Breton struggles continually against shifting -sand,--sand which is constantly shifting when piled in banks on the -seashore, and becomes of the nature of quicksand when lying beneath the -water where the Breton moors his lobster-pots. Between the two, he is -constantly harassed, and until the off season comes has little of that -gaiety into which he periodically relaxes. Every one will remark that -the aspect of both men and women is sombre and dark, even though their -spontaneous gaiety and dress on the feast of a patron saint or at a -great pardon gives one the impression of gladness. - -One sees this when on the great holidays the Breton peasant is moved -to song, and chants such lines as the following, which more nearly -correspond in sentiment to “We won’t go home till morning” than anything -else that can be thought of. - - “J’ai deux grands bœufs dans mon étable, - J’ai deux grands bœufs marqués de rouge; - Ils gagnent plus dans une semaine - Qu’ils n’en ont couté, qu’ils n’en ont couté. - J’aime Jeanne ma femme! - J’aime Jeanne ma femme! - Eh bien! j’aimerais mieux la voir mourir, - Que de voir mourir mes bœufs.” - -Doubtless there is not so much hard-heartedness about the sentiment as -is expressed by the words, which, to say the least and the most, are not -wholly up to the standard of “love, cherish, and protect.” - -Once in awhile one sees the type of man who is known among his fellows -as _Breton des plus Bretons_. Like his Norman brother, the Breton in -the off season works hard playing dominoes or cards in the taverns, -where one reads on a sign over the door that _Jean X donne à boire et à -manger_, that is, if the sign be not in Breton, which more often than -not it is. - -The landlord does not exactly “give” his fare; he exchanges it for -copper sous, but he caters for the inner man at absurdly small prices, -and accordingly is well patronized, in spite of his refusal of credit. - -Bowls is the national game of Brittany, having a greater hold upon the -simple-minded Breton, particularly in the neighbourhood of the Lannion, -than any other amusement. No respectably ambitious inn in all Brittany -is without its bowling-alley. As a distraction, it is mild and harmless, -and withal good exercise, as we all know. - -The religious fervour of the Breton folk has been remarked of all who -know them howsoever slightly. It is universal, and, if it be more -apparent in one place than any other, it is in the Department of -Finistère, and it is not in the cities and towns that it reaches its -greatest height, but mostly in the country-side, or on the seacoast -among the labourers and the fisher-folk. - -The religion of Brittany to-day is of the people and for the people. It -is one of the great questions of the world to-day, but from a dogmatic -point of view it shall have no discussion here. Suffice it to say that -throughout France, with the numerous great, and nearly always empty, -churches ever before one, one can but realize that the power of the -Church is not what it once was. - -The churchgoers are chiefly women; seldom, if ever, except on a -great feast-day, are the churches filled with a congregation at all -representative of the population of the parish, and even in the great -cathedrals the same impression nearly always holds good. - -In Brittany, the case is somewhat different, in the country districts -at least, and even at Roscoff, Quimper, Vannes, and Rennes, where -there are great cathedrals. In Brittany, in every parish church and at -every wayside shrine, is almost always to be found not only a little -knot of devoutly kneeling peasants, but, on all occasions of mark, a -congregation overflowing beyond the doors. What this all signifies, as -before said, is no concern of the writer of this book. It is simply a -recorded state of affairs, and, judging from the attitude of the people -themselves--when seen on the spot--toward the subject of religion, -the most liberal thinker would hardly consider that here in Brittany -religion was anything else than spontaneous devotion on the part of the -people. - -Of religion and priests, Brittany is full, but the people are not by -any means priest-ridden, as many uncharitable and slack observers have -asserted before now. No priest bids a Breton worship at any shrine. They -do it of their own free will, and, though a churchman always officiates -at the great pardons and festivals, the worshippers themselves are as -much the performers of the ceremony as the priest. - -In Brittany to-day the piece of money which passes current in most -transactions, though in numbers it is infrequently handled by the -traveller, is _la pièce_, the half-franc or ten-sous coin. - -It is confusing when you are bargaining for a carriage to drive to some -wayside shrine, to be told the price will be “_deux pièces_,” when--in -Normandy--you have just formed the habit of realizing offhand that _deux -cent sous_ is the same thing as ten francs. It’s all very simple, when -one knows what they are talking about, and the Breton likes still to -think his institutions are different from those of the rest of France, -and so he goes on bargaining in _pièces_, when in other parts they are -counting in _sous_, which is even more confusing, or in _francs_. - -Most of the farmhouses of Brittany are constructed of stone and wood, -with their roofs covered with a straw thatch. Of course this is a -dangerous style of building to-day, as the authorities admit. Indeed -a decree has gone forth in some parts forbidding the erection of any -new straw-thatched building, and again in other parts against using -any structure so built as a dwelling-house. The law is not absolutely -observed, but it is by no means a dead letter, and the homely and -picturesque thatched roof has now all but disappeared, except from the -open country. - -To enter the Breton peasant’s farmhouse, one almost invariably descends -a step. The interior is badly lighted, and worse ventilated, but, as -it is mostly the open-air life that the peasant and his family lead, -perhaps this does not so much matter. Usually the house is composed -of but one room, with a floor of hard-trodden earth. This is the -dining-room, kitchen, and bedroom of all the family. The ceiling is -composed of great rough-hewn rafters, sometimes even of trunks left -with the bark on, and from it are hung the knives and forks and dishes, -as in a ship’s cabin. - -[Illustration: YOUNG BRETONS - -_B. McManus--1905_] - -Furniture has been reduced to the most simple formula. Two or three -great closed and panelled beds or bunks line one side of the wall, with -perhaps a wardrobe, where the “Sunday-best” of the whole household is -kept. Beneath the great beds is a series of oaken chests, and there -the household linen is stored. These, with a long table, with a bench -and a wide passage on either side, the great, yawning fireplace, -with its crane and the inevitable highly polished pots and pans, form -the furnishings of this remarkable apartment. All this is homely and -strange, but it is comfortable enough for the occupants, if one does not -mind being crowded, and it is the typical dwelling throughout Brittany. - -Everywhere in the Breton country one sees oxen, cattle, and, above -all, the horses of the indefatigable Breton race, “ready and willing -to work and full of spirit in warfare.” So said Eugene Sue, and the -same observation holds true to-day. None of the animals are so large -or so fat as in the neighbouring provinces, but this is not because of -malnutrition or because they are ill-tended. The cows of Brittany are by -no means such plump, dainty animals as the cows of the Cotentin, and the -Breton horses are certainly undersized when compared to the Norman sires -and the great-footed Percherons, but one and all possess good qualities -purely their own, and one thing above all should be noted,--Brittany is -exceedingly rich grazing country, if not agricultural. - -[Illustration: _From the_ ARTIST’S SKETCH BOOK.] - -Much of the local character is shown in the dress of the people, and -throughout the country-side and the seacoast villages alike both -men and women show that remarkable attention to dress which marks the -strong individuality of the race,--individuality which has come down -through the ages, and endures to this day in very nearly, if not quite -all, its original aspect. One knows this dress through photographic -reproductions, and from having occasionally seen it on the comic opera -stage, but actually to live among such picturesquely dressed folk is -like a step back into the past. - -[Illustration: LA COIFFE POLKA--_The Smallest Coiffe in Brittany_ - -B. McM. 1905] - -The costumes of Brittany are greatly varied, but all look theatrical, -and many of them are remarkably embroidered in multicoloured braid. On -all great occasions, feast-days and fairs, on Sundays and on the days -of the pardons, many ancient costumes, not modern reproductions, are -seen. Particularly is this to be noted at Pont l’Abbé, Pont Aven, and -elsewhere in the far west. The coifs of the women and the embroidered -waistcoats and velvet-ribboned hats of the men mark them as a species of -Frenchmen different from their Norman brethren; lovers of fanciful dress -and customs quite Southern in gorgeousness, and not the least like the -colder fashions of other dwellers in the same latitude. - -At Quimper is an interesting Ethnological Museum, where one may study -the subject at length, and in the town one may buy fabrics and stuffs -and articles of wearing apparel fashioned in the genuine Breton manner. - -The greatest activity of life in Brittany is in the coast towns, for -there the populace has for the longest time been in touch with the ideas -of an advanced civilization. - -[Illustration: <u>_Ironing Coifs_</u>] - -By the very geographic position of Brittany this was inevitable, as the -country was not in the direct path of any great current of commerce, -and had no great navigable river, except the Loire, which bordered it -upon the south. There had been malicious critics of things Breton before -him, but there could have been no real justification for the lament of -Paul St. Victor, who must have had an exceedingly bad dinner at his inn -when he delivered himself of the following: - -“Breton dialect is full of barbarisms, and Brittany is not even a -healthy country for painters. It is a land of monasteries and dull -routine; the same types and the same costumes; no men, no women, all -Bretons, all of Brittany.” - -As a race, the Breton may well be summed up as follows: They are the -descendants of the men of a primitive epoch, from whom they inherit -traits which even time has not entirely eradicated. Their intuitions are -correct, and their convictions profound; their will tenacious, and their -energies equal to all that may be demanded of them. They are proud, -truthful, courageous, intrepid, hospitable, and religious. - -The manufacturing industry throughout Brittany is practically null, if -one except the work of the great arsenals and ship-building ports, and -the production of such articles of local consumption as sail-cloth. - -Flax and hemp are grown in considerable quantities, but the ordinary -crops of cereals rise to nothing like the proportions of those reared -in Normandy or Perche. The Breton is strong on bee-keeping, however, -and keenly watches the busy workers of his hives as they gather their -harvest from the abundant crop of wild flowers covering the hillsides. - -[Illustration: <u>_Breton Types_</u>] - -The Breton communes are of vast extent compared with those of other -parts of France, but the population is scattered. Gathered around the -parish church are the dwellings of the market-towns of three, four, -or five hundred inhabitants or more. Upon the whole, Brittany is not -thinly peopled, the mean of its population exceeding that of most of -the other provinces of France. Whatever the aborigines were, whether -of Indo-Germanique type or of a species hitherto unplaced, the present -Breton population has been developed along lines close to those of -Britain. And the Bretons are not far behind, and herein undoubtedly lies -the charm of Brittany for the English-speaking traveller. - -Writing of his stay at Guingamp,--which is about the dividing line -where one passes from the zone of the French tongue to that of the -Breton, where one is frequently to hear the short exclamation, “I do -not understand you,”--Arthur Young tells us of putting up at a roadside -inn “where the hangings over his bed were full of cobwebs and spiders.” -The inn-keeper remarked to him that he had “a superb English mare,” and -wished to buy it from him. “I gave him half a dozen flowers of French -eloquence for his impertinence,” said the witty traveller, “when he -thought proper to leave me and my spiders in peace.” “Apropos of the -breed of horses in Lower Brittany,” he continues, “they are capital -hunters, and yet my ordinary little English mare was much admired, while -every stable round about is filled with a pack of these little pony -stallions sufficient to perpetuate the local breed for long to come.” - -To the humble inn--one of the regular posting-houses on the great -highroad from Paris to Brest--he is not so complimentary. “This -villainous hole,” said he, “which calls itself a great house, is the -best inn of the town, at which marshals of France, dukes, peers, -countesses, and so forth, must now and then, by the accidents to -which long journeys are subject, have found themselves. What are we -to think of a country that has made, in the eighteenth century, no -better provision for its travellers?” In this our author was clearly a -faultfinder, or at least he was unfortunate in not living at a later -day, for the above is certainly not true of the inns of France to-day, -though it may truthfully be said that, even to-day, the inns of Brittany -are a _little_ backward, but it is not true of the Hôtel de France at -Guingamp, which has even a dark room for the kodaker, and a _fossé_ for -the motor-car traveller. - - - - -CHAPTER VII. - -THE FISHERIES - - -What the cider-apple crop is to Normandy, that the fisheries are to -Brittany, and more, for the fisheries turn over more money by far than -the cider of Normandy, which is grown purely for home consumption. The -Breton young person of the male sex takes to the sea in the little -pilchard-boats, the three-masters of the deep-sea fishery, or the -whalers, for the purpose of earning his livelihood, and also to secure a -prescribed term of exemption from military or naval service. With such -an object, it is no wonder that the industry employs so many hands, -and has become so important and considerable in its returns. Of course -the geographical position of the country has more than a little to do -with this, and also the stony soil of the country-side, suggesting the -harvest of the sea as a more ample crop. - -In Brittany, the sea nourishes the land, though perhaps but meagrely. - -[Illustration: <u>_Douarnenez_</u>] - -From the mouth of the Loire, around Finistère to Lannion, thousands upon -thousands of the inhabitants live by the harvest of the sea, whereas, -if it were not for this, they might be forced to emigrate, or to hie -themselves to the large towns, there to herd in unsanitary quarters, -which is worse. - -The pilchard fishery is practically at its best directly off the -Quiberon peninsula, opposite Lorient and Concarneau. It is important -also just offshore from Audierne, Douarnenez, and Camaret. - -It is well to recall just what the sardine really is, inasmuch as we -mostly buy any “little fishes boiled in oil,” which a pushful grocer -may thrust upon us. The “corporal’s stripe,” or the “cavalry corporal,” -as the sardine is known in France, is quite a different species from -the “armed policeman,” or common sea-garden herring. The Atlantic, the -North Sea, the Baltic, and some parts of the Mediterranean are its -home. It winters between 50 degrees and 60 degrees north latitude, in -a zone where the temperature is constant, but from March to October it -emigrates toward the north. Sometimes the future sardines are known as -pilchards; on the coasts of Normandy and Picardy as _hareng de Bergues_; -as sardines in Brittany; as _royan_ in Charente; and as _sarda_ and -_sardinyola_ in the Pyrénées Orientales. - -The best and most common method of preserving the sardine is by slightly -heating the oil before placing it with the fish in those little tin -boxes known the world over; then the boxes are soldered and put into -a double boiler and boiled for the better part of an hour, when the -exceedingly simple process is finished. So simple is it, and so readily -accomplished without a great capital investment, that the wonder is -that imitations of the “real Brittany sardines” are not more successful -elsewhere. Up to this time, however, nothing rivals the Breton product. - -Each year, at the feast of St. Jean, the barques set out from the -various ports, all richly decorated, and often sped on their way by a -religious ceremony, at which a priest officiates and gives his blessing. - -The profits vary considerably one year from another, as may be supposed. -The catch is by no means constant. Its ordinary receipts approximate -twelve million francs, and, when it drops below this figure, distress -is likely to ensue, particularly if a hard winter falls upon Brittany, -which in truth it seldom does. - -The little fish return each year, their feeding-ground scarcely varying -thirty miles in any direction. Thus, in season, the boats with their -red sails and blue and brown nets put off for the same spots where -they took their catches last year, only to find that the habits of the -sardines have not in the least changed. Five or six men to a boat is -the average crew, and, if the wind be contrary, their speed is much the -same by means of oars. Once arrived on the ground, the skipper of the -boat throws overboard at intervals some handfuls of _rogue_ as a bait; -this is a paste composed of the roe of the cod, and the only drawback is -that its cost is great. It comes mostly from Norway, and, after passing -through many intermediate hands, finally reaches the Breton fisherman, -who pays from sixty to seventy francs per hundred kilos. When the price -rises above this figure, the ingenious skipper fabricates a substitute, -a mixture of the real article and a local vegetable product known as -_farine d’arachides_. Its results are not so good as those from the real -article, and the local fishermen have a saying which is doubtless so -true as to have become a proverb: “One must bait with fish to catch a -fish.” Moreover, the fish caught by this means do not rank as a first -quality product in the markets of the Breton fishing ports, owing to -the after-effects on the fish, which shall be undefined here. It may be -well to recall the fact, however, and, if you get a sardine which is not -what you think it ought to be, and is too much like a bad oyster, you -may depend upon it that it was caught with _farine d’arachides_. - -The Breton custom is to fish with buoyed nets, disdaining the drag-net, -though occasionally the latter is used. - -The buoyed nets merely scoop the surface of the water, but the drag-nets -are sunk to a depth of from forty to fifty metres. When the skipper -estimates that the net is full, or, at least, that he shall have a haul -worthy of his trouble, all hands, singing as all sailor-folk do, pull -the net inboard, and, with a clever turn, empty it of its freight of -silver-scaled fish, which are forthwith scooped up and placed in great -baskets. On the return to port, the fishermen still in harbour, the -factory hands, and all the inhabitants who are not otherwise employed, -even though they ought to be, to say nothing of curious peasant-folk -from the inland towns, and always a generous sprinkling of tourists, and -the inevitable American artist, are in waiting, curious as to the luck. - -Here the dealers come and bargain for the catch. Thirty to thirty-five -francs a thousand is usually the market price, and the choicest fish -naturally sell first. Speculation comes in now and then, and a scare -as to the prospect of the catch being too abundant is as common and as -disastrous as the fear that it may not be large enough. Sometimes the -price will fall as low as a franc and a half, and then come “trials -without number for the sailors,” as an old fisherman told the writer. -Certainly, if thirty francs a thousand be only a paying wage, a franc -and a half must mean about the same as utter failure to the crew, who -generally work the boat on shares. - -The pilchard fishers have not forgotten the crisis of 1903, to combat -the recurrence of which it was proposed to establish special schools -for fishermen apprentices, and to forbid the use of the drag-net, and -they are seeking a rearrangement of conditions whereby the returns -may be more equally distributed among the workers than now. At the -present time the owner--who fits out the boat--claims a third, and the -skipper a third, the hands dividing the other third. According to this -arrangement, the novice or apprentice receives an infinitesimal share. - -As a Frenchman, a Breton of Quimper who was not in the sardine business, -said to us: “_Ces pauvres diables! Ils mériteraient mieux._” All of -which is true, so let all well-wishers, who are fond of the “little -fishes boiled in oil” at their picnic dinners, give a thought now and -again to the Breton fisherman. - -Besides the sardine fisheries, there is a considerable traffic from -such ports as Tréguier, St. Malo, and Morlaix in the deep-sea fishery, -and elsewhere in the mackerel and herring fishery in Icelandic waters -and the North Sea, and these give a prosperity that would otherwise be -wanting. - -Statistics are dry reading, and so they are not given here, but there -are some curious things with regard to the laws regulating the offshore -and deep-sea fisheries of France, just as there are with respect to -the line fishing, by which method one can legally take fish only if he -actually hold his rod or line in his hand: he may not lay it on the -ground beside him and doze until an unusually frisky gudgeon wakes him -up. - -On all of the French fishing-craft, which sail to the Banks or -to Iceland for cod, French salt must be used, and all masters of -fishing-craft must keep a supplementary log or diary relating to the -takings of fish alone. - -In deep-sea fishing the law prescribes that a vessel which is fitted -out for the fishing-banks must remain on the ground a certain length of -time. This is to preclude the possibility of a decreasing catch, it is -to be presumed, as many a fisherman has been known, before now, to give -up the labour with holds half-filled simply because he had come upon a -meagre feeding-ground. It seems a wise precaution, and is another of -those parental acts which the French government is always undertaking -on behalf of its children. There is still the whalebone catch to reckon -with, for the French government specializes this industry, and offers -a bonus of seventy francs a ton displacement on leaving port for all -French equipments, and fifty francs per ton displacement upon returning -after the term prescribed. - - - - -PART II. - - - - -CHAPTER I. - -THE LOIRE IN BRITTANY - - -At Ancenis, the Loire, that mighty river which rises near the frontier -of Garde, a Mediterranean department, enters Brittany on its way to the -Atlantic. For more than nine hundred kilometres above this point, the -Loire has been navigable for such fresh-water craft as usually are found -upon great waterways, and, having passed Orleans, Blois, and Tours, and -broadened out into a great, wide, shallow stream, it is to be reckoned -as one of the world’s great rivers. Mostly its appearance is that of a -broad, tranquil, docile stream, with scarce enough depth of water to -make a respectable current, leaving its bed with its bars of sand and -pebbles bare to the sky. This lack of depth, except at occasional flood, -is the principal and obvious reason for the comparative absence of -water-borne traffic. - -At the times of the great freshets there are twenty-three feet or more -registered on the huge black and white scale of the bridge at Ancenis, -and again it falls to less than a fourth of that height, and then there -is a mere rivulet of water trickling through the broad channel at -Chaumont, at Blois, or at Orleans. - -In the olden time, as one passed from Anjou into Brittany, by way of -the valley of the Loire, he came to a great barrier across the road,--a -veritable frontier post, with a custom-house and examiners, as if -one were passing into a foreign country. The Revolution changed all -this, and now nothing but another of that vast family of great, white -departmental boundary-posts marks the dividing line between the Maine et -Loire and the Loire-Inférieure, the border departments between the old -province of the Counts of Anjou and that of the Breton dukes. - -Just above Ancenis, one passes vineyard after vineyard, and château -after château follows rapidly in turn,--all very delightful, as Pepys -would have said. Not so the bridge at Ancenis, quite the ugliest -wire-rope affair to be seen on the Loire, and one is only too glad to -leave it behind, though it is with a real regret that he parts from -Ancenis itself. - -Ancenis is one of those blessed spots possessing a château; it is -endowed with a wonderfully picturesque situation, and, moreover, is -capable of catering for the inner man in so satisfactory a manner that -one can but put it down in his books as one of the spots to be favoured. -The Barons of Ancenis were a long and picturesque line, and their local -fame has by no means perished. The old-time château, constructed in the -fifteenth century, was the masterwork of a famous Angevin architect, -Jean Lespine by name. To-day this fine building, or what is left of it, -has become an Ursuline boarding-house. Much is still left to tell the -story of its former greatness, but it is not so accessible as one would -like. - -The most that can be remarked is a great doorway flanked by two towers, -with overpowering machicolations, another smaller tower,--a _tourelle_, -the French themselves would call it,--and a ruined pavilion, where, in -1468, Francis, Duke of Brittany, signed a treaty with Louis XI. On the -market-house of Ancenis is superimposed a sort of a belfry which, seen -in conjunction with the low-lying river-bank, imparts a low-country -aspect to the town. The old streets of Ancenis give shelter to many fine -mediæval houses, of which the most notable is perhaps the old “house of -the Croix de Lorraine.” - -Below Ancenis, navigation is not so difficult, but the river current -is more strong. For a long distance, on the right bank, extends a -dike, carrying the roadway beside the river for a matter of a hundred -kilometres. This is one of the charms of travel by the Loire. When you -see any animation on its bosom, save an occasional fishing-punt, neither -it nor its occupant usually very animated, it is one of those great -flat-bottomed ferry-boats, with a square sail hung on a yard amidships, -such as Turner always made an accompaniment to his Loire landscapes. - -Conditions of traffic thereon have not changed much since those days. -Whenever one sees a barge or a boat worthy of classification with those -on the rivers of the east or north, or of the canals, it is only about -a quarter of the usual size, so, altogether, in spite of its great -navigable length, the waterway of the Loire is more valuable as a -picturesque and healthful element of the landscape than as a commercial -artery. Below Nantes is the “section maritime,” which from Nantes to the -sea is a matter of some sixty kilometres. Here the boats increase in -number and size. They are known as lighters, barges, and tenders, and go -down with the river current and return on the incoming ebb, for here the -river is tidal. - -From this one gathers that the Loire, so noble and magnificent, is the -most aristocratic river of France, and so, too, it is with respect to -its associations of the past. - -It has not the grandeur of the Rhône when the spring freshets from the -Jura and the Swiss lakes have filled it to its banks; and it has not the -burning activity of the Seine, as it bears its thousands of boat-loads -of produce and merchandise to and from market; it has not the prettiness -of the Thames, or the legendary aspect of the Rhine; but, in a way, it -combines something of the features of all, and has, in addition, a tone -that is all its own, as it sweeps the horizon through its countless -miles of ample curves, and holds within its embrace all that is best -of mediæval and Renascence France, the period which built up the later -monarchy and--who shall say not?--the present prosperous nation. - -The Loire is essentially a river of other days. Truly, as Mr. James has -said, “it is the very model of a generous, beneficent stream.... A wide -river which you may follow by a wide road is excellent company.” The -Frenchman himself is more flowery. “It is the noblest river of France. -Its basin is immense, magnificent.” All of which is true, too. For a -good bit of local colour of this region, one should read Chapter V. of -“The Regent’s Daughter,” by Dumas, wherein the willing Gaston, in the -midday sunshine of a winter’s day, made his way from Nantes to Paris, -“travelling slowly as far as Oudon opposite Champtoceaux.” “At Oudon he -halted and put up at the Char-Couronne, an inn with windows overlooking -the highroad.” Some stirring events took place here, but the reader is -referred to the pages of Dumas for the details. - -Oudon, however, will not detain the cursory traveller of to-day, even if -he deigns to visit it at all. - -Champtoceaux, on the other hand, though only a small town of thirteen -hundred inhabitants, does awaken interest. Formerly it belonged to the -Counts of Anjou, and then to the Dukes of Brittany. - -Its site is most picturesque; it stands on a mound some two hundred -feet above the Loire. There are two fine mediæval churches, and an old -château, which, with the ruins of the ancient fortified castle, now -forms a part of the domain of a M. de la Touche, who will kindly permit -the visitor to inspect the details of this ancient feudal stronghold. - -The dismantled old walls are covered with moss and lichens, and -their picturesqueness is of that quality that painters love to put -on canvas. The wonder is that Champtoceaux has not become a new -artists’ sketching-ground, such as are so often discovered--or -rediscovered--throughout France. Perhaps it is because of its distance -from Paris, for your artist-painter, be he French, English, or American, -dearly loves the streets of the Latin Quarter, and, as a rule, prefers -Fontainebleau and its circle of artist colonies to going farther afield. - -At last one beholds what a Frenchman has called the “tumultuous vision -of Nantes.” To-day the very ancient and historic city which grew up -from the Portus Nannetum and the Condivientum of the Romans is indeed a -veritable tumult of chimneys, masts and smokestacks, and locomotives. -But all this will not detract one jot from its reputation of being -one of the most delightful of provincial capitals, and the smoke and -activity of its port only tend to accentuate the note of colour, which -in the whole itinerary of the Loire has been but pale. - -The former reputation of Nantes as a little capital where gaiety and -wealth came in abundance is correct for to-day, but a comparison is -interesting. Here is a reminiscence of old stage-coaching days, when -the post took four days to make the journey from Paris: - -“The neighbourhood of the theatre is magnificent, all the streets being -at right angles and of white stone. One is in doubt as to whether -the Hôtel Henri IV. is not the finest inn in Europe.” (It must have -disappeared since those days, but really its reputation still lives in -any one of the three leading hotels.) “Dessein’s” (also disappeared) “at -Calais is larger, but is not built, fitted up, or furnished like this, -which is new. It cost nearly five hundred thousand francs, and contains -sixty bedrooms. It is without comparison the first inn of France, and -very cheap withal. - -“The theatre must have cost a like sum, and, when its seats are full, -holds 120 louis d’or. The ground that the inn is built upon cost nine -francs a foot, and elsewhere in the city one may pay as much as fifteen -francs. This ground value induces them to build so high as to be -destructive of beauty.” Unquestionably this last observation was quite -true then, as it is now, but Nantes nevertheless fills very nearly every -qualification of a well-laid-out and attractive city. - -To some Nantes will be reminiscent of Venice, or at least some Dutch -city, for its five river branches are continually crossing and -recrossing one’s path in most bewildering fashion, and bridges confront -one at every turn. - -The city’s attractions are many, from its great cathedral and its -château-fortress, enclosing a beautiful edifice wherein once lived the -Duchess Anne, to its great hotels, cafés, and shops of modern times. - -Five great events of history stand forth prominent in the memory of the -very name of Nantes: the struggle of John of Montfort against Charles -of Blois for the ducal power; the affairs of the League; the famous -Edict; the Cellamare conspiracy; and the rising of the Vendeans and the -rascally Carrier’s retaliation in Revolutionary days. - -Each and every one of these were vivid and bloody enough to furnish -inexhaustible material for a novelist of the Dumas school, should he -rise in the future, for the half has not yet been used. It was in -the Place of Bouffay that that execution of the Breton conspirators -took place, of which we read in the graphic pages of Dumas. Gaston, -who sought to deliver his former companions, was posting along the -road to Nantes with their reprieve safely guarded. Before the age of -steam and electricity, news travelled slowly, and Sèvres, Versailles, -Rambouillet, Chartres, Mans, and Angers were then far apart. But the -faithful Gaston travelled fast, one of the bystanders at Rambouillet -calling to him: “If you go at that pace, you will kill more than one -team between here and Nantes.” - -Gradually he learned that a “courier of the minister’s” had passed -that way. This was the beginning of what Dumas called the “tragedy -of Nantes.” The event was historical, and Dumas’s account was most -dramatic, yet did not differ greatly from the facts. Gaston arrived too -late. Talhouet was dead, and the Place of Bouffay reeked with the blood -of the conspirators, who, guilty though they were, had received the -pardon of the Regent. The cry of De Conedic, as he bent his head to the -block, still echoes down through history: “See how they recompense the -services of faithful soldiers! Ye cowards of Bretagne,” he cried, as -the sword of the executioner fell upon him. Ten minutes afterward the -square was empty. One of the corpses still held a crumpled paper in his -hand,--it was the pardon of the other four, for the bearer had arrived -too late. Thus finished “the tragedy of Nantes.” - -Though this part of Brittany has the reputation of being the least -illiterate of any, as late as the beginning of the last quarter of -the nineteenth century might be seen at Nantes the sign of the public -scrivener, which read: - - ÉCRIVAIN PUBLIQUE - _10 centimes par lettre_ - -Below Nantes the Loire basin has turned the surrounding country into a -little Holland, where fisherfolk and their boats, with sails of red and -blue, form charming symphonies of dull colour. In the drinking-places -along its shores there is a strange medley of peasants, seafarers, -and fisher men and women. Not so cosmopolitan a crew as one sees in -the harbour-side drinking-places at Marseilles, or even at Havre, but -sufficiently strange to be a fascination to one who has just come down -from the headwaters. - -Gray and green is the aspect at the Loire’s source, and green and gray -it still is, though of a decidedly different colour value, at St. -Nazaire, below Nantes, the real deep-water port of the Loire. By this -time the river has amplified itself into a broad estuary, and is lost in -the incoming and outgoing tides of the Bay of Biscay. From its source -the Loire has wound its way gently, broadly, and with placid grandeur -through rocky escarpments, fertile plains, populous and luxurious -towns, all historic ground, by stately châteaux and through vineyards -and fruit-orchards. Now it becomes more or less prosaic and matter of -fact, though, in a way, no less interesting, as it takes on some of the -attributes of the outside world. - -Here one gives the last glance to the Loire, as an inland waterway, -for, by the time Nantes is passed, it is of the sea salty. Here the -Sèvre Nantaise comes from the Department Deux-Sèvres and numerous other -streams broaden the lower river until it meets the bay at St. Nazaire, -where coasters and deep-sea fishermen take the place of boat-haulers and -vineyard-workers as picturesque accessories to the landscape. - -Jacobites and their sympathizers will take pleasure in noting that it -was in the early days of St. Nazaire’s importance as a port that the -Young Pretender set sail thence in 1745, in a frigate provided by a Mr. -Walsh of Nantes. - -It is only now that one realizes to the full the gamut through which -run the varying moods of the Loire, from the hard, sterile lands around -Le Puy through the pleasant Nivernais, the Orleanais, the vineyards of -Saumur, to the Sardinières and the salt works of the marshes of Bourg -de Batz and Croisic. - -It was from Croisic that Talhouet, one of the Breton conspirators of -“The Regent’s Daughter,” threatened to set sail if discovered in their -dastardly plot against the Regent. - -“I shall be off to St. Nazaire,” said he, “and from thence to Croisic; -take my advice and come with me. I know a brig about to start for -Newfoundland, and the captain is a servant of mine. If the air on shore -become too bad, we will embark, set sail, and adieu to the galleys.” -“Well, I for one,” said his companion, “am a Breton, and Bretons trust -only in God.” - -South of the Loire, in that small fragment of territory which formerly -belonged to the old province, is a wonderful collection of old-time and -gone-to-seed towns hardly ever visited by the general run of tourists. - -Paimbœuf and Pornic and Clisson are the three places which appeal -most strongly, and this chiefly by their accessibility to Nantes. To -the southwest is the Lake of Grand Lieu, which, according to an ancient -Armorican legend, was the former site of a city “flourishing, but -dissolute,” which was submerged for its sins by the command of God. -This sounds apocryphal, but the moral is plain. - -Anciently the Retz country, lying just southward of the Loire, formed a -part of the ancient Breton province, and, although before the Revolution -and the rearrangement of provinces and departments anew this member had -been shorn away, yet Paimbœuf, on the south bank of the Loire, just -beyond Nantes, is of Breton nomenclature, known in French as Tête de -Bœuf. To-day it is but a relic of a former great port, now deserted; -St. Nazaire, its younger relative, with much more ample commercial -resources, has drawn its trade away, and its quays and docks are now -unoccupied, except by coasters and fishing-boats. - -Paimbœuf has already become depopulated, and the former little -fishing port of Pornic daily takes on more and more importance. - -Pornic itself has a charm which Paimbœuf entirely lacks. It is a -lively little fishing village of perhaps two thousand inhabitants. The -port, the bay, and the canal which empties into the salt waters of the -Atlantic form a delightful setting for artists’ foregrounds, let the -backgrounds be what they may. At present, it has taken on somewhat of -the aspect of a watering-place, but it is safe to say that it will -never become popular as such, in spite of the fact that a casino has -already made its appearance. - -[Illustration: <u>_Pornic_</u>] - -In addition to the charm of its situation, the chief attraction of -Pornic is its thirteenth and fourteenth century château, with its fine -towers and machicolations. Its history, like that of most others of its -kind, has been romantic, and by no means has it always had the placid -aspect which it has to-day. It was taken from Gilles de Retz by the -Dukes of Brittany during the civil wars, and to-day belongs to a M. de -Bourquency, who has restored it admirably. - -At the foot of the château is a great cross of stone, called the Croix -of the Huguenots, erected, it is said, by converted Calvinists. At the -foot of this cross are buried the bones of over two hundred Vendeans -killed at Pornic. - -Clisson is a small town of something less than three thousand -inhabitants, whose very name will conjure up memories of the great -Constable Olivier de Clisson. There is much here of interest, but the -history of the town, the château, and of De Clisson himself are so -interwoven with the affairs of state and warfare of the nation that the -outline even may not be given here. The ruins of the old-time château -are a wonderfully impressive reminder of other days, other ways. As a -whole, it is a grand ruin only, although an architect or archaeologist -may build up somewhat of an approach to the former glorious fabric. The -great central tower has not even preserved its walls entire, but what -is left stands to-day as one of the most imposing examples of a great -feudal keep yet extant. Clisson has some right to be considered up to -date, in that some enterprising inhabitant has introduced an electric -light plant. In spite of this, however, the donjon is one of those -architectural splendours of the world which, like the Coliseum at Rome -and Melrose Abbey, should be seen by moonlight in order to be rightly -appreciated. - -[Illustration: <u>_Donjon of Clisson_</u>] - -The chapel, in which was celebrated the marriage of Duke Francis II. -and Margaret of Foix, the keep, the dungeons, the ramparts, and the -chief apartments occupied by the constable himself have been preserved, -and make Clisson well worth the half-day it will take to go there from -Nantes. - - - - -CHAPTER II. - -NANTES TO VANNES - - -Next to Marseilles, Nantes is the finest provincial capital of France. -This may be disputed, but it is the opinion of the writer. - -Perhaps it is because of the glorious part that the city played in the -past to preserve its independence, and the independence of Brittany, -succumbing only with the second marriage of Queen Anne; but, for some -reason, the links that bind it with the past have never grown rusty, nor -have modern cosmopolitan characteristics destroyed the individuality of -the Breton. - -The situation doubtless has much to do with the air of geniality which -pervades the city. When the Loire glistens under the caressing rays of -the setting sun, and the roof-tops of the town are all of a reddened -gold, Nantes might indeed be even now the mediæval capital that it was -before the age of steam and electricity, which sound the only modern -notes to be heard here. At night the spectacle is far more dramatic, -with the streets and quays lit by countless lamps; the subdued murmur -of the workaday world, now all but gone to rest; for an occasional -shriek from a locomotive or a wail from the siren of some great steamer -dropping down-river with the tide is all that one hears. - -There is a forest of masts of shipping, scores upon scores of great -chimney-stacks, of ship-houses, of sugar and oil refineries, and along -the quay-side streets there are yet sailors and longshoremen hanging -about and smoking a finishing pipe, or drinking a last drop of spirit -or glass of beer. But all is “drawing in,” and soon all will be hushed -in silence, and only the walls and towers of the great castle and the -cathedral will keep watch, as they have for five centuries past. This -is Nantes, the great trading port. Up in the town blaze forth the great -hotels that would do credit to Paris, and yet are so different, and -coffee-rooms as splendid and brilliant as any in the capital itself, -with the prices of the portions twenty per cent. less. - -They keep late hours in this part of Nantes, and night does not -actually fall until midnight, when, one by one, up go the coffee-room -shutters,--to come down again in the same order between six and seven -in the morning. This is not bad for a climate which on the Loire -approaches almost Mediterranean mildness. It is a pity that cold and -austere England does not rise a little earlier in the morning. London, -it is true, sits up late enough, but she makes up for it by dawdling -away all the morning up to half-past ten or eleven. - -In spite of all its loveliness and gaiety, Nantes is a city more ancient -than modern,--this antique Namnêtes, the capital, by preference, of the -Dukes of Brittany, and the political rival of Rennes. - -The old lanes and crossways of the middle ages have disappeared in -making the spacious great streets of our own time, but there is much -left to remind one of other days in the old houses and in the ever -dominant cathedral and castle. - -The Cathedral of St. Pierre is not a masterpiece of itself, but it -encloses a treasure that may well be included in that category,--the -tomb of Duke Francis II. and Margaret of Foix. The great harmony of -this composition, under the half-light of the stained-glass windows, -reveals a charm that most mausoleums altogether lack. On a tablet of -white marble lie the effigies of the duke and duchess, with two angels -kneeling at their heads, and, crouched at their feet, a greyhound, -supporting the escutcheon of Brittany. Four statues, at the corners of -the pedestal, symbolize Justice, Strength, Temperance, and Prudence. -This magnificent tomb is justly counted as Michel Colombe’s finest work. - -The castle of Nantes, like that of Angers, is now an arsenal, and -accordingly is less interesting than if it were even a shattered -ruin. It was the castle of the dukes, and the great lodge, a dainty -Renaissance building, with delicately sculptured window-frames and -balconies capriciously disposed, gives an idea of the comfort and luxury -with which pervasive Duchess Anne surrounded herself in the vivid days -when she lived at Nantes. Within the walls of the castle, one might yet -see--were one allowed to ramble over it at will--the chambers where the -odious Gilles of Laval, the Maréchal de Raiz, Fouquet, the Cardinal de -Retz, and the Duchess de Berri were imprisoned during the long years -that it served as a cage for the political prisoners of France. Madame -de Sévigné sojourned here in 1675, so the sombre and yet gay castle, -besides having entertained many of the Kings of France, from Louis XI. -onward, has also somewhat of the aspect of a literary shrine. - -In the courtyard is a great well with an admirably worked decorative -railing in wrought iron, quite worthy to rank with Quintin Matsys’s -famous well at Antwerp. The museums of painting and of archaeology, -abounding in rare Breton antiquities, give the town prominence among the -artistic centres of provincial France. The former contains some fine -examples of the work of Philippe de Champaigne, Lancret, Watteau, and -Théodore Rousseau among others. - -The environs of Nantes are wonderfully picturesque for the artist, but -offer little for the amusement of the 125,000 inhabitants of this city -of affairs. - -To the north, the Erdre winds its way through flat banks, and widens out -here and there into a veritable lake. - -From Nantes to the ocean the wind blows more strongly and the horizon -widens; the great waterway of the Loire has already become practically -an arm of the sea, and one breathes its salt air. The aspect of nature -now grows more and more melancholy for the seeker after gaiety and life; -only the artist will revel in these dull brown and gray riverside and -seaside towns, which follow the coast-line from St. Nazaire to Batz, -Croisic, and Guérande. It is what the French themselves call a land of -grayish twilight, with vast stretches of marsh-land and pebble-strewn -sands. - -At the extremity of the north bank of the Loire, at the apex of a bend -of the coast-line, is the Bay of Croisic and the Batz country. - -Like a needle pricking the horizon, the tip of the tower of Croisic -marks the location of this sleepy little port in the flat and saline -marsh-land round about. South lie the lighthouse and the tower of the -ruined church of Bourg de Batz, that little Breton village all but -isolated from the mainland itself. - -It is the true borderland or frontier between the sea and the land, the -one almost imperceptibly mingling with the other. Of it Jean Richepin -sang: - - “Mirage! Sahara! les Bédouins! Un Émir - Est venu planter là ses innombrables tentes - Dont les cônes dressés en blancheurs éclatantes - Resplendissent parmi les tons bariolés - De tapis d’Orient sur le sol étalés; - Ses cônes dont les tas de sel sur les ladures, - Et ses riches tapis aux brillantes bordures - Ne sont que les Gabiers, les Fares, les Œillets. - On l’évaporement laisse de gros feuillets - Métalliques, moirés flottant d’or et de soir. - Par l’étier et le tour qu’un paludier fossoil - La mer entre, s’épand, s’éparpille en circuits, - Puis arrive aux bassins....” - -“The sea sells cheap” say the natives, who are mostly engaged in the -salt industry, as one would infer from the foregoing. Competition -has cut considerably into the industry of recovering salt from the -sea-water, but it is still kept up, and these little Breton coast -villages depend upon it, and on fishing, for their sustenance. - -St. Nazaire, where the sea first meets the waters of the Loire, is -quite new, created but yesterday by the march of progress. Tradition -connects the site of this busy port--the seventh in rank among the ports -of France--with the ancient Gallo-Roman port of Corbilon. No trace of -its former appellation exists since the sixth century, when Gregory of -Tours, in the first history of France, mentions the settlement as having -been pillaged by a Breton chief, and refers to it as Vic-Saint-Nazaire, -which nearly approaches its present name. - -In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the market-town was called -Port Nazaire, and was defended by a castle erected by the Dukes of -Brittany. - -[Illustration: <u>_St. Nazaire_</u>] - -Modern navigation has replaced the old sailing-vessels, and to-day, with -its coastwise and foreign trade and its great shipyards, St. Nazaire -is a busy, bustling town. The blemish it has, in the eyes of most, will -be its general aspect of modernity and its uncompromising, right-angled, -straight streets, laid out on a plan which suggests that of Chicago, -if one make an allowance for the difference in magnitude. St. Nazaire -surpasses Chicago, however, in having a sea front, instead of a lake -front, and its hotels are better and cost less. What more should a -passing traveller want of a modern city? - -Between Nantes and St. Nazaire, on the granite flank of Sillon de -Bretagne, sits Savenay, as if its houses were ranged around the steps -of an amphitheatre. It has fallen considerably from its proud position -of having been the flourishing capital of the district. It still is the -largest town, but none of the honours go with its size; decay has fallen -upon it, and the hotels are dull, sad places, and even the omnibus from -the railway has stopped its journeys. - -The town was the site of a terrific conflict in the Vendean wars, -and was well-nigh destroyed, and its inhabitants were massacred. Now -vineyards grow upon the very soil that a hundred or more years ago -covered thousands of corpses. Altogether it is a gruesome memory which -Savenay conjures up, if one dare even to think of it. - -Between Savenay and Guérande, at an equal distance between the two, -are the peat-bogs of Grand Brière. They are the great resources of the -country. Would you see them worked? Then come in August, when you are -making your way to some seacoast resort of Lower Brittany. For nine -days only in the year do the authorities permit the sods to be cut, but -everybody takes part therein, you will be told; and enough peat will be -gathered, and dried, and pressed into “loaves,” as the Brièrons call -them, to warm Nantes for a year. - -Guérande is a capital not quite so dead and alive as Savenay; it is -the possessor of a past of a most momentous and vivid character in -its relation to the history of Brittany and of France. To-day, as in -other days, the town is avowedly Breton, as characteristically so as -any of its size in the province. Much has been sacrificed to the god -of progress, but enough of the ancient aspect of the place remains to -recall its features of the time of Duguesclin and Clisson, and the -Counts of Montfort and of Blois, who proclaimed peace here in 1365. The -enormous Saint Michael Gate is a great fortress-gateway, flanked with -two cylindrical and conical roofed towers of the time when feudalism -ruled Brittany. - -[Illustration: <u>_Ancient Fortifications of Guérande_</u>] - -“Guérande,” says a Frenchman, “has not unlaced its corselet of stone -since the fifteenth century.” To-day, even, it is surrounded by its -mediæval ramparts in a manner like no other northern city in France, -reminding one of those great walled cities of Aigues Mortes and -Carcassonne in Southern Gaul. - -This proud belt of machicolated ramparts, ten towers, and four great -gates, and its deep, though now herbage-grown, moat is indeed one of -the few monuments of the middle ages that remain to us in all their -undisturbed splendour. - -Guérande is not exactly a deserted village, but its streets are, at -midday, as lone and silent as though its population had not been in -residence for many months. This is a notable feature in many small -French towns during the hour and a half of the midday meal, but nowhere -else is it more to be remarked. - -The old parish Church of St. Aubin of Guérande has a collection of -strangely carved capitals depicting horrible chimerical beasts, and -the Chapel of Notre Dame de la Blanche--a fine work of the thirteenth -century--is occasionally the scene of a marriage wherein the -participants dress themselves in the old-time resplendent costumes. Such -an occasion is rare, but should one be fortunate enough to meet with it, -he will carry away still another memory of the mediæval flavour still -lingering about this somnolent little Breton city. - -Seaward beyond Guérande are only Bourg de Batz and Croisic, a gay -little maritime city with a fine Gothic church of the highly ornamented -species, and many old, high-gabled houses of the variety which one sees -frequently in stage settings. There are the local watering-places, -too, of the Nantais, Ste. Marguerite and Baule, which have nothing of -interest, however, for the traveller who seeks to improve his mind and -amuse himself simultaneously. They are undoubtedly of great healthful -and economic value to Nantes and St. Nazaire, however, and they do not -differ greatly from others of their class elsewhere. - -Again returning to the highroad, if one be travelling by road, “_Vous -prenez le chemin de Vennes” (Vannes) “par la Roche Bernard qui est aussy -celuy de Rhennes et de Rhedon_,” wrote a sixteenth-century chronicler, -and the direct road to-day lies the same way. It is known as “National -Road” No. 165. - -Straight as the crow flies, but now up and now down, like all Breton -roadways, this highway runs from Nantes to Quimper, 232 kilometres. - -The aspect of the country changes perceptibly as one leaves Savenay on -the way to the real Brittany. One crosses the Vilaine by the suspension -bridge of La Roche-Bernard, hung so perilously high that the great -three-masted coasters may pass beneath. It is unlovely, but convenient, -and saves a round of fifty kilometres on the journey, as one goes from -Nantes to Vannes, so it may be pardoned. - -[Illustration: <u>_Châteaubriant_</u>] - -Northward lies the very ancient town of Châteaubriant, once the centre -and life of Breton warfare and political strife. It was an ancient -barony of the county of Nantes, and owes its name to the compounding -of the word château with that of its original lord, who was named Brient. - -The ancient feudal fortress is now a ruin, but the castle built by -John of Laval, governor of Brittany under Francis I., still serves -the gendarmerie and the sous-préfecture offices. Above the portal of -the colonnade one reads this inscription, which gives the date of the -completion of the new castle: - - DE MAL EN BIEN, DE BIEN MYCVLX - POUR LACHEVER IE DEVINS VIEVLX - 1538 - -Each is most interesting, and so abundantly supplied with the lore of -romance and reality, that one can only get his fill of studying it on -the spot. - -The Church of St. Jean de Béré is a historical monument of almost the -first rank, and the remains of the ancient Benedictine convent of St. -Saveur date originally from a foundation of Brient I. - -On the thirteenth and fourteenth of September of each year, on the plain -behind the town, is held the celebrated fair of Béré, one of those -great combinations of marketing and merrymaking for which old France -was noted, and which have so largely disappeared that to be a part and -parcel of one is to have a most agreeable experience. Guibray, near -Falaise, in Normandy, the “horse-fair” at Bernay, and the Fair de Béré -are the most celebrated in these parts. - -It was in the neighbouring forest, as Pontcalec recites in the pages of -“The Regent’s Daughter” of Dumas, that he met his adventure with the -“sorceress of Savenay.” - -“I saw an enormous faggot walking along,” said Pontcalec to his three -Breton friends. “This did not surprise me, for our peasants carry such -enormous faggots that they quite disappear under their load, but this -faggot appeared from behind to move alone.” - -A very good description this of what one may see even to-day, not only -in this particular forest, but in any other in France. French frugality -burns small sticks and twigs that in other lands would be made into -a brushwood fire, and who shall not say that this trait, along with -many others, does not contribute to the contentment of the French -peasant? for he is content, if not amply endowed with this world’s -goods; marvellously so as compared with his English, Irish, or Italian -brethren. There may be other reasons, but his thrift is the principal -one. - -Any one seeking change and rest will certainly find what he is looking -for at Châteaubriant. It is somnolently dull all through the week and -doubly so on Sundays, but, in spite of all this, it is delightful, and -a romantic novelist--or even a writer of romantic novels--could hardly -find a more inspiring background than the country round about. - -There is a legend, too, in connection with the old château that might be -worked up into a first-class romance, either for the stage or as a sword -and cloak novel. After all, it is not exactly legend either, though it -is almost too horrible to appear true. The reader may judge for himself, -for here it is: - -In the old château lived for a time that unfortunate Frances de Foix -whom Francis I. had created Countess de Châteaubriant. To-day much of -the luxury with which this mistress of the royal lover had surrounded -herself has disappeared, though enough remains, through restoration -and preservation, to suggest the very splendid appointments of a -former time. The young Frances de Foix, herself of the house that once -possessed the crown of Navarre, married the old Count of Laval, who -soon brooded himself into a passion of jealousy over the affair of -his wife and her princely lover, particularly as it was said that she -had gone to visit Francis while he was in prison after his capture at -Pavia. “The countess found the king’s prison very dismal,” said the -chroniclers of the time. This last act proved too much for the elderly -spouse, who speedily “shut up his young wife in a darkened and padded -cell, and finally had her cut into pieces by two surgeons,” as the story -goes. After this horrible event the murderer fled the country, as might -have been expected, in order, say the chroniclers again, “to escape the -vengeance of the king.” - -Redon, just to the north, is an unattractive place. Most folk know it -only as the railway official calls out: “Forty-five minutes’ stop for -luncheon, refreshments, and all the rest.” - -Very amusing are these railway lunch-rooms seen throughout France. But -withal they are most excellently appointed, although the passengers, -like their kind the world over, eat as though they had not a minute -to lose, and have a good fifteen left on their hands when they have -finished their repast. - -The meals are usually divided into three categories: the public table at -a set price, the table for the aristocracy at three francs, the table -with set portions, the frugal repast at half as much, and the service -“to order,” which is the most costly of all. - -[Illustration] - -Nothing is of an inferior quality, however, and, as all is served -from the same kitchen, it is merely a question as to whether one will -have more or less, or whether he will eat it off linen napery, with -a napkin to tuck under his right ear,--as is the French commercial -traveller’s custom,--or whether he will be satisfied with an oilcloth -table-covering. The difference is more apparent than real, for the -“frugal repast” at a franc and a half is the three franc meal shorn of -its trimmings; you get the same dishes and the same service. - -As if to ease the process, a stentorian railway hand puts his head in -the door and shouts: “Ten minutes before the Vannes express starts!” -and returns again at the end of the allotted time to give a final call: -“Into the carriages, gentlemen!” It is much the same the world over, of -course, but they are more polite in France, and the food is better of -its kind, and much better served, two very appreciable differences. - -Redon itself and its great open square, on which are the railway -station, the hotels, and the gaunt, lone, dismembered tower of the -Church of St. Sauveur, is by no means attractive. The square is bare of -trees, and in the summer the sun beats down upon the frequenters of the -terrace coffee-rooms of the hotels in a manner which makes one wonder -why they do not move off and seek a shady spot elsewhere. - -The indifference shown by the natives of certain localities for the -pelting sunlight, which makes some of us think of cabbage leaves for -our hats and “gin rickeys” for our stomachs, is curious. The Neapolitan -prefers to loll about in the blazing Italian sun, and says that no one -but an Englishman or a dog ever seeks the shade. The citizen of Redon is -like him, and does not care who knows it, and his sunlight, though it -comes to earth some hundreds of miles farther north, appears to be of -the same caloric value. - -Redon was an old monastic foundation of St. Convoïon’s, of the Vannes -church. He built the Abbey of St. Sauveur, of which the present church -and its lone tower are later additions. The main body of the present -edifice dates in part from the time of the foundation, though its fabric -was frequently added to and restored up to the twelfth century, from -which period it may really be said to date. The central tower of this -church is said to be the only Romanesque feature of its class in all -Brittany, and is certainly one of the most sturdy anywhere to be seen. - -Another remarkable feature is a chapel, the walls loopholed and -machicolated, and built by the Abbé Yves in the fifteenth century; -to-day it serves as the sacristy. - -The high altar, a rich and imposing affair, was the gift of the great -Richelieu when he was in possession of the revenues of the abbey. The -city was surrounded by a fortification or wall by the Abbot John of -Treal in 1364, and in 1422 John V., Count of Brittany, established a -mint here. - -Questembert, westward toward Vannes, is a town of four thousand or so -inhabitants, and has many interesting old houses, but otherwise is -devoid of attractions either for the lover of architectural monuments or -for worshippers at religious or other shrines. It is, however, the place -for holding many local fairs or markets of considerable magnitude, where -one may make practically his first acquaintance with the Breton peasant, -becoiffed and beribboned as he, or she, only is on native heath. - -Rochefort-en-Terre is also a chief place; as its population numbers -less than seven hundred souls, it cannot be considered as even a -local metropolis. Its situation and its fine, though not stupendously -remarkable, architectural glories make up for what it lacks in the way -of population. It sits high on a hillside dominating the little river -Arz, a confluent of the Vilaine. Its name is due to the founder of -a château built here in the thirteenth century and destroyed by the -Catholic Leaguers in 1594, though it was afterwards rebuilt and again -destroyed, this time by Revolutionary firebrands, in 1793. The ruins of -this château are to-day very satisfactory indeed as ruins, though they -include few or none of the architectural details with which the work -must once have been endowed. The lower courses of the walls are there, -remains of five towers, and an ancient well, with a curb of sculptured -granite. - -The ancient collegiate Church of Notre Dame de la Tronchaye -is an ecclesiastical monument of high rank, for a town like -Rochefort-en-Terre, and is an altogether lovable old shrine, with -admirable sculptures in stone and some curious wooden statues, in the -interior, said originally to have been those of Claude of Rieux and -Suzanne of Bourbon, Lord and Lady de Rochefort. These statues are now -converted into a St. Joseph and a Virgin. This may or may not have been -a sacrilege; it certainly was a desecration. The ancient city gates -remain, and there are numerous fifteenth and sixteenth century houses. - -The country round about Rochefort-en-Terre was brought into vogue by -the landscape-painter, Pelouze, some years ago, and other artists have -followed in his wake, making an over growing artist colony in the -summer-time. Studies and sketches decorate the dining-room of the Hôtel -Lecadre in a surprising number; at least surprising to one who comes -upon this unassuming little town and its excellent, before named, little -hotel while journeying to Finistère. - -Still going toward Vannes one passes Elven, near which is the Manoir of -Kerlean, the family estate of _the_ Descartes. The birth certificate of -the Descartes is in the records in the mayor’s office. - -Three kilometres to the north are the remains of the ancient fortress -of Largoet, whose tower, known as the Tour d’Elven, dates from the -fifteenth century. This tower has been called the most beautiful castle -keep in all Brittany, and so it is if one take into consideration -its moss-and-ivy-grown walls and its general eerie aspect heightened -perceptibly if seen by moonlight. This high, majestic tower of a feudal -castle, whose other members have practically disappeared, is also a -literary shrine of high rank, inasmuch as Octave Feuillet has placed -here some of the most moving scenes in his “Story of a Poor Young Man.” -Perhaps this true romance is not so well known to the present generation -as to a former, but it should be, and accordingly the clue is here -given, and it should have a double significance so far as travellers in -Brittany are concerned. - -[Illustration: <u>_Tour d’Elven_</u>] - -One enters Vannes, if it be a holiday or a Sunday, amid a gaiety and -uproar that is apparently inexplicable. To be sure Vannes is the -metropolis of the Morbihan, but one does not look for such continuous -gaiety on the part of a people supposed to be wholly devout and not very -rich, as possessors of this world’s goods count their gains. Devoutness -need not necessarily mean glumness, and so as it all seems, around -Vannes at least, to be for the general good, one is not sorry to have -his first introduction to a great Breton town in a way so pleasant. - -Really it is a sort of small gaiety, and strictly local, which goes on -here. There is nothing of the riotous order, but it is all very gay, -nevertheless. - -The simple folk of the Morbihan, who have crowded into Vannes for the -day, are as interested and amused with a hurdy-gurdy Punch and Judy -show, a travelling circus, or a merry-go-round as if they were the -latest distractions of Paris. Meanwhile one seeks his hotel, and there -comes another surprise. - - - - -CHAPTER III. - -THE MORBIHAN--VANNES AND THE “GOLFE” - - -The “Golfe” or Bay of Morbihan is one of those great landlocked havens -in which the whole Breton coast abounds; its islands are as many as the -days of the year, as the natives have it. - -Morbihan itself is as much sea as land. The tides rise to a great height -along this whole southern coast of Brittany, and in the Bay of Morbihan -they have full play. - -The metropolis of Lower Morbihan is Vannes, which the railway porters -shout out at you, as you descend from the train, as Va-a-a-nnes. - -Leaving the station, one threads his way through whole batteries of -laundresses, their gull-winged head-dress nodding in rhythm with the -beating of their paddles, a most picturesque sight, but a process which -works disaster to one’s clothes, destroying pearl buttons, and causing -mysterious small holes to appear in the most inconvenient places. An -accompaniment of song always goes with these shattering and battering -exercises. At Vannes, according to Theodore Botrel, it runs like this: - - “Pan! pan! pan! - Ma Doué! - Comme la langue maudite - Marche bien au vieux lavoit. - Pan! pan! pan! - Vite! vite! - Plus vite que le battoir!” - -It is the day of the local fair, the chief article of commerce being, -it would seem, pigs, as at Limerick. At any rate, there are hundreds, -if not thousands, of little porkers, who have just put foot to earth, -as their venders tell one; their own voices, too, strident and high -pitched, announce the same thing. - -Vannes, truth to tell, is not much of a capital, but it is a highly -interesting and picturesque old town, with manners and customs quite -different from those of any of its neighbours. - -The chief characteristics of the place seem to be pointed roofs of red -and moss-grown tiles and walls of blue granite. One can almost imagine -that Botrel chose it as the scene of the stanza: - - “Qui donc chante sous nos fenêtres - Ces mystérieuses chansons? - Ce sont les âmes des ancêtres - Qui reconnaissent leurs maisons!” - -[Illustration: <u>_Market-woman, Vannes_</u>] - -There is a blending of the seashore and the open country here which is -scarcely found in any other part of France. In some respects it is like -Holland, and again it is not, for it lacks the web of canals with which -that country is interwoven. - -The whole bay--“Le Golfe”--forms a dooryard for Vannes, and a yacht or a -boat is as much an appendage of the Vannes household of the better class -as a dog or cat. - -[Illustration: <u>_The Country near Vannes_</u>] - -Vannes, the capital of the Morbihan, is a city of 23,000 souls, and has -two great modern, up-to-date hotels. Choose one, and you will “like the -other best,” as Rubinstein said to the young pianist, who was to play -two of his compositions to the master. He said this, be it recalled, -after he had heard only the first one. Not that Vannes hotels are really -bad. Oh, no. Truth to tell, they are excellent in their way, but they -are unconvincing. - -When one is here, in the midst of a new, strange set of conditions -of life, he looks for something characteristic about his inn. If he -find it, he is content; if he do not, all the smugness and propriety -of imported manners and customs in the dinner service will not make -him so. The true traveller prefers taking his chances with the native -dishes to trifling with Paris culinary fashions at the hands of a Breton -peasant-chef,--if that is the exact classification one ought to give the -cooks of Vannes. - -To enter Vannes by road, one has come down a precipitous descent to -the sea-level, and accordingly rises again to an equal height when he -leaves, for Vannes is the great tidewater port for the whole of the -south coast of Brittany between Lorient and St. Nazaire. The traffic of -the bays of Morbihan and Quiberon is considerable, and the ceaseless -coming and going of many small steamers and sailing-craft is unlike -traffic elsewhere. - -The great bay is an inland sea almost surrounded by the jutting -peninsulas which terminate on either side of the narrow channel in -Pointe de Kerpenhir and Port Navalo. The name is compounded of two -Breton words, _mor_ (sea) and _bihan_ (little). The flat tree-grown -islands of this little sea make vistas and groups of a unique character, -and to learn the bay well by a voyage among them in a flat-bottomed -skimming-dish of a craft, or by the more facile motor-launch, is a -thoroughly agreeable experience. - -The chief of the islands are the Monks Isle and the Ile d’Arz, but the -enfolding shores of the mainland, with its little seaside-farmyard -villages, have the same characteristics. - -On the little passenger steamers, which ply between the islands and the -mainland, one meets a queer company of peasant-folk in coifs and round -velvet or straw caps, fowls, sheep, goats, and an occasional overgrown -calf. - -Such of the islands of the bay as are populated, and many of them -are, were colonized from the neighbouring country, and the women in -particular are physically admirable. They still wear the distinctive -costume of the country in a spirit uncontaminated by the electric lights -and railways of Vannes. Custom in these isles allows the young women -to demand the hand of a likely swain in marriage, and the plan seems -to work well. The population seems generally happy, prosperous, and -contented. What better is expected as the outcome of marriage? - -The climate of all the Morbihan shore is mild and tranquil at all -seasons of the year, and one may sit beside the open window of his hotel -dining-room throughout the year. The mimosa flowers in winter, and -palms, rose-trees, camellias, and fig-trees prosper exceedingly in the -open air. - -Vannes was the ancient capital of the Veneti, a strong coast tribe of -other days which resisted the invasion of Cæsar and triumphed against -his fleet a half-century or more before the Christian era. - -When finally the Romans came, they made Vannes the centre of six -great highways which radiated to Corseul, to Angers, to Hennebont, to -Locmariaquer, to Rennes, and to Nantes. From this its importance may be -inferred. - -Christianity came to Vannes in 465, when St. Perpetus, Metropolitan of -Tours, consecrated St. Patern as first bishop. By the sixth century it -had become an independent county, but was joined again to the duchy -of Brittany in 990. John IV. established his habitual residence at -Vannes, and constructed the celebrated Château de l’Hermine, with its -constable’s tower so famous in the history of Brittany as the place in -which he imprisoned Clisson, releasing him only after the payment of a -heavy ransom. - -The history of Vannes and the Morbihan is too long and stormy to be even -outlined here, but there are still many remains and memories which will -serve as a foundation upon which to build the fabric anew. - -[Illustration: <u>_Ancient City Walls, Vannes_</u>] - -The port is most interesting, with its varied traffic and its great -ships of nearly a thousand tons which thread their way up through the -islands of the gulf, bringing lumber, coals, and all the small cargoes -of a great coasting port. - -At Vannes one may see a huge parti-coloured handkerchief of the -_bandanna_ variety waving before a narrow doorway. It is the “shawl,” -the sign of the hair-cutter, who will exchange its fellow for your -hair, if you be a Breton girl with dark brown tresses, or even an -elderly person whose hair is iron-gray. In Lower Brittany, on summer -fair-days, the dealer in hair makes a round exceedingly profitable to -his establishment, though at each stopping-place it leaves a hundred -or more young girls shorn of their crowning glory,--a loss which they -successfully cover with their daintily ironed head-dress. - -The chief of the sights and shrines of the neighbourhood of Vannes are -St. Gildas de Rhuis and the Château of Suscino. The former is revered -for its sixth-century monastic foundation of St. Gildas, called the -wise, and for some time in the twelfth century governed by the famous -Abelard. The ancient abbatial church is now the parish church. It dates -from the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries, and is an unusual work in -many respects, and rising to a height of grandeur seldom seen outside -the larger Breton cities and towns. - -[Illustration: <u>_Château of Suscino_</u>] - -The castle of Suscino--or more properly the ruin--is a wonderful -thirteenth-century structure on the water’s edge, built by John the -Red-haired. It follows the best Gothic traditions of its time, and -its crenelated walls and towers, the latter now unroofed, are perfect -of their kind. It was captured by Charles of Blois, and retaken by his -Montfort rival in 1364. An English garrison occupied it in 1373. Finally -it was given by Anne of Brittany to John of Chalons, Prince of Orange, -from whom it was taken by Francis I., and he presented it to Frances of -Foix, Lady of Châteaubriant, as she then was. The rest of its history is -equally varied, and as important as becomes so magnificent a mediæval -fortress. - -[Illustration] - -In form the château is an irregular pentagon, perhaps modified from -its original plan in 1420. Its orchid machicolations are remarkable -both for their beauty and their utility. Seven towers, of which six -remain, originally flanked its gates and walls. The new tower is a fine -cylindrical keep of the fifteenth century. Over the entrance one still -reads a tablet inscription as follows: - - ICI EST NÉ - LE DUC ARTHUR III. - LE 24 AOÛT, 1393 - -North of Vannes are Ploërmel and Josselin, two places which no one -should leave out of the itinerary of Brittany. Neither is easily -accessible by rail, but both are conveniently reached by road. - -Ploërmel has a railway connection with the line to Brest by way of -Rennes, and another with the line to Brest by way of Vannes, but -Josselin is off the beaten track, and one makes his way from Ploërmel by -omnibus or in a carriage. - -Ploërmel and its “pardon” have inspired an opera, one of Meyerbeer’s -most celebrated scores, known to English music lovers as “Dinorah,” but -in French called “The Pardon of Ploërmel.” The town owes its name to an -anchorite who, in the sixth century, retired here to a hermitage. - -The history of Ploërmel during the middle ages was stormy. It was here -that the edict expelling the Jews from Brittany was issued in 1240. In -1273 the Comte de Richemont--upon his return from the Crusades--founded -at Ploërmel the first Carmelite convent known to France. This ancient -convent, situated without the walls, escaped from the disasters which -caused the city to be burned in 1347. The Calvinists came in time to -have a temple here, in which they held two synods of their church. - -To-day Ploërmel is a sleepy, old-world town, with two good inns, and -not much except the fragmentary reminders of old walls and buildings to -remind one of the parts played in other days. - -The Church of St. Armel, a reconstruction of 1511-1602, is in parts -highly decorated with stone sculptures and strange images, recalling, -says an ingenious, but profane, Frenchman, the “pleasantries of -Rabelais.” Of course he refers to the players on the bagpipes, the man -sewing up the mouth of his wife, and the wife tearing off her husband’s -cap. Certainly these quaint figures are not born of religious symbolism, -unless, by chance, that the symbolism of the religious builders of -Ploërmel differs greatly from that of others elsewhere. - -There are still remains of Ploërmel’s old city walls dating from the -fifteenth century, and also a fragment of a tower. - -Near by, on the road to Josselin, is a simple granite shaft perpetuating -the famous “Battle of the Thirty,” celebrated in history. - -According to Froissart, Robert of Beaumanoir, chatelain of Josselin, -one day provoked an English captain--Bromborough--who was encamped at -Ploërmel, and challenged him to battle; thirty of his men against thirty -Frenchmen. At the first attack four Frenchmen and two English fell. -Then the combat began again with swords, battle-axes, and lances. Eight -English only finally remained, including Bromborough himself; all the -others were killed or taken prisoners and led away to the dungeons of -the Château de Josselin. - -Froissart writes elsewhere of this same engagement: “Twenty-two years -after the battle of the thirty, I saw at the table of King Charles of -France one of the combatants, a knight called Yvain Charnel. His face -showed that the battle had been hot, for it was scarred all over.” - -This wayside column or pyramid just off the route bears the following -inscription: - -[Illustration: <u>_Ploërmel_</u>] - - À LA MEMOIRE PERPETUELLE - DE LA BATAILLE DES TRANTE - QUE MGR LE MARÉCHAL DE BEAU MANOIR - A GAIGNÉE DANS CE LIEU L’AN 1530 - -Josselin is now chief town of a commune of 2,500 inhabitants; it has a -fine mediæval château yet inhabitable, two ecclesiastical monuments of -more than unusual excellence, and a rather shaky and ill-situated inn -(Hôtel de France), which makes up in the abundance and excellence of its -fare for what it lacks in the way of electric lights and modern sanitary -arrangements. - -The first houses of Josselin were grouped around a miraculous effigy -of the Virgin, known as Notre Dame du Roncier, because it was found -beneath a blackberry-bush. To-day Notre Dame du Roncier, the church and -the chapel and its statue of the Virgin, are venerated highly by the -faithful who make the pilgrimage to the shrine on the Monday and Tuesday -of Pentecost and on the eighth of September, the birthday of the Virgin, -when the remains of her ancient statue are shown. This effigy was broken -and burned in the Revolutionary fury of 1793, but a modern replica was -crowned, in the Chapel Notre Dame du Roncier, in 1868. The settlement -which grew up around the shrine was surrounded by a protecting wall by -the Count of Guéthénoc in 1008, and in 1030 it was given the name of -Josselin, after his son. - -[Illustration: <u>_Shrine of St. Etienne, Josselin_</u>] - -In the thirteenth century, the county of Porhoet, in which Josselin was -situated, passed to the house of Fougères, and its affairs were varied -and involved until Peter of Valois, Count of Alençon, sold it to the -Constable Oliver of Clisson, whose daughter brought it in marriage to -the Rohans, to whose descendants it still belongs. - -In the Church of Our Lady of the Blackberry-bush is a remarkable tomb -placed in the Chapel of St. Marguerite--the former oratory of the -constable--to Oliver of Clisson and Marguerite of Rohan. - -The castle rests on a rocky foundation beside the river Oust, and its -front is most imposing. Three towers with conical roofs flank the -riverside, and are an expression of the best fortress-château building -of its era (twelfth century), severe and gaunt in every line, and yet -beautifully planned. The interior court takes on quite a different -aspect, that of the “_architecture civile_” of the third ogival period, -when Renaissance forms and details had crept in, almost destroying -Gothic lines. - -The window openings of the two stories have an admirable decorative -effect, as beautiful as those of Blois and very nearly equalling those -of Chambord. - -An open gallery above the windows is a charming additional -interpolation, and between each window is carved “A Plus,” the device -of the distinguished family of the Rohans, who built this part of the -structure. A keep and some later walls and parapets were added by -Clisson somewhere about the year 1400, but most of them disappeared in -1629, when the château ceased to be a stronghold of the League. - -In the main it is a twelfth and thirteenth century structure which is -so admirably preserved to-day. One may visit the interior, through the -courtesy of the family in residence, and, though it may be somewhat -disconcerting to walk through these historic apartments of another -day and see such modern innovations as electric bells and other -appurtenances of a late civilization, the experience is, after all, -a peep behind the curtain, and this the up-to-date motor-car tourist -always appreciates highly. - -The great hall, the library, with its magnificent chimneypiece and -its cipher, “A Plus,” carved in stone, and the dining-room ornamented -with a modern equestrian statue of Clisson, by Fremiet, are the chief -apartments shown. - -[Illustration: <u>_Château de Josselin_</u>] - -In the court within the walls is an ancient well surrounded by an -elaborate forged iron railing. - -One takes the road again, by the way of Locminé and Baud, for Auray, the -most dainty and charming of all Breton market-towns, passing through a -delightfully picturesque country of rolling hills and deep valleys and -fir forests, studded here and there with lakelets. - -Locminé, which derives its name from _Locmenec’h_ (monk’s cell), was the -site of a monastery founded in the sixth century by St. Colomban. It was -burned by the Normans in the ninth century, after the pleasant custom of -these invaders, and reëstablished in 1006 by Geoffrey, Duke of Brittany, -as a priory attached to the Abbey of St. Gildas of Rhuis. - -In the present church of Locminé is a chapel dedicated to St. Colomban, -containing a painting representing scenes from the life of the saint; -others are carried out in the coloured glass of the windows. - -One reads the following,--a supplication on behalf of the dangerous -madmen who at one time occupied two cells beneath the pavement: - - “St. Colomban, patron of Locminé, pray for us! - St. Colomban, help of idiots, pray for us!” - -Behind the church is an elaborate ossuary dating from Renaissance times, -when these adjuncts to burial-grounds were so plentifully scattered -over Brittany. - -Baud has an enormous parish church of the time of Louis XIV., with a -fine Gothic arcade and a great crucifix standing beside the outer wall. -Aside from this, there is not much else here to attract one, unless he -be a pilgrim affected with disease of the eye. If he be, and if he bathe -in the “Fontaine de la clarté,” and the fates be propitious, and he be -not too far gone otherwise, and everything else be as it should, he will -be cured forthwith--perhaps. - -It is unkind to scoff at these miraculous fountains scattered here and -there over the world, of course, but one has seen so many individual -cases that were not benefited, and heard of so many that were, that one -may be justified in a little skepticism. - -To Auray is twenty kilometres by a road which gently rolls down a matter -of 150 metres of elevation until it reaches sea-level at the little -market-town seaport known in Breton as Alre. - - - - -CHAPTER IV. - -AURAY AND THE MEGALITHIC MONUMENTS OF MORBIHAN - - -Auray is the real centre from which to make the round of the vast -collection of relics of the long lost civilization of Morbihan. - -Many have attempted to explain the significance of these rude stone -monuments. Some have said that the famous avenues of Carnac were the -streets of one of Cæsar’s camps, its roofs having fallen and mouldered -away, and that the famous “Merchants’ Table” at Locmariaquer was an -ancient druidical altar, to which the helpless were led to be sacrificed. - -All this and much more is for the antiquary alone, and a nodding -acquaintance with the history of these curious stone formations or -erections is about all for which most travellers will care. - -He who arrives at Auray on a market-day will seem to himself to come -into a region where every one speaks the Breton tongue. Not all, of -course, for French is now compulsory with the school-children, but the -frequency of it here in the booths and stalls in and around Auray’s -lovely old timbered market-house is greatly to be remarked. - -It is a question if this same market-house be not quite the most -theatrical-looking thing of its kind in all France. It is for all -the world like a successful piece of stage carpentry, with a great -spectacular stairway running up into its garret above, quite in the -manner that one has seen upon the stage over and over again, when the -heroine or the villain--it does not much matter which--escapes from his, -or her, pursuers. Low built, heavily raftered, and with a leaky roof -allowing rays of sunlight to dribble through into the gloom within in a -most entrancing manner, this old market-house is the centre of the life -and activity of the place for fifty-two Mondays in each year. - -Within and without the walls of the market-house is gathered the most -varied conglomeration of wares imaginable. Beside the draper’s counter -are baskets of vegetables, eggs, or fish. A poor little calf, tied by -the legs and lying at full length on the ground, keeps company with his -former farmyard neighbours, the ducks and geese, but on either side is a -second-hand collection of ironmongery and old shoes, and it should be -the envy of the provident, for two sous buy anything in the collection. - -[Illustration: <u>_Interior of Market-house, Auray_</u>] - -The country-side Breton peasant who comes to Auray on a market-day is -the glass of fashion of his race, his jacket embroidered in braid of gay -colours, and velvet bands on his sleeves and collar. His shirt is high -and stiffly starched, and his felt hat or cap heavily hung with velvet -ribbons. The womenfolk are clad in equally spectacular fashion, with -high white caps and full-sleeved bodices, each with a black velvet band -around the sleeve, and full gathered skirts, spoiling all symmetry of -form as nature made it. - -The history of Auray, from the days when it belonged to John of Auray, -grand huntsman of Brittany, has left its mark in the annals of the -country in no indefinite manner. John of Montfort, the Counts of Blois, -Duguesclin, and many others stalk through its pages of history until -finally, in the wars of religions, it was held by the Catholic army -and the Spaniards in turn. Its old château, whose foundations now form -the fine Promenade du Loc, dates from the eleventh century; and it was -reconstructed and enlarged two centuries later, finally to disappear, -as the result of an order for its demolition given by the castle -destroyer, Henry II., in 1558. - -[Illustration: <u>_Shrine of St. Roch, Auray_</u>] - -The port of Auray is more daintily and charmingly environed than most -seaports. As it lies between the wooded, deep-cut banks of the little -river, its intermingling of ships and salt water, and country-side, and -sailor lads and rustic maidens, and all the motley population of the -little town, is a marvellous thing to see. - -The smack of antiquity is about it all, and the historic legend of its -shrine of St. Anne--which lives as vividly to-day as ever it lived--most -touchingly connects the present with the past. - -One of the most celebrated, and certainly the most largely attended, -of all the “pardons” of Brittany is that held at St. Anne of Auray, -though Auray itself is something more than a mere place of religious -pilgrimage, and a good deal more than a wayside station on the railway -line where one leaves the train and hires a carriage for Carnac and -Quiberon, though apparently not many tourists know it. In the first -place, it is one of the largest and most characteristic of all the -little Breton market-towns, is a deep-water port of a considerable size, -and has a hotel which supplies one with the most ample and delightful -meals that the traveller will find westward of Nantes. - -This may be a mundane standard by which to judge of an old-world town’s -appeal to interest, but it is all-sufficient, and the most marvellous -attractions the world may have to offer will hardly be appreciated by -a travel-worn and hungry traveller, and such should plan to arrive in -town for the Monday dinner at the Golden Lion; also he should not hurry -through the town merely for the sake of visiting the shrine of St. Anne, -which is tawdry enough in its general aspect, except when it is thronged -on the great days of the “pardon,” March seventh and July twenty-fifth. - -The great festival of the Pardon of St. Anne of Auray is held in July, -on the birthday of St. Anne, the mother of the Virgin Mary. Its origin -dates back to 1623, when a peasant of the country-side, one Yves -Nicolazic, was commanded by St. Anne, who appeared to him in a vision, -to found a chapel in her honour in the fields of Bocenno, where, she -said, an ancient shrine had existed nearly a thousand years earlier. -Guided by explicit directions and a mysterious star, Yves found a -precious image, which ultimately was transported and set up anew in -the church built at Auray. This miraculous statue was lost during -the Revolution, but a fragment was preserved and is included in the -present shrine, which is surrounded by a modern edifice dating from the -mid-nineteenth century. - -Near by is the miraculous fountain, which, like others of its kind -elsewhere, is exceedingly erratic as to the miracles it performs. It -was beside this fountain, then but a humble little rock-gushing spring, -but now neatly set about with a concrete basin, that St. Anne first -appeared to Yves. - -Each year, by train, by boat, by country cart, and on foot, pilgrims -come from miles around, many of them camping out the night by the -roadside, all, in spite of the solemn purport of their pilgrimage, in -the gayest spirits. There is always a certain amount of discord to be -encountered at all these great festivals,--beggars, deformed or ill -with incurable disease, crippled or what not, all expectant of reaping -a thriving harvest from the simple-minded frequenters of the shrine. -Whether deserving or not, all of them appear to receive liberal alms, -for the custom of giving alms is as much a component part of the -event as any of the other observances, nor is it ever frowned upon or -curtailed by the religious or civic authorities. - -The order of the day includes the massing of the pilgrims at open-air -services, the placing of candles before the shrine, the inspection of -the relics of the saint, the drinking of, or bathing in, the miraculous -fountain, and sermons and admonitions uncounted, all in the Breton -tongue, incomprehensible to outsiders, but to be taken as salutary. The -great feature is the procession of priests and pilgrims, the former -in their brilliant vestments, many of the latter bearing tall, gaudily -coloured candles and gay silken banners. Grouped around each banner -will be found the Breton men and women from a particular section, each -group differently clad from those of other sections, but all gay with -brilliant colouring. - -“Saint Anne, pray for us!” is the cry one would hear were it in English, -or “_Sainte Anne, priez pour nous_” in French; in Breton, its sadness is -indescribable, more like the wail of a _banshee_ than anything else. - -Usually the Bishop of Vannes delivers an exhortation, in the Breton -tongue, of course, from the top of the Holy Steps, after which the -throng--or, at least, such as are truly and sincerely devout--climb to -the top on their knees. According to the printed notice at the foot, -each step mounted on the bended knee, accompanied of course by a prayer, -is good for a nine years’ absolution of a soul in purgatory. In the -cloister behind the church is a great crucifix, in which the peasant -pilgrims stick pins, each recording a prayer said or a vow made. - -On the night of July twenty-sixth, St. Anne’s Day, a grand torchlight -procession marches. The “Marche aux Flambeaux,” a celebrated painting -by Jules Breton, now owned in America, well shows the effect of one of -these great demonstrations, except that it lacks the weirdness of the -sombre background of night itself. - -This ends the great days of the pardon, but throughout the year pilgrims -make their way to the shrine to say a prayer, or to drink or bathe in -the waters of the fountain, or perhaps to carry a jugful home to some -bedridden member of their families. - -Among the offerings in fulfilment of vows made at the shrine of Ste. -Anne d’Auray are a number of very ancient inscriptions, such as the -following best illustrate: - -“William Genin, bitten by a mad dog, vowed himself to St. Anne and -obtained a perfect cure in 1631.” - -“Helen Sausse, abandoned by her mother, vomited a two-headed snake and -recovered her health.” - -On the way from Auray to Plouharnel, Carnac, Quiberon, and Locmariaquer -are worth one day or three, accordingly as one may feel inclined. The -distance is not great; a dozen kilometres will cover the journey out, -and a little more circuitous return route will take in a half-dozen or -more old centres of a civilization of which all knowledge is lost in -the night of time. - -Whatsoever the great megalithic monuments of Carnac may mean, certain it -is that they tell--or could tell if one could feel sure he understood -it correctly--a story quite out of keeping with the manners and customs -of to-day. Like the tall, gaunt windmills plentifully besprinkled -hereabouts, these great stones rear their heads skyward in fashion most -strange. Long rows of them, like files of soldiers, or like the trees of -the forest, stand to-day for the curious to marvel at, as they stood so -long ago that their origin is not to be definitely traced. - -[Illustration: <u>_The Lines of Carnac_</u>] - -[Illustration: <u>_The Lines of Carnac_</u>] - -Of the Lines of Carnac, as the strange population of -tombstone-looking monoliths is known, much has been written by -antiquaries, archæologists, and geologists ever since the tide of travel -set this way. What these stones actually mean--some thousands of them -in all, set out in regular rows--only a vain, presumptuous person could -answer. They offer a prospect of a strange grandeur, for they really -are grand, if not stupendous, and, as they stretch away in long, silent -lines almost to the horizon, they are as phantoms looming to-day out of -the mysterious past to which they belong. - -There are three great companies of these menhirs here. Those of Ménec, -composed of 1,169 members in eleven ranks; of Kermario, 1,120 members -in ten rows; and of Kerlescan, thirteen rows made up of 579 individual -stones. - -Carnac has another ancient monument in the tumulus of Mont St. Michel, -which, like other elevations bearing the same name, is a sky-nearing -little peak of land which supposedly formed a firm earthly foothold for -the archangel. - -The parish church of Carnac is dedicated to St. Cornély, who, according -to legend, lived in the neighbourhood and was many times saved from -an untimely death by the oxen of the region. Just how this was -accomplished no one seems to know, but enough of the tradition still -lives to inspire a grand celebration on the saint’s day, the thirteenth -of September, when many animals are offered up to him, as one learns -from the kindly, tall-coifed guardian of the church. - -[Illustration: <u>_Map of Carnac and the Surrounding Country_</u>] - -The painted ceilings of the Church of St. Cornély are remarkable works -of art, if not for their excellence, at least for their ingenuity. The -north porch is an astonishing Renaissance addition, which, from its -curves and curls, would seem to be the precursor of “_l’art nouveau_.” - -To the westward of Carnac, at the shore-end of the peninsula of -Quiberon, is Plouharnel, another centre around which are grouped many -curious stone monuments. - -The Chapel of Our Lady of the Flowers is a singularly beautiful small -church built of the granite of the country. It contains a notable -bas-relief in alabaster in the form of what is known in ecclesiastical -art as a “Jesse Tree.” - -Just why the promoters of a railway had the temerity to push it to the -very end of the snake-like peninsula of Quiberon is a problem which will -ever remain unsolved so far as the general public is concerned. Stendhal -has written some gloomy views of scenes enacted at Fort Penthièvre, -half-way down the peninsula, and Victor Hugo wrote of the same times -(now a hundred years ago): - -“_Mourir plus d’un soldat à son prince fidèle, un prêtre fidèle à son -Dieu._” - -The aspect of this long, narrow peninsula is everywhere the same, from -its juncture with the mainland to the sandy point fifteen kilometres -away, from which one sees the flash of the twinkling light on Belle Ile. - -Quiberon has what may almost be called an ideal hotel, except that it -is unworldly and not the least new. A travelling salesman, whom we met -at Auray, told us that it was kept by an old cook, one of the Vatels -of the stove. Simple and modest, but clean withal as the proverbial -door-step of Holland, it is one of those inns that the traveller loves -out of sheer inability to find fault with it. - -Quiberon has two ports, Port Haliguen and Port Maria, both in danger -of becoming popular seaside resorts, for the guide-books are already -describing them as places where the sojourn will be agreeable for -persons of simple habits. - -The fish-market of Quiberon is one, if not the chief, of its sights for -the student of manners and customs. “_Cinq lubines pour douze francs -et deux cent quarante maquereaux pour trente-un francs_” was the way -the market ran on the occasion of the visit of the author, all of which -argues that Quiberon is a good place for the fish to come. - -[Illustration: <u>_Quiberon_</u>] - -The lobsters, too, are a great feature of the trade here, and are sold -by their length, measuring from the eye up to the first scale of their -tails. An average price is rather over four sous, and Paris takes the -best of the lot. They travel first-class and by express, the lobsters -of Quiberon, when they take their first and last voyage to the “shining -city,” and there are plenty of friends awaiting them at the station. -They invariably arrive at the fish-market for the earliest sales, and at -noon the epicure may eat them at Marguery’s, which sounds like a French -version of the “Alice in Wonderland” tale. - -One hour from Quiberon, by a tiny steamboat, and one finds himself -skirting the cliff walls surrounding and sheltering the little port and -town of Palais on Belle Ile, overlooked by the powerful citadel built by -Vauban, who, as the fortress-builder of France, stood in his profession -where Napoleon did in his. - -This “_plus belle île de l’ocean_” has forty-eight kilometres of -coast-line, and every one of them has been so cut and serrated by -the action of the waves that the island would form a veritable ocean -graveyard were it situated on the direct line of travel by sea. - -For the most part, visitors content themselves with making an excursion -to the northerly end of the island, a visit to the apothecary’s grotto, -and another to the lantern of the great lighthouse, which at night sends -its electric rays far out to sea. - -What tourists may not do is to roam over the old citadel now occupied -as a national fort, and this is a pity, for there they might conjure up -a reminder of other days that would be like a chapter out of Dumas. - -The citadel was built by Marshal de Retz in 1572, and was the refuge of -the cardinal of the same name when he fled from Nantes in 1653. Not far -away is the Château Fouquet. Nicholas Fouquet, Marquis of Belle Ile, -was Superintendent of Finance under the regency of Anne of Austria, -and continued the important office after the accession of Louis XIV. -The consensus of opinion is that Fouquet was insinuating, specious, -hypocritical, and sensual. It was at the great fête given by Fouquet at -Vaux that the king planned his arrest, “fearing he would escape to Belle -Ile,” then thought to be an impregnable fortress. Both in the pages of -the historians and in the romances of Dumas one may read the story. - -Belle-Ile-en-Mer, also, was made the home of Aramis after Dumas had -given him episcopal rank. The minute details given in “Le Vicomte de -Bragelonne” would form an admirable supplement to any guide-book. - -The great Sara Bernhardt has of recent years made her home on this -barren and desolate isle. It is not altogether desolate, however, for -there are hotels at Palais and Sauzon, and tourists, solitary and in -droves, are continually making excursions thither in the season from the -neighbouring Breton coast, from Vannes, Quiberon, or Lorient. - -Although Belle Ile is only a pin-head on most maps of France, it has a -considerable population. Palais is a town of five thousand souls, and -Sauzon counts something over sixteen hundred, and so Belle Ile, being -only about 21,000 acres in extent, is a very thickly populated part of -the globe. - -Returning to the mainland, a call at Locmariaquer is inevitable, if one -be a true and genuine traveller, even if it be “out of the world,” which -virtually it is, being at the tip end of another peninsula like that of -Quiberon. - -The town itself owns to fifteen hundred or more souls, and all of them -look prosperous and contented. Where all of them get their livelihood, -it is difficult to see, for there is not much intercourse with the -outside world. - -Locmariaquer has not even a railway, as Quiberon has, but lies twenty -kilometres or so south of Auray, almost at the mouth of Morbihan Bay. -The church of Locmariaquer is a fine twelfth-century work, but the -foundation of the little town lies much farther back in antiquity than -this. It was the ancient Doriorigum of the Romans. - -The Chapel of St. Michel is built up from the Roman remains of a -structure known as _er c’hastel_. - -The great celebrities of Locmariaquer are, however, those members -of the great family of menhirs, dolmens, and cromlechs with which -this part of Morbihan is so thickly strewn. The chief of these are -the dolmen known as Mané-Lud, Mountain of Ashes, of vast dimensions -and having a grotto beneath it. Not far off is a tumulus and another -dolmen known as Dol-er-Groh, an enormous stone table or altar. Another -is known as Mané-er-H’roeck, the stone of the fairies; it is quite -seventy feet long, or was, for it now lies full length on the ground -broken into four pieces. The finest and best preserved of all is the -Dol-ar-Marc’hadouiren, the Merchants’ Table. It is hard to see just the -significance of the name given to these three huge stones, but they form -a wonderfully impressive monument of days gone by, nevertheless. - -The most beautiful dolmen known, whatever that description may really -mean (the local renter of boats calls it such: “_le plus beau dolmen -connu_”), can be visited only by boat. It is on an island in the gulf, -and is known as the Gavr’inis. - -La Trinité, “a little village on the very edge of the sea”! This is a -description which exactly fits what the natives and the railway powers -like to think is a watering-place. It is something like one, to be sure, -but the influx of strangers during the summer months has never been so -great as to obliterate or even to deaden the local colour. Its little -harbour is lively with fishing-boats, and occasionally gay, when the -boats are “dressed” for some great festival, but nothing of blatant -bands and riotous crowds mars the quietness and sweetness of La Trinité, -and accordingly it is a place to be remembered. - -Sometimes the sterility of the soil round about causes real distress -among the small farming peasants; “one cannot live on fish alone,” they -say. - -There is a local benefactress who, when crops are poor and meagre, gives -the whole of her own harvest gathered from an unusually ample holding -to her more distressed neighbours. This is a true and practical charity -that does not smack of smugness or pretence as do many acts questionably -classed under that head. It is a singularly expressive exemplification -of what the French know as “good socialism,” and one hears much of it at -La Trinité and in its neighbourhood. - -Taking to the road again, on the way to Auray, one passes another of -those curious granitic formations. This time it comes down more near -our own day, and is called the “St. Tiviro’s hat.” It does not look the -least like the saint’s hat, any more than the “devil’s seats” and the -“old men of the mountains,” scattered about the world, look like what -they are called--but let that pass. Legend connects this rock with a -certain St. Tiviro, who one day lost his hat, which ultimately turned to -stone. It does not seem plausible, and it is a pointless story indeed, -but it gives a small child the opportunity to point it out for a penny, -which most folk will not grudge. - - - - -CHAPTER V. - -MORBIHAN--LORIENT AND ITS NEIGHBOURHOOD - - -Three towns of Morbihan little known, still less visited by travellers -in Brittany, lie within a comparatively small area just north of the -coast, and their names are Lorient, Hennebont, and Pont Scorff. - -The very name Lorient will appeal to many. It suggests the great -trade with the East, in full swing in the seventeenth and eighteenth -centuries, when the town grew up as a necessary part of a vast commerce. -Some of the old-time romantic picturesqueness of the shipping has -disappeared, and the Hotels “Royal Sword” and “White Horse” have given -way to the Hotels “Modern” and “of France,” with electric lights and -sheds for motor-cars, but there is still a distinguishing excellence to -be remarked which makes Lorient a place well worth visiting. - -It was in the seventeenth century that an association of Breton -merchants, who were carrying on the trade with the East Indies, -first built their warehouses here. The traffic grew to proportions so -considerable that Louis XIV. ultimately gave letters patent for the -foundation of a new and grander East India Company. - -The company erected ship-houses here, and the name Lorient was given to -the settlement, which was fast growing to a prime importance among the -ports of France. An English fleet, under Admiral Lestock, landed some -six or seven thousand men in the bay of Poldu, at twelve kilometres west -of Lorient, and marched upon the town as a revenge for certain attacks -upon British interests in the East. - -The English met with no great triumph here, but Louis XV. was -indifferent enough to allow many of the French settlements in the Indies -to be taken, and this led to the rapid decadence of the great East India -Company and its port. Napoleon resuscitated it, as he did many another -decaying institution in France, and developed the industry of the port -to such an extent that Lorient became one of the principal maritime -towns of France. Its past history sounds romantic enough, but there is -little of romance about the life of its streets and wharves to-day; -instead, there is activity not admitting even the thought of romance. -Jangling gongs of tram-cars, the puffing of locomotives, and the -shrieks of the sirens, to say nothing of the accompaniment of belching -chimney-stacks and the sound of the riveting hammers in the great -shipyards, all testify that Lorient is living in the age of progress. - -Local sights, outside this marvellous exposition of modern spirit, are -few. There is a municipal museum, containing some good modern pictures, -many of them of Breton subjects, but there are no ecclesiastical or -architectural monuments worthy of remark. The commercial harbour and the -dockyard are decidedly the most interesting features. Within the walls -of the latter is the parade-ground, which serves as a fine promenade -for the population of Lorient when the military band plays on summer -evenings. - -The roadstead of Lorient is a great deep-water harbour, which can -shelter the largest ships afloat. It is guarded by six great lights, -one of them in the cupola of the Church of St. Louis. This is one of -the very few instances where a great city church is a mariner’s beacon, -besides performing its other functions on behalf of lost souls. - -Opposite Lorient is Port Louis, founded a century before its bigger -sister. Anciently it was known as Blavet, but took its present name in -honour of Louis XIII. Its walls were begun in 1652. - -In the immediate neighbourhood of Lorient and Port Louis are many -delightful little seaside places, hardly popular resorts in any sense -of the word, but all the better for that, where one may get such views -of sea and shore and shipping of all ranks as is hardly to be found -elsewhere on the Breton coast. - -Up the little river Blavet, at the head of deep-sea navigation, is -Hennebont, a most delightfully disposed little place, which has been -called the pearl of the Blavet. Like most of the tidal rivers of France, -the Blavet, on its lower reaches, offers about the most paintable of all -landscapes imaginable. This, with the Auray, the Aven, the Scorff, and -the Elle, would prove a sketching-ground quite inexhaustible, in the -variety of its moods, to the artist of an average length of life. - -[Illustration: <u>_Hennebont_</u>] - -Hennebont, which has eight thousand or more inhabitants and a delightful -inn, electric-lighted though it be, is divided into the new town and the -fortified town. It sits beside the river’s bank, and crosses on a bridge -of three arches. Above, the river dwindles to a mere rivulet, but below -the incoming tides will bring craft of a tonnage of three hundred -or more straight to the heart of the town. A tonnage of three hundred -does not mean much to the travellers by twenty-thousand-ton steamships, -but assuredly when one sees one of these little craft, with their three -slender square-rigged masts, by the soft light of the full moon, in the -little Breton port of Hennebont, it looks like the phantom ship, whose -masts and spars “cross the moon like prison bars.” - -Hennebont derives its name from the Breton words for old bridge. The -first lord of the place, Huelin of Hennebont, lived in 1037. The -fortified town was, of course, the earlier foundation, the new town only -coming into existence in the sixteenth century, when the great Church of -Our Lady of Paradise was still in the open country. - -Trade follows the flag, but habitations follow the church, and so, when -this great Gothic edifice was built in 1513-30, it began to draw the -houses of the city dwellers around it, and now the fortified town is -practically non-existent except as a quarter. - -This church is a wonder-work of its kind, considering its great size, -its graceful lines, and its ornamental Gothic spire, rising to a height -which must approximate three hundred feet. - -The ancient ramparts of the old fortified town appear here and there -along the river-bank, in the well-preserved gateway which one passes -on the left after leaving the river on the way to the church, and in -yet another fragment--a great circular tower--in the courtyard of the -aforesaid excellent Hôtel de France. - -The old castle of Hennebont, of which something more than fragments -still remain, saw the death of Comte Charles of Blois, who, escaping -from his dungeon in one of the towers of the old Louvre at Paris, came -here in 1345. One may read in Froissart of the defence of Hennebont by -Jeanne of Montfort in 1342. - -There are many old gabled houses at Hennebont, most fantastic in form, -one of which, bearing the inscription, “LE LEVIC, 1600,” is -perhaps the most ancient of any built without the walls of the fortified -town. - -The great fortified gateway, which gives access to the old citadel, is -a fine ogival work flanked by two massive machicolated towers. This old -district is quite the most curious and unworldly feature of this little -city by the Blavet. - -It is a veritable town of the middle ages, yet unspoiled and quite as it -was in the olden days, when its sturdy walls gave protection against -the invader, and its great gates opened only upon the orders of the -governor. - -In suburban Hennebont, scarce a kilometre away, on the left bank of -the Blavet, are to be seen the remains of the old Abbaye de la Joie, -a famous establishment of the monks of the Cistercian order. It was -founded in the thirteenth century by Blanche of Champagne, wife of John -the Red-haired. One still sees her statue in wood and bronze, but the -conventual buildings themselves have come to base uses, and are now a -horse-breeding establishment. - -Pont Scorff, so far as its situation is concerned, resembles Hennebont. -It spans the tiny river Scorff, and the views along the banks are in -every way equally delightful with those on the Blavet. Pont Scorff, -however, has not the magnitude or the antiquity of Hennebont, and its -two parts are known as the upper town and the lower town. - -The most ancient building here is the Chapel of St. John of the old -commandery of St. John du Faouët; it dates at least from the thirteenth -century. There is a fine Renaissance house in the little public square, -called the House of the Princes. It is richly decorated and has a fine -series of dormer windows and a row of pilasters bearing the symbols of -the Rohan family. There is another ancient house, formerly belonging, -it is believed, to the Templars. The parish Church of St. Albin dates -only from 1610, and is in no way a remarkable work. - -The Chapel of Notre Dame de Kergornet, a fifteenth-century edifice near -by, is a place of pilgrimage for the Breton nurses, that great race of -foster-mothers who care for the thousands of Parisian children in the -Bois, or the gardens of the Tuileries, or the Luxembourg. - -From this point, as one journeys westward, he leaves pretty much all -France behind him. The modern Department of Finistère, the “Land’s -End” of the French, is all that lies between him and the vast heaving -Atlantic. - - - - -CHAPTER VI. - -FINISTÈRE--SOUTH - - -At Quimperlé one makes his first acquaintance with that part of -the Armorican peninsula known to-day on the maps of France as the -Department of Finistère. This charming little town is of itself of great -importance, as marking the dividing-line between the dialect of Vannes -and that of the western peninsula. There is no great difference to be -noted by the casual traveller, since all of the younger population speak -the French tongue,--sometimes exclusively,--but there is an unmistakable -modification of manners and customs toward the more theatrical aspect -which one best sees at Pont Aven, Pont l’Abbé, and the little fishing -villages around the Bay of Douarnenez. - -Of the women of Quimperlé much has been remarked by all who have ever -lingered within its walls. They are “superb in type, elegant and -gracious,” we were told by a French artist who had set up his easel on -the quay. But there is no need to tell anybody; even a woman-hater would -remark it. Certainly this is as good an entrance to a new and strange -land as heart could desire. - -Quimperlé lies on both sides of the little river Elle, which, like -the other streams of the South Breton coast, is a special variety of -waterway quite unlike their more pretentious brothers and sisters -elsewhere. The country round about has been called the “Arcadia of -Lower Brittany,” and so it will strike even the least observant of -travellers--after he has recovered from the effects of the glances of -those elegant and gracious females. - -The most ancient part of the little city is that known as the walled -town, grouped around the ancient Abbey of Holy Cross, on that tongue of -land which separates the Isole and the Elle. The escarpment is badly -built up, but withal it is ruggedly picturesque, abounding in old -houses, some of which have stood since the thirteenth century. - -[Illustration: <u>_Quimperlé_</u>] - -The site of the old Abbey of Holy Cross was known in the sixth century -as Anaurot, and became the refuge of one of the Breton Kings of -Cambria, who, abdicating, came here and built a hermitage, which in -time was converted into an abbey of Benedictines. This old Abbey -of Holy Cross, as it exists to-day, has a ground-plan which more -nearly follows that of a four-armed cross than any other extant in -Christendom. The same motive doubtless inspired its builders as that -which induced the architects of Charlemagne to erect that famous round -church at Aix-la-Chapelle, which in reality it greatly resembles in -general features; both went back to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at -Jerusalem for their initial idea. - -This church at Quimperlé is one of the three or four in all Brittany -having a crypt, and it is more amply endowed with interior furnishings -and fitments than many a grander edifice. Altogether it is an -ecclesiastical monument of the first importance. - -It has a companion, moreover, of no mean rank, either, in the Church of -St. Michael, which sits high on the hilltop and dominates nearly every -vista of the town. - -After a tempestuous past extending from the monastic foundation of -the sixth century, Anaurot, or Quimperlé as it had become meantime, -surrendered to Duguesclin in 1373. Finally, when a treaty had been -signed with the League as to future neutrality, the city walls were -demolished (in 1680), and Quimperlé settled down to a peaceful -existence, which is only broken on the year’s great feast-days, or on -the days of the pardons,--that of the Passion in March, the Pardon of -the Birds on Whit-Monday, the second day of May, or the last Sunday of -July. - -One or the other of these dates should be made to correspond with one’s -itinerary, when one will see the real Lower Breton as he seldom appears -outside a picture. Near Quimperlé is the little coast station of Pouldu, -where figtrees, the hydrangea, and other plants of the Midi bloom -throughout the year. - -Needless to say that it may some day become a really popular and -populous seaside resort, with casinos and alleged Hungarian bands, -but that day may be far distant, and any one looking for an unspoiled -seaside resting-place need not hesitate to go out of his way to give -a glance to this altogether delightful little port of Pouldu. There -is nothing like it, nothing so unaffected and unspoiled, on the whole -Breton coast. On the way to Pouldu one passes the important ruins of the -ancient Abbey of St. Maurice, founded in 1170 by the Duke Conan IV., and -the place where Maurice--a monk of Langonnet since become sainted--was -buried in 1191. In part, this fine ruin dates from the thirteenth -century, to which period belong the chapter-room and the chapel, the -principal features still remaining intact. - -Near Quimperlé is St. Fiacre, whom some unknowing person has called the -patron saint of the Paris cabman, an individual who has not much regard -for anything saintly. - -There is a beautiful fifteenth-century chapel at St. Fiacre, though -to-day it is greatly marred by wind, weather, and barbarous customs. -Each year, in June, there is an important fair held at St. Fiacre, at -which the young men from round about offer themselves for employment. -Each of them carries a rod or switch. To engage one who seems a likely -person for your purpose, you, or the young man before your eyes,--after -a parley,--break the rod, and he immediately becomes a member of your -domestic establishment. - -There seems something rather uncertain about all this, but surely the -“matter of form” augurs as well for good and faithful service as the -average written “character” with which one engages a servant in England. - -The hair-cutter appears at St. Fiacre as at all Breton fairs. He is -known as Gerard, and since the age of ten years he has been learned in -the art of hair-cutting. For a long time he was the chief barber of a -regiment of the line, and he will tell you (or he may not) that he has -cut many hundreds of thousands of heads in his time, and has garnered -enough of a crop to carpet the whole of the village of St. Fiacre a -metre deep. - -Faouët, not to be confounded with the place of the same name in the -Côtes du Nord, is a small town with a great square, and a still more -important old market-house, which, like that at Auray, strikes the -stranger as being a marvellous construction of wooden beams, and quite -impossible to duplicate to-day, whereas the construction is doubtless -far less complex than the modern market-houses that one sometimes -meets,--mere ugly sheds of brick and iron. - -There is a never ceasing ebb and flow of peasant-folk at the Faouët -market, the busiest of which come the Saturday of Holy Week, the Friday -after Pentecost, the twentieth of June, and the sixth and twenty-sixth -of July. - -[Illustration: <u>_Market-house, Faouët_</u>] - -The scene is too dazzling to describe, and too active to snap-shot, -and one can only feel its real significance by personal participation. -The transactions are not of the stupendous order, and there is much -good-natured chaffing and bartering, and it offers a scene as lively -as if the fate of a nation were depending on the outcome. - -[Illustration: <u>_Market-day_</u>] - -The Breton peasant is not always the sad and superstitious individual he -has been pictured, though both men and women think nothing of embracing -the opportunity of saying a “Hail Mary” in the Chapel of St. Barbara, or -before the great cross of stone beside the main road, as they go into -town, taking to market a small calf or a brace or two of ducks, led at -the end of a cord by their sides. - -The Chapel of St. Barbara occupies an extraordinary position three -hundred metres or more above the bed of the Elle, which bathes the lower -walls of the town. - -After tradition, the Sieur de Toulbodon was one day hunting in the -valley of the Elle, when a terrific storm broke overhead, and a rock -falling at his feet barred the way. He made a vow to St. Barbara to -erect a chapel here, because of his merciful preservation from death. -The rock exists to-day, and is shown to the credulous,--at least, a -rock is shown which the credulous believe is the identical one, and -accordingly it is venerated; though why it is not reviled, no one seems -to know. - -Near Faouët is the Abbey of Our Lady of Langonnet, founded in 1136 by -Conan III. of Brittany. Its fortunes have been various; in Revolutionary -times it served as quarters for a stud, but has since been turned over -to religious uses again, and is now occupied by a congregation of the -Fathers of the Holy Ghost. - -The church, the chapter-room, and some other details still remain, -admirably preserved, to illustrate the excellence of the early Gothic -period of the buildings. - -On the way to Rosporden, one passes the principal town of Bannalec, -whose original name was Balaneck, meaning the place for planting the -broom. It has not much interest for the stranger, unless perchance -he happens to pass through it on the day of some local feast or -celebration, when he will most likely see the young peasant-folk, men -and women, dancing in the middle of the roadway, as they do in the -operas. Brittany indeed is about the only place where one is likely -to see such a phenomenon, and, if by chance it happen to be a wedding -celebration, the diversion will be doubly interesting. - -On the particular occasion when the builders of this book passed that -way, a wedding dance was actually in progress, and so edifying was the -ceremony that the bride and groom were invited into the tonneau of our -motor-car, and whirled away to Rosporden for a little excursion, which -was unpremeditated and unexpected to all concerned, and was probably -also a unique experience. - -Rosporden, on the shore of the great lake of Rosporden, as it was -described to us, proved a disappointment. Not that so very much was -expected of it, but that so little was found in it. The lake is a -misnomer, though the water-weedy pond near the church serves the -innumerable artists who flock to the region as a highly interesting -foreground. The women of Rosporden wear the most immense bonnets and -coifs to be seen in all Brittany, and wimples like those of the Sisters -of Charity. - -[Illustration: <u>_Rosporden_</u>] - -The church dates from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries, and is in -every way an admirably preserved monument. - -To Concarneau and the smell of the sea is a dozen or fourteen kilometres -over a gently rising and falling road, with a tendency always to descend -until finally one coasts down the long main street of the celebrated -fishing port and artists’ sketching-ground (it would be hard to tell -in which aspect it is the more famous), until one comes to that famous -Great Travellers’ Hotel, where one eats of oysters, lobster, and fresh -sardines and many other kinds of sea food to such an extent that one -feels decidedly fishy, or at least thirsty. - -This should make little difference, as the coffee-room of that most -excellent hostelry is likewise excellent, and has a charming outlook -upon the wharfs and fishing-boats, thus affording as delightful a method -of accustoming oneself to strange sights as could be imagined. - -The fishing-boats of Concarneau are one and all great brown-winged gulls -that flit slowly over the great bay, going in and out with the rise -and fall of the tide all through the round of the clock, depositing -their cargoes on the wharfs, shifting crews, and starting off again in -a continuous performance of coming and going which never ceases until -their timbers, from some untoward cause, fall apart. - -As the boats lie at the landing, sails come down and the delicate brown -and blue nets go up for drying, for not all of the boats have so great -a supply that they can shift to another set. The most curious effect is -given by these blue and brown nets swinging masthead high, as if they -were spider-web sails. - -The picturesqueness of the Concarneau fishing-boats is undeniable. -Nothing like them exists elsewhere, and when the sardine boats set out -for the west, as the sun goes down, there are as wonderful combinations -of golden yellow-browns, reds, and purples as the most imaginative -painter could possibly conjure on his canvas. - -On shore, the nets, spread for drying on the wharfs and on the racks -beside the little fisherman’s chapel and the great stone crucifix -which faces seawards, are of the deepest blues and purple-browns in a -bewitching mixture. - -Not a white-sailed boat is to be seen, unless it is an occasional yacht -drifting in because its owner has tired of making the fashionable -harbours where his guests can spend the night on shore dancing to the -questionable music of a red or blue coated band. - -[Illustration: <u>_Stone Crucifix, Concarneau_</u>] - -It is a question as to whether Concarneau, were it not the centre of the -sardine fishery, might not be the first seaside resort of the world. -As it is, there are not a few who evidently think it far preferable to -those pseudo-society watering-places, whose chief attractions are big -casinos and little horses. - -[Illustration: <u>_Concarneau_</u>] - -The hotels of the place are in no sense resort hotels, though they -are fitted with a marvellous convenience and comfort, and feed one -most bountifully and excellently on sea food, wherein fresh sardines -and lobsters predominate,--those two great delicacies of the Paris -restaurant which here are the common food of the people, for Concarneau -is one of the few fishing centres of the world which keeps some of its -products for the supply of its own table. - -To-day the town is composed of two quarters, the new town, otherwise the -faubourg Ste. Croix, modern, prosperous, and animated, and the walled -town, the island fort of the middle ages. - -In 1373, Concarneau was occupied by an English garrison, who fled before -Duguesclin. In 1488, the Viscount of Rohan reduced it by order of -Charles VIII., but the Marshal de Rieux retook it from the French the -following year, and repaired and strengthened the old fortifications. - -The religious wars played their part here most vividly, until finally it -fell to the hands of Henry IV. - -The walled town to-day is a remarkable example of an isolated fort -or citadel, the islet upon which it is situated being of a confined -area and wholly surrounded by a thick granite rampart, which, however -invulnerable it may have been in a former day, would stand no chance -against modern guns. - -In part, these fortifications date from the fourteenth century, and -at high water are entirely surrounded by the sea. The great bastion -attributed to the former Duchess Anne--after she had become a queen of -France--is a stupendous work of its time. For the most part, the other -parts of the walls have been restored and built up anew in modern times. - -Concarneau is the Ploudenec of Blanche Willis Howard’s charming Breton -tale of “Guenn,” and Nevin, where the great pardon dance was held, may -have been Pont Aven or Rosporden. - -There is a wealth of charming colour in this sad tale, and not a little -truth with regard to some of the characters, to which Americans, before -now, have attempted to attach the names of real persons in the world of -art and literature. - -Opposite Concarneau is Beg-Meil, which in more respects than one is an -anomaly. It has some pretence at being a watering-place, but there is -no town there, save such as is built up around a few country-houses and -hotels, catering only to summer folk; besides this, a few scattered -and isolated farms form the sum total of the habitations of this -little jutting point of land running out into the billowy Atlantic. -For four-fifths of the year, the population of this salt meadow is -composed only of sea-birds, which, like their fellows elsewhere, form an -interesting colony of themselves. - -The sea-birds of Brittany, like those of other rock-bound shores, are -ever interesting to the traveller. Like the gulls of London Bridge, -those near the great bay of Concarneau are wonderfully tame and -singularly ravenous, and apparently eat all day. That is, when they -are not sleeping or billing and cooing, as is the sea-birds’ way, for -in this they would seem to rival the turtle-dove. When they are not -courting or sleeping, they go a-fishing, and the seaweed-strewn rocks -about Concarneau are their happy hunting-grounds. They will eat, say the -fisherfolk of the sardine fleet, five pounds or more of fish in a day, -which is considerably more than the weight of an individual bird. - -From Concarneau one must perforce follow back along the coast-line to -Pont Aven, for a trip to Brittany without having known the delights of -this colony of artist-folk, in which Americans predominate, would be -like the tragedy without Hamlet, or the circus without the elephant or -the pink lemonade. - -“_Pont Aven, the Barbison of Bretagne! chosen home of the painters of -all nations and all schools, with Americans predominating._” This is -a faithful translation of the remark of an appreciative travelling -salesman, one “who loved art,” if the description be credible. You -will hear tales at Pont Aven of the time when artists found their -accommodation at a roadside inn outside the town--now apparently -vanished--for fifty-five francs per month, and paid a sou for a litre -of milk, and four sous for a litre of cider. - -[Illustration: <u>_Pont Aven_</u>] - -These days have gone, and at Pont Aven, as elsewhere throughout the -world, the prices of all things are apparently rising. Really, Pont Aven -and its environs are delightful; its little river is busy and chattering -with many mill-wheels, and the Lovers’ Wood--as many know--is well named. - -Because of its many riverside mill-wheels, Pont Aven has been named -Millers’ Town by the natives, and also “The famous town with fourteen -mills and fifteen houses.” - -Unquestionably, the fame of Pont Aven has been made, or, at least, -furthered, by Mlle. Julia, the most capable landlady of the Travellers’ -Hotel. The modest little country-house which formed the original hotel -has now a more magnificent neighbour, built up with a steel frame,--like -a Chicago skyscraper,--and resplendent with modern furniture, with -chairs and sofas of the saddle-bag variety, electric lights, electric -bells which actually do ring, ice-water, afternoon tea, Scotch whiskey, -and all the super-refinements of a twentieth-century civilization. - -It is all very comfortable,--too comfortable the artists will tell -you,--but the eagle eye and strong will of Mlle. Julia still hover over -all, and nothing of deterioration is to be noted in the fare, which is -excellent, and served in the charmingly quaint and beautifully decorated -dining-hall of the little old inn, the precursor of the more splendid -addition. - -[Illustration: Map, ENVIRONS OF PONT AVEN] - -All this is as it should be, of course, but the price has of late gone -up, though it is still thought exceedingly modest by guests who have -spent most of their time in big city or seaside hotels. - -Painters are perhaps fewer here to-day than some years ago, and there -are more of the questionable pleasures of society, such as bridge and -ping-pong, which is a pity. - -Another appendage to the Hotel Julia is found at the St. Nicolas Beach -on the coast. St. Nicolas is hardly more than a bathing-place, but it -is delightfully empty, and altogether Pont Aven, with its environs, is -a charming centre from which to make a week’s, a month’s, or a summer’s -excursion. - -Of the young girls of Pont Aven, Anatole France has uttered many -truthful phrases. Very gracious they are indeed with their great white -quilled collars, their windmill coifs, and their black skirts plaited -like an accordion. - -Here at Pont Aven--as elsewhere--fashion reigns, and the costume as it -is known to-day is quite different from that of fifty years ago, which -was not so picturesque, one would say, judging from old prints. - -The metropolis of these parts and the ecclesiastical capital, for it is -a cathedral city, is Quimper, twenty odd kilometres west of Concarneau. - -Quimper is a real city, though it owns to a trifle less than twenty -thousand inhabitants, and was the ancient capital of the county of -Cornouaille. From all points the marvellously beautiful spires of its -Cathedral of St. Corentin dominate the place. It is one of the most -characteristically Breton towns in the manners and customs of the -people, the general aspect of its wharfs and streets, its shops and its -markets. - -The first establishment of a settlement here was in Roman times, when, -in the eleventh century, it was known as the Civitas Aquilonia. After -the expulsion of the Romans from the land, it became the capital and -the home of the kings or hereditary Counts of Cornouaille, one of whom, -Grollon, has left a legend of great vitality, telling of his emigration -here from Britain across the seas, and the founding of the first -bishopric. - -The cathedral, dedicated to St. Corentin, was built between 1239 and -1515, and shows the marks of the best workmanship of its time. Its fine -spires rival those of St. Pol de Léon and Tréguier in the north. The -ground-plan of this fine church is not truly orientated, a detail which -is supposed to indicate the inclining of the head of Christ on the -cross. It is not unique, but the arrangement is so rarely found as to -warrant remark. - -The town hall encloses a library of some thirty-four thousand volumes, -among them a copy of the first dictionary in the Breton tongue, -published at Tréguier in 1499. - -The museum contains some interesting archæological treasures and some -good modern paintings, including examples of the work of Yan d’Argent, -Joubert Lansyer, Dagnan, and Abram Duvau, mostly depicting Breton -subjects. It also has an admirable collection of old Breton costumes, -etc. - -[Illustration: <u>_From the Museum at Quimper_</u>] - -The Rue Kéréon is the chief street of the town, and, like the -Kalverstraat of Amsterdam, is one of those narrow thoroughfares so -overflowing with life that to observe and study the passing throng is to -master the manners and customs of the people. - -There are many quaint old houses scattered here and there, and like -those old lean-to and tumble-down structures of Rouen and Lisieux, they -continually reappear on the canvases shown in Paris each year at the two -great exhibitions. - -The Allées Locmaria form a series of magnificently shaded promenades; -this is frequently a feature of French towns above a population of ten -thousand, and a feature which might be imitated in America and England -with considerable accruing advantage. - -South from Quimper lie Pont l’Abbé and Penmarc’h, as characteristically -Breton as anything to be seen in the whole province; the former has -something over six thousand inhabitants, and the latter over four, and -each has its own distinct characteristics. - -Pont l’Abbé is a town of embroiderers. Everywhere one finds shops whose -sole business it is to sell those fine braid embroideries--yellow on a -black ground--which have made this part of Brittany famous. - -The costumes of Pont l’Abbé are famous throughout all Brittany. The -coif recalls those seen in the pictures of the ancient Gauls. It is -virtually a little black velvet hood, and the coif itself is a “_pignon -de couleur_,” as the hostess of the hotel described it, and then, -man-fashion, the author felt he was wallowing in a strange subject. -Locally this confection, taken entire, it is inferred, is known as a -_bigouden_,--a picturesque but not precisely instructive word. - -The men wear a hat with three great buckles, and some of them--though -their numbers are few--may yet be seen in the _culotte bouffante_, that -peculiarly Breton species of breeches known in their own tongue as -“_bragou-braz_.” - -With such an introduction, one might expect almost any fantastic costume -to step out from a doorway, but, to realize the quaintness of it all to -the full, one should see the inhabitants at the Fêtes de la Tréminou, -held on the twenty-fifth of March, Whit-Monday, the third Sunday in -July, and the fourth Sunday in September. - -The dances of Pont l’Abbé are famous and are indescribable by any one -but a dancing-master. Inasmuch as they invariably take place in the open -air, they may be accepted as the free and spontaneous expression of an -emotion, which stuffy ballroom cotillons most decidedly are not. - -The church of Pont l’Abbé dates from a Carmelite foundation of the -fourteenth century, and is a fine work of its era, though surmounted -by a curious and modern bell-tower in wood. Within the church are the -tombs of many of the ancient barons of Pont l’Abbé. The magnificent rose -window is of modern glass, but so admirable that one stands before it -with a certain respectful awe, as before that old thirteenth-century -glass in Chartres cathedral. The ancient cloisters are still preserved -and surround a fine garden. - -Pont l’Abbé is only five kilometres from the coast, and Loctudy, also -the possessor of a fine mediæval church, and Penmarc’h form a trio of -Breton coast towns quite as worthy of one’s attention as many better -known resorts. - -Penmarc’h--which for some inexplicable reason is pronounced _Penmar_--is -situated in the midst of a great bare peninsula terminating in the -Pointe de Penmarc’h. Instead of a high cliff sheared off at the water’s -edge, as one so frequently sees on the north coast, the point sinks -gently into the blue waters of the Atlantic until it is swallowed up, -with never so much as a line of breakers to indicate its presence from -seaward. Penmarc’h in Breton signifies the “head of a horse,” and Benzec -Capcaval, a village not far distant, means the same. An ingenious person -will have no difficulty in following the etymology of the latter word, -but the former is quite incomprehensible except to a Welshman. - -Penmarc’h was for four centuries a city which kept pace with Nantes. Its -early riches came from the traffic in “lenten meat,” which is simply -codfish. - -The Church of St. Nonna is a late Gothic edifice, with a great square -tower which will be remarked by all who come near it. Its interior -has two baptismal fonts, strangely decorated with stone carvings of -fantastic shapes, depicting the history of Penmarc’h. - -Three kilometres away is the town of St. Guénolé, a tiny fishing port -with fine panoramic view of the Bay of Audierne. The chapel of St. -Guénolé occupies the base of a great tower, now ruinous, but looking as -though in a former day it must have belonged to some pretentious church. - -“The Handle of the Torch” is one of the local sights. It is formed of a -series of great rocks at some little distance from the mainland. That -bearing the name of “The Torch” is separated from the mainland by the -Monk’s Leap, which, according to legend, was the landing-place of St. -Viaud, when he migrated from Hibernia to Brittany ages ago. - -From Quimper to the Point of Raz is one long up and down hill pull of -fifty kilometres, until one finally reaches Point or Cape Sizun, known -to Ptolemy as the promontory of Gabœum. It is the extreme westerly -point of the peninsula of Cornouaille, and, reckoning from the meridian -of Paris,--for the French do not use the meridian of Greenwich,--is just -on the line of the seventh degree of west longitude. The Léon country -northward of Brest actually extends a trifle farther westward, at Point -St. Mathieu, but most maps do not show it. - -North of the Point of Raz is the great Bay of Douarnenez, with its -sardine fisheries rivalling those of Concarneau, and southward lies the -shallow bay of the Audierne, whose shores, in their own way, are quite -as characteristically wild as those of any part of Northwestern France. - -At the extreme end of the Point of Raz are two unpretentious hotels, -which will please only those of simple tastes and lovers of the -solitary; both are connected with more ambitious establishments at -Audierne. - -The Bay of the Dead, the Hell of Plogaff, and the rocky point itself, -form the tourist attractions, but it will be enough for most lovers of -solitude to bask in the sunlight amid the gentle breezes from the Gulf -Stream, and to leave rock-climbing to those agile spirits who affect -that sort of exercise. - -Near Audierne is the Church of St. Tuglan, a fine fifteenth and -sixteenth century edifice, with many a legend clinging to the name of -its patron saint. It is all very vague, but there is hidden superstition -in abundance, if one only had the patience to work it out. All that can -be learned is, that the holy man was the Abbé of Primelin, near by, and -that his feast is celebrated throughout all the Point of Raz. His statue -represents him with a key in the hand, and there is a great iron key -preserved in the church said to have once belonged to him. On the day -of the pardon great quantities of little loaves are stamped with this -key and, according to a popular belief, they will cure a mad dog of his -madness, if he be given a morsel to eat, and possess many other virtues -of a similar nature. In the sacristy of the church are preserved the -teeth of St. Tuglan. The inhabitants of Primelin are known as _paotret -ar alc’houez_, or servants of the key. - -Audierne is a busy little Breton port of perhaps four thousand -inhabitants, and opposite is the fishing village of Poulgoazec, with -sardine factories and all the equipment of the trade. Up to the -sixteenth century, Audierne was even more flourishing than it is to-day, -for the codfish, which were its riches, had not left for other shores. - -The vast Bay of Audierne has a wild and deeply embayed coast-line, -with nothing but a population of sea-birds to add to the gaiety of the -landscape. - -Northward, toward Douarnenez, is Pont Croix, built in the form of an -amphitheatre on the bank of the river Goayen. - -Our Lady of Roscudon is an ancient collegiate church now turned into a -little seminary. The peasant folk round about call it only the Virgin’s -church. It is in many respects a remarkable fifteenth-century work. - -[Illustration: <u>_Cape de la Chèvre_</u>] - -From the Point of Raz in the south to Cape de la Chèvre in the north -extends the great gulf known as the Bay of Douarnenez. Along its shores -are innumerable little fishing villages, which seem almost of another -world. Certainly they have not much in common with other sections of -Brittany, to say nothing of the rest of Europe. - -Douarnenez disputes with Concarneau the privilege of being considered -the centre of the sardine industry, and, like it, has all the -picturesque attributes of brown-sailed boats and of blue and brown nets -hung masthead high for drying, as the craft lie at the quayside, after -having unloaded their catch. - -The delicate blues and purple-browns of these nets are irresistible -to the artist, but few have caught the real tone; indeed, more than -one painter of repute has given it up as a bad job, saying that it was -impossible to transfer it to canvas. - -The beauty of the Bay of Douarnenez has a fascination for artists and -holds one spellbound under certain aspects of the westering sun, when -lights and shadows intermingle in truly heavenly fashion. - -During the civil wars of the sixteenth centuries, Douarnenez was -taken by Jacques de Guengat, but was retaken by Fontenelle in 1595 -and its houses for the most part demolished, and used to build up the -fortifications of the Ile Tristan. - -Douarnenez signifies, literally, the land of the isle. The Ile Tristan -once contained a priory dedicated to St. Tutarn, but now the chief -sights are the lighthouse and a sardine factory. An ancient tradition -recounts that the Ile Tristan received its name from the valiant Tristan -of Léonais, one of the knights of the Round Table. - -Except for the view from the gallery of the great lighthouse, the -trip to the island is hardly worth the making. The view from this -vantage-point is, however, remarkable; indeed, it is unique, the writer -is inclined to think, in all the world. Suffice to say of it that it is -unworldly, and yet gay with the workaday coming and going of the sardine -fleets, as such a paradoxical description will permit one to imagine. -All is peaceful, and yet there is a steady inflow of industry that is in -no wise detrimental to its unspoiled tranquillity. Perhaps if an artist -lived by the shores of the deep blue and purple waters of this bay for a -matter of two score of years, he might do it justice; until then--never. - -Concarneau as a port is more interesting than Douarnenez, but the bay of -Concarneau, delightful as it is, has not a tithe of the variations that -are played upon the gently flowing waters of the bay of Douarnenez by -the setting sun. - -The peninsula of Crozon shelters the bay of Douarnenez on the north. At -one pronged extremity is Roscanvel, jutting out into the roads of Brest, -and at the other is Cape de la Chèvre. Between the two is a wonderful -country of rock-strewn coast-line and poppy-covered inland fields. - -[Illustration: <u>_Woman of Chateaulin_</u>] - -Chateaulin, situated on the river Aulne, a little beyond the head of -the peninsula, is the metropolis of these parts. It owes its name to -an ancient hermitage of St. Idunet. Its present name grew from Nin or -Castel Nin, then Castelin, and finally Chateaulin. The hermitage, in -time, was succeeded by the priory of Locquidunet, and that in its turn -became the parish church of the present town. - -Hoël, Count of Cornouaille, who became Duke of Brittany, incorporated -the town with the ducal domain, from which time on its history was one -of partisan strife. - -The Revolution elevated it to the rank of a market-town, and changed -its name to “Cité sur Aulne” in an attempt to suppress the supposedly -aristocratic prefix of Château. Ultimately, it reverted to its former -name. - -Near by are the Black Mountains, of which Mené Hom is the chief -eminence, its summit rising to a height of 330 metres, with other peaks -at the height of 299, 272, and 248 metres. The heights are not so very -considerable, but their proximity to the sea exaggerates them, and -travellers by road--bicycle riders and travellers in motor-cars--will -think the process of crossing the Black Mountains, on the way from North -to South Finistère, as formidable as the task of Hannibal. - -Crozon is a much larger place than Chateaulin, isolated though it is -from all direct communication with other parts. It is situated some -250 feet above the sea, on what the French call a wild table-land, and -dominates the Bay of Douarnenez from the north. All around Crozon are -innumerable grottoes and rock-cut caves and excavations, which always -have a certain fascination for some folk, but will hardly interest the -devotee to the beauties of landscape. - -Camaret, at the very tip of the peninsula, is another safe port for -artists. Here are fishing-boats and all the accessories, like those -seen at Douarnenez and Concarneau, and with a landscape background and -a foreground of blue water that many whose names are great in the world -of art have painted and many more will paint. Cottets’s “Fishing-boats -at Camaret,” in the Luxembourg Gallery, is perhaps the best known of -these pictures, but the composition is always the same. The background -never changes,--the tiny chapel with its dwindling spire, the beacon, -and the tall, gaunt stone house on the little mole running seaward and -protecting the port, group themselves willingly enough into the most -charming view in all the town. - -The fishing-boats of the foreground change their positions, but -kaleidoscopically only, and one may return year after year and see -practically the same groupings, with only trifling differences. - -One makes his way from Camaret to the great military port and trading -town of Brest--if one need to go there at all, which is doubtful--either -by boat across the Goulet and the roads of Brest, some sixteen -kilometres by a puffy little excursion-boat, which, on a Sunday or a -feast-day, is anything but comfortable, or by road by way of Faou, which -is a great fruit and vegetable market for Brest, and not much more. - -There is a considerable display of costume here on market-days,--which -appear to be every day,--and the town is picturesque enough of itself, -though, strange to say, it smacks of suburbia,--a place where one gets -his news second-hand from some neighbouring city. - -[Illustration: <u>_Camaret_</u>] - - - - -CHAPTER VII. - -FINISTÈRE--NORTH - - -The northernmost part of the peninsula of Finistère has not the -abounding or varied interests of the south. Its monuments of other days -are not so many or so remarkable, and the sterner conditions of life -seem to have had a sobering effect upon manners and customs. - -Brest and its wonderfully ample harbour has by no means the attractions -of Vannes or of Nantes for the bird of passage, though its commercial -and strategic value is great, and its history vivid and eventful. In -spite of all this, there is little that is interesting to-day in its -straight streets and rectangular blocks. - -This fortified and exceedingly animated town owns to eighty odd thousand -inhabitants, and is so pervaded by military and naval organization that -there is very little local colour, very little atmosphere of the past -hanging about it to-day. To find this, one has to go back to Faou, to -Plougastel or Landerneau or Landivisiau, all within a radius of twenty -kilometres or so. - -The great bay of Brest is a swarming waterway, upon which the little -excursion steamers, tugboats, great cruisers and battle-ships, -torpedo-boats and torpedo-boat destroyers, and yet other craft built to -catch torpedo-boat destroyers, are all apparently entangled inexplicably -each in the wakes of all the others. - -The entrance to this harbour is known as the Goulet, and is lighted -by five lighthouses, which at night send out their twinkling rays of -red, green, and white in most kaleidoscopic fashion,--all Greek to a -landsman, but as clear as day to the Breton pilots who bring the great -ships in and out of this narrow waterway. In the ninth century, Brest -was already in existence, in spite of its modern aspect to-day, and -belonged to the Counts of Léon. Its future was as varied as the history -of Brittany. - -It opened its ports to the army of Charles VIII. in 1489, in spite of -the efforts of Duchess Anne to prevent such a proceeding. How far she -succumbed will be recalled when one realizes that two years later her -marriage with this prince was the first step which united the province -of Brittany for ever with France. Brest from this time took on a new -importance, until Cardinal Richelieu came to designate it as one of the -principal arsenals of France, and then, in 1631, came the creation of -the great dockyards. - -Of architectural monuments, Brest still has the Church of St. Louis -(1688-1778) and the twelfth and thirteenth century castle. As an -ecclesiastical monument, the church is quite unworthy of attention, -though it has some interesting tombs and monuments. - -The castle is an admirable example of mediæval fortification, with some -remarkable accessory details in its construction. The isolated donjon -tower was in other days a sort of independent citadel, and formed a -last refuge for the besieged occupants of the castle, should its outer -walls give way to the invaders. The Tower of Azenor and the Tower of -Anne of Brittany, so named for the respective princesses, are admirably -preserved parts. - -The local museum and library have fine collections. There are fifty-six -thousand volumes in the library, and the collection of paintings -contains many Breton subjects by modern masters. - -The dockyard--navy-yard in the language of the United States, _port -militaire_ in French--is closed to the general public, but a marvellous -detailed bird’s-eye view of the city, the docks, and the roads is -obtained from the platform of the Pont Tournant. - -Nineteen kilometres from Brest is Landerneau, and the junction of the -railway lines to Kerlouan and Folgoët in the north, and to Quimper -and Concarneau in the south. Landerneau from the twelfth to sixteenth -centuries had a distinct feudal administration. - -The folk of Landerneau have opinions of their own, as witness the -remark, made at Versailles under the regency by a Breton noble hailing -from this place: “The Landerneau moon is larger than that at Versailles.” - -Again there is a Breton proverb which runs thus: “There will always be -something to talk about in Landerneau.” Mostly this is used when a widow -marries again, which may be taken to mean much or little, as one chooses. - -Landerneau has a fine little tidal harbour, and its streets and wharfs -are busy with the hum of coastwise traffic and river life, and, with its -Church of St. Thomas of Canterbury and its “best and cleanest inn in the -bishopric” (Hôtel de l’Univers), as a traveller of a century or more ago -once wrote, it has no lack of interest for travellers. - -[Illustration: <u>_Landerneau_</u>] - -One is not likely to be met with a statement by his host, as was the -century-old traveller, that a respectable man begs to know if he may eat -at the same table, and accordingly one will not have to reply, “With all -my heart,” for most likely there will be twenty at the common table, and -all will sit down to a meal of all the good things of life, “sea food” -and golden cider and apple sweetmeats predominating. - -It is all excellent, however, and the abundance of deliciously cooked -fish will make one think it were no hardship to make a lenten sojourn -here. A great church and a good hotel are indeed all-sufficient -attractions for a market-town of perhaps eight thousand souls. - -The town borders upon a picturesque little river, the Elorn, which -finally flows into the harbour of Brest. From the fifth century until -the sixteenth, it was far and away a more important place than its now -more opulent neighbour at the river’s mouth. Then it was the chief town -of Léon, the domain of the De Rohans, one of the ancient Breton baronies. - -At the entrance of one of the principal streets--Rue Plouedern--are -two curious ancient pieces of sculpture,--a lion and a man armed with -a sword, bearing the inscription “Tire Tve.” They came from an old -house which existed here in the sixteen hundreds, and are fitting -examples of that curious mediæval symbolism which so often crops out in -domestic and religious architecture. Although the chief of Landerneau’s -ecclesiastical monuments is the sixteenth-century edifice dedicated to -St. Thomas of Canterbury, the Church of St. Houardon is a contemporary -work of some pretension; its base Renaissance portico was added at a -later time. The arms and emblems of the De Rohans are conspicuous in -both edifices. - -July fifteenth is the great fête-day hereabout, when the horse-races, -boat-races, and illuminations attract the peasantry from the inland -country and the workmen from the dockyards at Brest. - -Five kilometres away is the Chapel of St. Eloi of the sixteenth century. -This sainted personage is represented throughout Finistère with the -attributes of a bishop and of a horseshoer. Horses are placed under his -protection, and the Pardon of St. Eloi is celebrated in various parts -with much merrymaking, and always with much firing of guns. A motor-car -is not beloved here, and if one incidentally or accidentally come upon -a festival of St. Eloi, he had best forthwith make tracks in retreat. -The actual religious ceremony consists of a mounted cavalier riding -up to the chapel door and making a sort of salute or obeisance three -times from the saddle without putting foot to the ground, after which -he deposits on the altar a packet of horse-hair, or even the tail of a -horse. - -In the Forest of Landerneau, six kilometres southwest, is the Château of -“La Joyeuse Garde,” celebrated in the romance of the chivalry of King -Arthur’s time, wherein King Arthur, Lancelot of the Lake, and Tristan of -Lyonnesse played so great a part. - -Landivisiau, on the main railway line from Paris to Brest, has a -remarkable church under the protection of St. Turiaff,--which in Breton -is Tivisian,--who was Archbishop of Dol in the eighth century. - -This fine church is a sixteenth-century work, and exhibits all the notes -of the early period of the Renaissance, but, in spite of this, the -richness of its portal, its bell-tower, its fine spire, and its nave -and choir rebuilt in the best of late Gothic, make it a building to be -remarked among the churches of Brittany, which, as a rule, have not the -ornateness and luxuriance of ornament of those of Normandy and other -parts of France. - -The cemetery of Landivisiau has a remarkable ossuary, supported by most -fantastic shapes, among them a skeleton armed with two arrows, a woman -in an unmistakably Spanish costume, and a most diabolical Satan. - -The fair-day at Landivisiau is the great celebration of these parts. It -is not so ambitious as many of those held elsewhere, but it will give -the visitor the opportunity of making an intimate acquaintance with the -Bas Bretons in a manner not possible in the larger towns. - -The dress of the people is peculiar, with the great baggy trousers of -the men, the coifs of the women, and the general display and love of the -finery of bright colours which seem inherent with a people living upon -the seacoast. - -In general, their features are heavy and their expression more or less -sullen, although this does not often indicate bad temper. Unquestionably -their carriage indicates hard labour, and the furrows and ridges of -their countenances come only from continuous contact with the open air. -Still, their bodies are stout and broad, and men and women alike have -none of the softness and languor of the southern provinces, albeit the -Armorican climate is mild throughout the year. - -[Illustration: <u>_Calvary, Plougastel_</u>] - -Opposite Brest, just across the estuary of the Elorn, is Plougastel, -famous for its melons and its green peas, and, above all, for its -picturesque calvary. - -The whole peninsula of Plougastel-Daoulas is a vast market-garden for -Brest, and, for that matter, for the hotels at Paris. The verdure and -vegetable growth is in striking contrast to the barren fringe of rocky -coast-line, and therein lies one of the charms of the whole aspect of -nature as it is seen here. - -Nothing in Brittany is more picturesque than the little villages of -Kerérault, Roc’hquérezen, Roc’huivlen, and Roc’hquillion. This is a -commonplace perhaps to those who know the region well, but it will not -be to strangers, and so it is reiterated here. - -The Chapel St. John of Plougastel is perhaps two kilometres away. It is -here, on the twenty-fourth of June of each year, that its pardon brings -so great a throng of visitors that they really have to bring their -eatables with them or starve, thus making a fast-day of a feast. - -In the cemetery is that great calvary which has so often been pictured, -the most considerable work of its kind in existence. - -It was erected 1602-04, in memory of a plague which fell upon the land -in 1598. - -In recent times it has been restored. On the front is an altar -ornamented with statues of St. Sebastien, St. Pierre, and St. Roch. The -frieze shows a multitude of bas-reliefs, illustrating the life of Jesus, -and the risers of the steps are a series of quaintly carved little -people, over two hundred in number. On the plinth is a risen Christ and -a tablet bearing the date of erection of the work. It is a marvellous -expression of religious devotion, and far surpasses other wayside -shrines in Brittany, and indeed in all the world. - -The inhabitants of Plougastel have preserved their ancient costumes with -little or no modern interpolation. Particularly is this to be noted -among the young girls, on a Sunday, as they come from the mass, and also -on the fifteenth of August, when there is a great religious procession. -The “Pardon of Plougastel” is known also as the “Birds’ Pardon,” for a -great bird fair is opened St. John’s Day. - -On the same side of the Goulet of Brest, that narrow inlet which is the -entrance from the sea to the bay, is Le Conquet. It sits at the very tip -of Finistère, just above the Pte. St. Mathieu, and its great lighthouse, -which, with a thirty-second eclipse, sends its rays some twenty miles -out to sea. - -Le Conquet has but fifteen hundred inhabitants, and its isolated -population apparently has not many friends, else the place would -be filled to overflowing in the summer months, which it is not. Its -two hotels, St. Barbara and Hôtel de Bretagne, are all that could be -expected, and more, hence the paucity of visitors to this charming bit -of “land’s end” is the more remarkable. - -Anciently Le Conquet was a strong fortified place, and it underwent a -great number of sieges, and was burned by the English in 1558. Eight -houses alone of the present habitations of the town survived the flames. - -The port is frequented only by the fishing-smacks, which land vast -quantities of lobsters and shrimps. - -There is also an ancient pottery here, the most ancient in all -Finistère. Its pots and pans are found in all the homesteads hereabouts, -and such tourists from all parts as actually do come here carry -numberless specimens away with them. - -The modern church, after the ogival manner, is far more satisfactory -than most modern ecclesiastical monuments. There is a fifteenth-century -portal, however, and some contemporary statues, which save it from being -wholly a modern work. - -The coast-line round about is the rough, abrupt ending of the Léon -plateau, jagged and deeply serrated like the jaws of a shark, as the -native tells one with respect to about all of the Breton coast-line. -Fine beaches do exist here and there, but in the main it is a stern and -rock-bound shore that buffets the Atlantic’s waves in Finistère. - -Three times a week one can make the journey by steamboat to Ouessant, -which English sailor-folk--those who go down to the sea in great -liners--know as Ushant. The Île Molène and the Île Ouessant are the -principal members of the group, and are even more stern and rock-bound -than the mainland. - -“Very little comfort on the boat,” you will be told at the port-office, -where you make inquiry as to the hour of departure. Any but good sailors -and true vagabond travellers had best leave the journey out of their -itinerary, although it has unique interest. - -There are numerous isles and islets to pass on the way, and the Chaussée -des Pierres Noires is a roughly strewn ledge which breathes danger in -the very spray continually flying over it. Molène is a kilometre long -and rather more than half as wide. If ever the population of a sea-girt -isle had to take in one another’s washing in order to make a living, -this is the place, for nearly six hundred men, women, and children make -their habitation upon the isle. - -Needless to say there are some things of the twentieth-century -civilization of which they know not, such as automobiles, tram-cars, or -locomotives. There is not even a donkey engine on the island, and there -are no bicycles or perambulators, hence there is something for which to -be thankful. Considerable quantities of vegetables are exported, the -population living apparently on fish, and the “farms” are divided into -plots so small as to be almost infinitesimal. - -The island is sadly remembered for the part it played in the wreck of -the great South African liner, the _Drummond Castle_, in recent years. -The inhabitants of the isle, poor in this world’s goods though they -were, did much to succour the survivors, an act which is writ large in -the history of life-saving. - -The isle of Ouessant itself has nearly three thousand population, and -boasts a market and a hotel, besides numerous hamlets or suburbs. The -isle is eight kilometres long, and perhaps three and a half wide, and is -known to the government authorities both as a canton and as a commune. - -Pliny knew of this rock-bound isle, the foremost outpost of France, -and called it Uxantos, though it was known to the ancient Bretons as -Enez Heussa. Practically, the island is a table-land with an abundance -of pure water, and the soil very productive so far as new potatoes and -an early crop of barley go. The cultivation is mostly in the hands of -the women, the men being nearly all engaged in the fisheries, or as -sailors. Ouessant is a little land of windmills, though in no way does -it resemble Holland. For the most part, they are sturdy stone buildings, -and work but lazily, many of them being dismantled, as if there were -not enough for them to do. Some years ago a fort was erected here, and -a garrison of colonial troops billeted upon the island. It is a sad job -at best to be a soldier in a colonial outpost such as this, and whether -the observation is just or not, it is made, nevertheless, that the -appearance of the garrison of Ouessant is as though it were made up, -literally, of the scum of the earth. - -As for history, the Île d’Ouessant is by no means entirely lacking. It -was evangelized in the sixth century by St. Pol Aurelian, who built a -chapel here at a spot known as Portz Pol. - -In 1388, the English ravaged the island, and the former seigniory was -made a marquisate in 1597, in favour of Réné de Rieux, the governor of -Brest, whose descendants sold their birthright to the king in 1764. - -The glorious battle of Ouessant--at least, the French call it “_la -glorieuse bataille_,” and so it really was--took place in 1778 in the -neighbouring waters between a French fleet under the Comte d’Orvilliers -and the English Admiral Keppel. - -As may be supposed, these far-jutting, rocky islands have been the scene -of many shipwrecks. There is a proverb known to mariners which classes -these Breton isles as follows: - - “Who sights Belle Île sights his refuge, - Who sights Île Groix sights joy, - Who sights Ouessant sights blood.” - -When a sailorman of Ouessant is lost at sea, his parents or friends -bring to his former dwelling a little cross of wood, which serves the -purpose of a corpse, and the clergy officiate over it, and his friends -weep over it as if it were his true body. - -Finally a procession forms, and, with much solemnity, this little cross -of wood, after having been placed in a casket, is deposited at the foot -of a statue of St. Pol, a sad and glorious symbol of grief and also of -hope. - -The women of Ouessant, whether in mourning or not--and they mostly are -in mourning--wear a costume of black cloth, cut their hair short and -wear a square sort of cap. For the most part, the inhabitants--all -those, in fact, who are natives, and there are but few mainlanders -here--speak only Breton. - -The Lighthouse de Créac’h, a white and black painted tower, with a -magnificent light flashing its rays twenty-four miles out at sea, is a -monument to the parental French government, which neglects nothing in -the way of guarding its coasts by modern search-lights, quite the best -of their kind in all the known world. There is another light here known -as the Stiff Lighthouse, which carries eighteen miles. - -Near the lighthouse is the tiny chapel of Our Lady of Farewells, a place -of pilgrimage on the day of the local pardon (1st September). - -On the mainland, just north of Brest and Le Conquet, on the way to the -Channel, is St. Rénan, the site of an ancient hermitage founded by an -anchorite who came from Ireland some time in the eighth century. There -are many quaint sixteenth-century houses here, and a large market-house -of the spectacular order. - -[Illustration: <u>_Lighthouse of Créac’h, Ouessant_</u>] - -Ploudalmézeau is an important town of Lower Léon with a Hôtel -Bretagne--as might be expected--also most excellent--also as might be -expected--except for its sanitary conveniences, which, to say nothing -of not being up to date, are practically non-existent. It is very -disconcerting of a rainy autumn morning to have to go down to the back -yard _puits_--as a pump or well is variously known--in order to perform -one’s ablutions. - -The comparatively modern church is far more magnificent than one would -expect to find in so small a town. It contains a curious statue of -the Virgin with a Breton coif, and also a fine modern fresco by Yan -d’Argent. A thirteenth-century sculptured cross is to be seen in the -churchyard. - -Folgoët has an important local fair, and is celebrated throughout all -Brittany for the pilgrimage to its magnificent shrine of Our Lady of -Folgoët, one of the most beautiful ecclesiastical monuments of the -province. - -Toward the middle of the fourteenth century there lived in the -neighbouring forest a poor idiot named Salaun, better known as the -forest fool; in Breton, Folgoët. After his death, there appeared written -on the leaves of a great white lily, in letters of gold, the admonition -to the people to build a great church here to the glory of Our Lady, and -this was begun in 1409, and consecrated in 1419; it became a collegiate -church in 1423. It has neither transepts nor apse, but is in every -other particular a remarkably beautiful work. There are many interior -furnishings of great value. - -Folgoët is at its best on the great day of the pardon, on the eighth of -September. - -St. Pol de Léon, Roscoff, and Morlaix call the hurried tourist off to -the northward, though why a tourist ever should be hurried is something -the true vagabond never can understand. - -Roscoff has much to endear it to any one. It has not the loneliness or -even the quaintness of some of the daintily set seacoast towns of the -South, but its unique attractions are so many and varied that one loves -it for itself alone, quite as much as if it were a celebrated artists’ -sketching-ground, and far more than one would were it a really “popular” -resort. - -First of all, it is celebrated for its early vegetables, due principally -to the excellence of its soil, and secondly to the mildness of its -climate. - -Because of its temperate climate, Roscoff might be called the Mentone -of the North, though it is not yet overrun by invalids and bath-chairs. -Summer and winter, it is a watering-place, with fir-trees replacing the -palms of the South. The visitor should remark the enormous fig-tree in -the Capuchins’ enclosure, the grounds of an ancient convent (1621), -which is now private property, and costs the sum of twenty-five -centimes to see. - -The Church of Our Lady of Croaz-Baz, with its fine domed tower dating -from 1550, is one of the chief ecclesiastical monuments of Brittany. - -[Illustration: <u>_Roscoff_</u>] - -Among the many quaint and curious houses of the town is one known as the -house of Mary Stuart. In its interior court are seven arcades supported -by columns, quite like a convent cloister, a disposition of parts which -must be purely local, as other examples are to be seen elsewhere in the -town. Another memory of the Scottish queen, whose last, long, sad adieu -to France is one of the links that never breaks, is the Chapel of St. -Ninian, built in 1548 as a souvenir of her landing when she first came -to France as the betrothed of the Dauphin. It is a most romantically -disposed structure, though with no architectural details of worth except -a small turret at an angle jutting over the lapping waves. - -Roscoff has a Chapel des Adieux, where the wives and mothers of the -fishermen go to pray as the men embark for the fishing. - -Offshore, a quarter-hour distant by boat, is the Isle of Batz, separated -from Roscoff only by a narrow strait, with a current so swift that the -passage is only possible in the best of weather. It does not look so -very perilous an undertaking at other times, but the Roscoff sailorman -certainly does know how to handle a boat, and when he says “No,” it’s -best not to attempt to persuade him to the contrary. He will not mind a -wetting himself,--if you pay him a fair price for the undertaking,--but -he will probably want, and be entitled to, a good, fat fee for rescuing -his passenger from drowning. - -The Isle of Batz, like most places in Brittany, has its own legend. -It is to the effect that St. Pol, coming in 530 from Britain to this -low, gray, melancholy islet, met a dragon, which, having ravaged the -neighbouring mainland country, had fled hither in order to escape the -fury of the peasant-folk. - -St. Pol, as became one who had the interests of his fellow men at heart, -forthwith killed the monster, and conveyed the news to the people -awaiting his return by rapping on the ground with his baton (_batz_). - -The rise and fall of the tide at the Isle of Batz shows remarkable -fluctuations, ten metres, something more than thirty feet, being noted -between high and low water. - -Its coast-line has great banks of sand, a delight to the bather in -salt water, but the rock formations are by no means so remarkable as -those on most of the Breton isles. The soil is arid and there is not -much luxuriant vegetation. There is a population of over twelve hundred -souls, but few apparently have any ambition to migrate to the mainland, -scarce a rifle-shot distant. In the island church is preserved the -stole of St. Pol, of Byzantine silk. If genuine, it has attained a -greater age than most confections of its class. An ancient Roman chapel -or temple existed here in former times, and was succeeded by a monastery -founded by St. Pol, now in ruins and mostly buried in the sands. - -St. Pol’s renown became such that a Breton king made him Archbishop -of Léon, giving him special care and control of the city bearing his -name. These rights came down to the holy man’s successors, and the -place became more religious than politic, as one reads in the old-time -chronicles. The riches which had been acquired attracted the Normans, -who devastated the cathedral church in 875. In the fourteenth century, -Duguesclin occupied the town in the name of Charles V. The religious -wars of the sixteenth century diminished the prosperity of the town, and -a bloody submission was forced upon the Revolutionary rebels here in -1793. - -St. Pol is somewhat doubtfully claimed as the native place of the -celebrated sixteenth-century sculptor, Michel Colomb (1512). - -The Chapel of Creizker or Creis-ker, with its astonishing bell-tower -piercing the sky at a height of nearly 250 feet, owes its origin to -a young girl of Léon, whom St. Kirec, Archdeacon of Léon in the sixth -century, had cured of paralysis. The present structure is, of course, -more modern. Albert le Grand fixes the date in the fourteenth century, -and this is probably correct. There are innumerable evidences of the -best of Gothic workmen, and there is much decorative embellishment -which, though not according to the accepted Gothic forms, is certainly -not Renaissance. - -The ancient cathedral merits rank with the Chapel of Creizker, and is -perhaps even a more consistent piece of work, though it represents three -distinct epochs. The two towers are considerably less in height than -that of the Creizker, but they are beautifully spired. The interior -contains innumerable decorative accessories, making it rank with those -cathedrals of France making up that third series, of which Nantes, -Coutances, Narbonne, and Angers are the best examples. - -In the choir is the tomb of St. Pol, and his skull, an arm bone, and a -finger are encased in a little coffer for the veneration of the devout. - -There is a series of sixty-nine delicately sculptured choir-stalls -dating from 1512, and, although not rivalling such great works of their -kind as one sees at their best at Amiens, Albi, or Rodez, they are -sufficiently elaborate to deserve attention. - -Innumerable tombs are set about the choir, many of them curiously and -characteristically sculptured. - -There is also a tiny bell which passes for having belonged to St. Pol. -On the days of pardon the notes of this ancient bell still ring out over -the heads of the faithful, who believe that they will cure any malady of -the head or hearing. - -[Illustration: MA DOUEZ] - -In one of the chapels of the Cathedral of St. Pol de Léon is an ancient -painting. It depicts a head with three visages, with the legend in -Gothic-Breton characters, “_Ma Douez_” (_Mon Dieu_). It represents, of -course, the Trinity, but, like many religious symbols, is more grotesque -than devout. - -Morlaix, the ancient Mons Relaxus of Roman times, is the metropolis of -the northwestern Breton coast. It achieved no great importance, until -it came under the sway of the Breton dukes, and became one of their -principal residences. The inhabitants of Morlaix declared for the League -in the period of the religious wars, and the castle was besieged and -carried by the troops of the king under Marshal d’Aumont, in 1594. - -Being at the head of the great bay of Morlaix, or, rather, just above -it, at the juncture of the rivers Jarlot and Quefflent, the city enjoys -a novel situation, and contains many curious contrasting effects of the -old and new order of things. - -The Viaduct of Morlaix, by which the railway traverses the town, is -really an imposing sight, and is reckoned as the chief of its class -in all France. The natives show an astonishing vagueness or ignorance -with regard thereto. You will be told that it was the work of the -Romans,--“very ancient, look you,”--and again that it was one of the -works of the indefatigable Vauban, who must really have worked in his -sleep, or through understudies, if all the works attributed to him -throughout France be genuine. Vauban must have been to France what -Michelangelo was to the universe,--according to the genial, though -skeptical, Mark Twain. - -The Church of St. Martin in the Fields is the chief ecclesiastical -monument of Morlaix, in point of antiquity at least, as it dates from -the ancient priory foundation of 1128, by Hervé, Count of Léon. - -The Church of St. Melaine originated also in the fifteenth-century -priory of the same name, founded by Guyormarc’h de Léon. - -The local museum, which is an unusually splendid establishment for a -town the size of Morlaix, possesses a collection of modern paintings, -including a great number of Breton scenes, forming a wonderfully -interesting exposition of Breton manners and customs. - -There are innumerable old houses in wood and stone here, and they put -Morlaix in the rank with Lisieux, in Normandy, for its picturesque and -tumble-down effects of the domestic architecture of other days. - -One of the finest examples of a great house of its time is that called -Pouliguen, which has a fine carved wood staircase that no one can afford -to miss seeing. - -[Illustration: <u>_Carved Wood Staircase, Morlaix_</u>] - -The harbour of Morlaix opens out widely into the channel, and is -commanded by the Château du Taureau, in reality a granite fortress, -one of the military defences of the north coast. St. Jean du Doigt -and the Point of Primel lie some twenty kilometres north of Morlaix, -directly on the coast. The former is the scene of one of the most -picturesque of pardons and is celebrated throughout Brittany. - -[Illustration: <u>_Procession of Sailors, St. Jean du Doigt_</u>] - -Its name comes from its church (1440-1513), in which the index finger -of the right hand of St. John the Baptist is kept. The churchyard has -a fine Gothic entrance gateway and a funeral chapel of the sixteenth -century. Within the same enclosure is also an elaborate fountain -surrounded by a Renaissance construction of much beauty. It was planned -by Anne of Brittany, who brought an artist from Italy to design the -work. The Pardon of St. Jean du Doigt takes place on the twenty-fourth -of June of each year. Decidedly it is not to be omitted from one’s -itinerary, if it be possible to include it. - -It is one of the strangest survivals of the belief in an ancient holy -relique yet existing in France, and annually attracts great hordes of -the devout from all parts of Brittany and France, to say nothing of -strangers from oversea. - -A good motor-car is indispensable to enable one to flee from the throng -after it is all over, for the railway lies at least a dozen miles away, -and local conveyances are scarce, poor, and expensive. - - - - -CHAPTER VIII. - -THE CÔTES DU NORD - - -The north coast of Brittany, the present-day Department of the Côtes -du Nord, is the great stretch of coast-line between Morlaix on the -west to the Bay of Mont St. Michel at Dol. Its large towns are few in -number, but the whole region is unusually prolific in the memory of -deeds of a historic past, and accordingly it has become the favourite -touring-ground of a great number of French and English summer visitors -who, it is regretfully stated, have become responsible for a good deal -of the claptrap and many of the catchpenny devices. - -It is possible to avoid casinos, tea-rooms, and golf-links, but they are -more abundant here in the neighbourhood of Dinan, St. Malo, and Dinard -than in most other parts of Continental Europe. This is a pity, for the -region is one of the most delightfully picturesque anywhere, although -there is little of the grandeur of desolation about it. - -A great national road runs northwesterly from Guingamp to Lannion and -Tréguier, two outposts of the Côtes du Nord so far off the beaten track -that they are not as yet overrun with the conventional tourists. There -is little at either place to amuse one, except the local manners and -customs, but they are quaint and interesting beyond belief, and the -wonderful combinations of sea and sky, which will make the artist’s -heart leap for joy. - -Lannion boasts of six thousand inhabitants, most of whom play at bowls -on Sunday or a feast-day, and other days engage in the sundry humble -pursuits of the usual Breton large town. - -The name Lannion first appeared in the twelfth century, when the -seigniory of Lannion formed a part of the domain of the house of -Penthièvre, which was united with that of Brittany in 1199. - -There are three quaint and charming hotels at Lannion, at any of which -you will get the best of local fare at prices ranging from 120 to 220 -francs per month--all found. One will not go wrong at any of them, and -one does not differ greatly from another, in spite of the difference in -price. There is an abundance of what is commonly known as good cheer, -by which is really meant good fare, and there are comfortable beds, a -sound roof over one’s head, and genial hosts, of course. - -This estimable person is literally everywhere at once, showing the -guests to their rooms, presiding at the table, or, at least, at the -serving of it, and generally overseeing everything that goes on. - -“_Allons, messieurs, à table_,” is called, in a melodious voice, -instead of the ringing of the usual brain-racking bell, and one by -one travelling salesmen, the permanent guests, and the mere tourists -seat themselves at the long table, which literally groans--like those -in the historical novels--with the best of country cookery. There is -nothing Parisian about it; there are no ices, no forced fruit, and no -savoury messes with mushrooms and truffles, but there is the abundant -and excellent local fare of sea food, hung mutton, new potatoes and -asparagus, and little wood strawberries in heaps, and that delightful -golden cider, which, if it be not an improvement on the Norman variety, -is just as good, and a delightful summer drink. - -The fine location of Lannion, on the right bank of the estuary of the -little river Leguer, accounts for much of the local charm, and the habit -that the population has of grouping itself picturesquely about the -quay-side--without the least provocation--accounts for a good deal more. - -There are many old houses in the town, and other more pretentious -architectural monuments, offering enough variety to the artist or lover -of architecture to occupy him a long time. - -The port is a harbour of refuge, of which there are not many on the -north coast of Brittany, and the traffic in salmon and sardines is -considerable, though not rivalling in bulk that of the greater ports in -the southwest. - -Tréguier has much the same attractions as Lannion, though its population -is but half as large. Its origin was some huts which anciently grouped -themselves around the monastery of Trecar, founded by St. Tugdal in the -sixth century. It has an imposing cathedral, a really great religious -edifice, and one which for the beauty of its parts is scarcely excelled -by that of Quimper itself. - -The history of Tréguier was very lively, from the time of the Norman -invasion of Brittany down through the troublous days of the Revolution. - -The men of Tréguier, one learns from history, accepted the law of -the “rights of man” but coldly, and indeed M. le Mintier, Bishop of -Tréguier, was one of those churchmen barred from the National Assembly -by the manifesto. He fled to Jersey. - -[Illustration: OLD HOUSE TRÉGUIER] - -Tréguier is the native place of Ernest Renan (1823-92), and his quaint, -timbered house may well be considered a literary shrine of the very -first rank. - -[Illustration: <u>_House of Ernest Renan, Tréguier_</u>] - -Convents, where women may find a quiet refuge away from the world, are -not so numerous as they once were in France. “Boarding-houses kept for -unprotected women by nuns, with a supposed Christian devotion and a -profound appreciation of ready money,” was the way in which an English -writer once spoke of them, and it was most unfair. Certainly, the -writer of those lines never knew--and she professed to know France--the -Convent of the Cross at Tréguier, where women can live in quiet -seclusion, “all found,” for a matter of seventy-five francs a month. To -those interested, the above may be worth investigation. - -Not far off is the Manor of Kermartin, where, in 1255, St. Yves, the -patron saint of advocates, was born. - -On the nineteenth of May a procession sets out from the Tréguier -cathedral for this shrine, to render homage to the patron of the men -of law. On the eve of the nineteenth all mendicants and vagabonds -presenting themselves at the manor are fed and lodged, which makes the -perpetuation of the ceremony one of real benefit to humanity, though its -endurance is brief. - -St. Yves is the only canonized Breton saint. He was born on the seventh -of October, 1253, and accompanied Peter of Dreux, reigning duke, to the -seventh crusade. - -In the Breton tongue his praises are sung as follows: - - “N’hen eus ket en Breiz, n’hen eus ket unan, - N’hen eus ket eur Zant evel Sant Erwan.” - -This in French comes to the following: - - “Il n’y a pas en Bretagne, il n’y en a pas un, - Il n’y a pas un Saint comme St. Yves.” - -The last will and testament of St. Yves is preserved in the sacristy -of the Church de Minihy, and also his breviary. His tomb is in the -cemetery, surmounted by an arcade through which the faithful pass, -crawling upon their knees when they seek his aid. - -[Illustration: <u>_Shrine of St. Yves, Tréguier_</u>] - -Not many travellers in France have ever even heard of Seven Isles, -situated five kilometres or more off the coast near Tréguier. The -corsairs of Jersey and Guernsey took refuge upon this little -archipelago in the olden time, and long maintained a form of government -quite of their own making, and even erected fortifications, of which -that on the Île aux Moines has still some suggestion of strength. - -Usually quite deserted, there are two seasons of the year when the -isles take on a population of residents from the mainland entirely -out of keeping with their size and number: in February for seaweed -gathering, and from June to September for the gathering of sea-mosses, -or _jargot_, as the natives call it. One who would experience something -out of the ordinary could not do better than make this little excursion. -The passage from the mainland does not look so very terrible to the -stranger, but not even the hardy fishermen will attempt it if the sky -is the least threatening. He says simply, “Only go out in very fine -weather,” and sits tight and prays and whistles for that same fine -weather, though he evidently does not expect it to come very soon, for -with every bit of fleecy cloud that crosses his vision, he exclaims: -“Big storm soon!” - -Paimpol is situated at the head of a well-sheltered bay on the banks -of an infinitesimal little river known as Quinic. There is nothing to -mark Paimpol as a tourist resort, and accordingly it is almost an ideal -resting-place for one wearied with the onrush of the world. It is not -even a bathing-place, as it well might be. Its long Rue de l’Église is -its principal thoroughfare, and through it all the small traffic of the -town circulates at a most sedate pace. - -The church dates from the thirteenth century, and is a lovely old -structure with admirable Gothic pillars and arches in its nave, and a -fine fourteenth-century rose window. - -The port of Paimpol has a most interesting rise and fall of life, -particularly at the season of the setting out and the return of the -Iceland fishermen. In the trade in codfish caught off the Icelandic -coasts, this place occupies the first rank, being the home port of -those who fish in Icelandic waters, and all along the quays of the -sad little town of Paimpol (sad, because there are so many widows -there,--the lone partners of those who have lost their lives at sea) -are to be seen the Iceland schooners. Everything in the town smacks of -the memory of Iceland: the schooners, the _ex-votos_ in the churches, -the widows, the sturdy but gloomy fisherfolk themselves, and the stones -in the churchyard. “The Iceland fog enshrouds everything,” the native -tells you, but still the work goes on, and each year, with the coming -of the spring days, the exodus begins, after a winter’s hard work at -refurbishing and refitting of the little two-masters and three-masters -of the fishers. It is here that one may hear that Breton sailor’s -prayer, which is so devout and full of faith: “_Mon Dieu protège nous, -car la mer est si grand et nos bateaux si petits._” - -Cod, whale, mackerel, and herring are all marketable products to the -nets of the Paimpolans. - -The Isle of Bréhat is near Paimpol, lying just off the coast. If one -seek to arrange a passage, thereto, he goes by public carriage, and -not by boat, until he gets to the tip of the Pointe Arcouest, when he -transfers himself and his luggage to a sailboat, and travels as one did -before the age of steam. - -The Isle of Bréhat is another of those rocky islets which dot the coast -of Brittany, and look not only as if they were barren and uncultivated, -but as if they were also uninhabited. All the same, their appearance -from a distance is misleading. There are close upon a thousand -inhabitants on the parent isle and the attendant flock of little islets -sheltered under its wing. In the olden time, the island was a strong -place of war, with batteries and fortifications against which the -English, the Leaguers, and the Royalists tried their strength in turn. - -The isle is what the sailor-folk roundabout call “a good port of -refuge,” for there are divers little sheltered harbours to which ships -of all classes can run from the storms of the open sea. - -The principal town is known as Bréhat, and possesses a church dating -from 1700, a tiny hotel, and an inn or two, mostly catering to local -customers. If one would leave the mainland, and its questionable -attractions of civilization behind, and live the simple life to the -full, he can do it here to the most exquisite degree,--if he does not -mind the sea-fogs of the winter. - -Guingamp, lying inland in the rich valley of the Trieux, is the -market-town of the arrondissement of the same name. It is of feudal -origin, and was the ancient capital of the countship, later the duchy, -of Penthièvre, and of the ancient Goëllo land. - -Guingamp Castle is a great square building, flanked by four massive -towers, of which one has been practically destroyed. - -The Church of Our Lady of Good Help, of the fourteenth to sixteenth -centuries, is a magnificent work of its era, with an elaborately -furnished interior. - -[Illustration: A BINOU PLAYER] - -The Pardon of Bon Secours is Guingamp’s gayest event of all the year. -In numbers, it is one of the largest in Brittany, and is held on the -Saturday before the first Sunday in July. On this occasion the statue -of Our Lady, within the porch of the church, is clad in a silken robe, -and receives the pilgrims, who refresh themselves with water previously -consecrated at its source. With the fall of the sun commences a -continual round of national dances, inspired by the lonesome, sharp, -shrill wail of the _binious_, played in much the same way as are the -Scotch bagpipes, except that their music is even more shrill and -heartrending--if possible. At nine o’clock the statue of the Virgin -is brought to the public square, solemnly conveyed by an immense -procession, and three great bonfires are lighted. At midnight a high -mass terminates the celebration, and some of the pilgrims depart, and -others remain for the banquet which invariably follows. - -On the eighth of September, 1857, the Madonna of Guingamp received the -crown of gold from the chapter of St. Peter’s at Rome, on behalf of the -Pope, a distinction offered to images of the Virgin uniting the three -traits of antiquity, popularity, and miracle-working. - -“La Pompe,” or the Fontaine, in hammered lead, is one of the chief -artistic curiosities of Guingamp. It is a remarkable work in every way, -and dates from 1588, since which time it has only been repaired--not -reconstructed. Its preservation is wonderful, and it is an embellishment -of which even a greater town might well be proud. - -Aside from the fragment of the castle, there are no mediæval gateways or -walls to remind one of the military importance of the place in former -days. A century and a quarter ago, a traveller wrote: “Enter Guingamp by -gateways, towers, and battlements of the oldest military architecture, -every part denoting antiquity, and in the best preservation.” All this, -unhappily, has disappeared, and one has to go to Vitré and Fougères to -see military architecture in Brittany. - -Eastward from Guingamp toward St. Brieuc, one passes--the traveller by -road or rail seldom stops--Chatelaudren. It is a conventional Breton -small town, but it is a market-town, nevertheless. It has not much -of interest for any one unless he be a keen observer of manners and -customs, hence it is but a way station between the two larger towns. - -St. Brieuc is a city, although it has no tram-cars to dodge and no -restaurants or Hôtels Étrangers, which is a good thing for the native -and the tourist alike. - -In reality its half-dozen hotels rise to the distinction of being known -as “establishments,” yet they have lost none of their local flavour. St. -Brieuc is the metropolis where the summer visitors--Parisians all--of -the beaches come to buy the little necessaries and luxuries which a -mere watering-place fails to supply. Then, too, one who is rusticating, -even in a delightful spot like Val André, lacks notably the inspiration -coming from a more or less frequent contact with a large centre, and -so he hies himself to a market-town, gets the fare of the country at a -hotel for travelling salesmen, and has a bit of the transmitted gossip -of the capital over a bock at the principal café; after this--_voilà!_ -the seaside again for a time. - -This may not be the Anglo-Saxon way of treating a similar situation, -but it is exactly after the French method. - -St. Brieuc is the seat of a bishopric, suffragan of the metropolitan -see of Brittany at Rennes. Its origin is due to a missionary who came -with eight disciples at the end of the fifth century to evangelize -Armorica. As a place of pilgrimage,--the tomb of St. Brieuc having -become a shrine,--it soon began to draw throngs from all parts, and the -importance of the city which grew up around the memory of the missionary -was soon assured. - -The cathedral of St. Brieuc was begun by St. William Pinchon before the -middle of the thirteenth century, and was soon finished. - -Its exterior presents the severe and austere, though beautiful, -Gothic of its time, but the accessories of its interior arrangements -show plainly the debasement of the later interpolations, although -there are some really excellent details hidden away amid a profusion -of mediocrities, notably the tomb of St. William, a fine Way of the -Cross by a local sculptor, and a low, hanging gallery at the base of -the choir, which is a remarkably beautiful and effective adjunct to a -great church. The exterior is more impressive, though its two principal -doorways have been badly restored or rebuilt at some time since the -completion of the edifice. The great, gaunt, donjon-like towers are the -chief features of beauty and distinction, and tell the story of the -whole fabric in quite an unassailable manner. - -At the town hall is a museum which has some good modern art works, -including a fragment of Rodin’s Portes de l’Enfer and some notable -paintings of Breton subjects. - -In the Rue St. Jacques and the Rue Fardel are many old houses, one of -the most notable being the hotel of the Dukes of Brittany, begun in 1572 -by Yvon Collou. James II. of England lodged here when he came to St. -Brieuc in 1689. - -The carved and decorated fronts of these old wooden houses lend a -quaintness and charm to the streets of St. Brieuc, in strong contrast to -the modernity of its hotels and cafés. There is considerable and varied -local industry at St. Brieuc, and this gives the city some importance as -a manufacturing centre, but the chief events of its commercial life are -the great fairs held in July and September, the latter founded in the -fifteenth century by Marguerite of Clisson. - -The environs of St. Brieuc are charmingly diversified, from the wide -open stretches of farming country at the south to the wastes of rock -and sand flanking the great Bay of St. Brieuc. - -Le Légué is the port of St. Brieuc, and the coastwise traffic is -considerable. The quays and docks, ship-houses and careening wharfs -lend a novel and interesting aspect to a background of thickly wooded -river-banks. The seaward entrance of the channel is protected by a -fifth-class light. The port is the first in rank in the Côtes du Nord -for the fitting out of the Newfoundland and Iceland fishing-boats. - -The Tower of Cesson, three kilometres or more from St. Brieuc, is a -simple circular tower, surrounded by a double protecting fosse cut -perpendicularly into the rock. The walls are quite twelve feet in -thickness on the lower of its four floors. It was built by Duke Jean -IV. in 1395, and, after much strife and bloodshed, extending over two -centuries, was laid in ruins by Henry IV. in 1598. - -On the shores of the Bay of St. Brieuc are innumerable little beaches -which are healthful breathing-spots for large numbers of Parisian folk, -who come thither between June and September of each year. - -These are not exactly riotous resorts of fashion, but still there are -some evidences of the distractions of the world that make most of them -appear as little parochial Parises. There are two spots on the western -shore of the bay to which this does not apply, however, Etables and -Binic. - -[Illustration: <u>_Binic_</u>] - -Binic, a small fishing port of Brittany, has all the attractions of -an unworldly seaside village, for it is not much more even to-day. -After Binic, Etables, and after Etables, Binic. Each is much the same -as the other. Binic has been a great-little port for the fitting out -of ships for the Newfoundland fisheries ever since the beginning of -the seventeenth century, and things go on in much the same way as of -old, except that the master of the craft now has a megaphone and a -patent log in his equipment, whereas formerly he went without these -refinements of navigation. To the Newfoundland fishermen of Binic is due -a special preparation of the codfish known as _bénicasser_, of which the -dictionaries will tell one nothing, but which is simply a species of -cured codfish. - -The high altar of Binic church was bought with funds contributed as -a result of the Sunday fishing on the Newfoundland banks. It can, -therefore, be said to have a real reason for being, and, as it is an -unusually ornate affair, one infers that the Sunday haul must be of -goodly proportions. - -From St. Brieuc eastward, until one actually comes within the confines -of that delectable land known as the Emerald Coast,--the summer rival -of that winter paradise, the Blue Coast,--is a verdant land of crops -and cultures which would quite change the opinions of any who thought -Brittany a sterile, rock-bound land, where nothing could grow but onions -and new potatoes. - -Lamballe is a sort of a faint shadow of St. Brieuc. It was founded in -feudal times, and from 1134 to 1420 was the capital of the county of -Penthièvre. As late as the eighteenth century, the oldest son of the Duc -de Penthièvre bore the title of Prince of Lamballe. - -The town is divided into the upper and lower towns. In the latter are -found those old settlers of ducal times, the houses of wood and stone -still standing to delight the eye of the artist and to arouse the wonder -of the general tourist. - -There is a fine Gothic Church of Our Lady, its foundations cut in the -very rock itself, and bearing, from more than one point of view, the -aspect of a fortified edifice, which has a battlemented roof that is -nothing if not an indication that the church of Dol was a truly militant -edifice. As the chapel of the old château, this church grew up from a -foundation of St. William Pinchon, Bishop of St. Brieuc in 1220. - -St. Martin’s is the church of an ancient priory belonging to the parent -house of Marmoutier. It was founded in 1083 by Geoffrey I., Count of -Lamballe. Its primitive nave shows a remarkable series of horseshoe -arches, and in every way, not excepting the great sixteenth-century -towers, St. Martin’s is quite the most interesting architectural -monument of Lamballe. - -North of Lamballe lies Val André. A charming watering-place much -frequented by families, is the way the all-powerful Western Railway -advertises this little seaside beach and its attractions, with the added -few lines to the effect that there is a large hotel with a casino, -regattas, nautical celebrations, concerts, etc., which are supposed to -amuse the fastidious summer visitors. - -It is all very delightful, particularly as the coast-line near by is -charming of itself, but Val André, with all its attractions, has not -half the charm of the little fishing port of Binic on the opposite shore -of the Bay of St. Brieuc. - - - - -CHAPTER IX. - -THE EMERALD COAST - - -The Emerald Coast is the passion chiefly of those who come to live -during the three summer months of rustication, but the sister cities -of St. Servan, Paramé and St. Malo, Dinard and Dinan, are lovely spots -and attractive of themselves, were one forced to camp out on one of the -barren, jagged rocks with which the coast hereabouts is strewn, instead -of living at the Hotel of France and Chateaubriand, which encloses the -ancient maison of Chateaubriand, at St. Malo. Starting thence, one -explores the wonderful country round about, and nourishes himself and -makes himself comfortable with all the modern refinements. This hotel -is about the only modern thing in St. Malo, however, for, while highly -interesting to the antiquary or to the student of architecture or of -art, it is commonly thought to be a vile, dirty hole, with a few shops -convenient for the inhabitants of the more aristocratic suburbs of -Paramé and St. Servan. - -St. Malo is a curious little city, with its ever apparent past not in -the least disturbed by the steamboats and electric trams, which bring -visitors to the base of its ancient fortifications and gateways. Among -its chief reminders of the past are its proud château, redolent of the -memory of the beautiful Duchess Anne, its fine cathedral, its quaint old -houses and narrow streets, and its wonderful encircling ramparts. - -Not only is St. Malo a city of the past, but it is above all, to-day, -a _resort_, as that elastic term is known which covers any place where -tourists congregate for pleasure. - -Kiosks, coffee-rooms, and bathing-cabins have taken the place of -whatever may have gone before, and to-day, truly, one may be as -comfortably up to date--if there is any real comfort in being up to -date--as if he were in Budapest, Paris, or San Francisco. St. Malo is -considerably more than this; it is the actual, if not the geographical, -centre of the whole Emerald Coast. - -[Illustration: <u>_Ramparts of St. Malo_</u>] - -The praises of the Emerald Coast have been sung by many poets, and -pictured by many painters. Jean Richepin, that rare vagabond, comes -frequently for his inspiration to St. Jacut-de-la-Mer, and in -his “Honest Folk” there are superb descriptions of this entrancing -combination of sea and shore, which in all France is not elsewhere -equalled, unless it be on the Riviera. - -The Emerald Coast must indeed be the paradise for jaded literary -workers, when work makes its inroads on their holiday, for it may enable -them to accomplish as much as Ferdinand Brunetière admitted during a -recent stay at Dinard-St. Énogat: - -“What do I read?” said he. “These: - -“1. The 240 pages which make up the _Revue des deux Mondes_ every -fortnight. - -“2. The manuscripts which may become future pages of the _Review_, and -even some which may not. - -“3. Works which have not appeared in the _Review_, whose authors I may -find it worth while to know and cultivate. - -“4. Journals in which the _Review_ is interested. - -“5. The _Official Journal_, from which one may always pick up something. - -“6. The other papers. - -“7. Works submitted for the approval of the French Academy. - -“8. Proof-sheets of my own works. - -“9. The books necessary for the preparation of my discourses, lectures, -and articles.” - -The puzzle is what a man like M. Brunetière will find to do in the -next world. Probably he will go about to all the celebrated writers to -see what they thought of his criticisms in his dearly loved _Review_; -and then perhaps he will regret, as Herbert Spencer is said to have -regretted, that he had not gone fishing oftener. - -The charms of St. Malo’s suburban social colony of Paramé, such as -they are, though they differ greatly from the mere attractions of -nature,--for which society folk really care for only as an accessory -to their more futile pleasures,--are best set forth in the following -stanzas of Jehan Valter: - - “PARAMÉ - - “IDYLLE - - “Quel est de Biarritz à Calais - Le seul bain de mer, qui jamais, - Faute de baigneurs, n’a chômé? - C’est Paramé! - - “Où le soleil à l’horizon - Montre-t-il en chaque saison - Son disque toujours enflammé? - A Paramé! - - “Où le froid est-il inconnu, - Où peut-on se promener nu - Sans avoir peur d’être enrhumé? - A Paramé! - - “Le soir, on danse au Casino, - Non aux sons d’un mauvais piano, - Mais d’un orchestre renommé - A Paramé! - - “Sur la plage on rêve d’amour, - La nuit aussi bien que le jour - Que de baigneuses ont aimé! - A Paramé! - - “Est-ce l’air qui porte à la peau; - Est-ce le soleil, est-ce l’eau? - Chacun sort du bain ranimé - A Paramé! - - “Et c’est un miracle constant, - Le plus chétif, en un instant, - Est en athlète transformé - A Paramé! - - “Du reste, miracle plus fort, - Jamais personne ici n’est mort, - On ne connaît pas d’inhumé - A Paramé! - - “A vous tous, gandins rabougris - Qui dépérissez à Paris, - Venez humer l’air embaumé - De Paramé! - - “Vous ne le regretterez pas: - On y fait d’excellents repas, - Et le cidre est fort estimé - A Paramé! - - “Donc, sur l’honneur, je vous le dis, - A défaut du vrai paradis, - Il n’est sur terre, en résumé, - Que Paramé!” - -That is about the sort of round that one gets at Paramé, with -motor-cars, golf, and bridge parties thrown in, but a wonderful aspect -of nature to be seen at every turn, and it is perhaps small wonder that -the little summer colony has now grown to huge proportions. - -Americans should have a special interest in, and a fondness for, St. -Malo, “the city of the corsairs.” - -St. Malo is the chief town of the province of Jacques Cartier, the -discoverer of Canada. “_It is a city of great men and the chief place of -the Breton middle class_,” said the Abbé Jalobert in his curious work on -St. Malo and St. Servan. - -There is some truth in calling St. Malo the “corsair stronghold,” for it -was the cradle of Mahé de la Bourdonnais, Duguay-Trouin, Surcouf, and -their followers, all “sea-rovers” if they were not something more. - -To-day St. Malo’s “sea-rovers” are the sailors of the Newfoundland -fishing-fleet, the humble _“terre-neuvas_,” as they are known, who go -in large numbers to fish for cod on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland. - - “I’s sont partis de Saint-Malo, - I’s sont partis de Saint-Malo, - Tous ben portants, vaillants et biaux. - In’ troun’ dérin tra lonlaire! - In’ troun’ dérin’ tra lonla!” - -sings Yann Nibor in his “Sea Songs and Stories.” - -The city’s older reputation as the city of the corsairs gave quite a -different interpretation, however: - - “LA CITÉ DES CORSAIRES - - “Si dans son aire, aujourd’hui tombe, - Elle ouit de rudes chansons! - Dont le souvenir donne au monde - Des frissons. - - “La gothique flêche de pierre - De son clocher audacieux - S’élance comme un rapière - Vers les cieux.” - --_Dabouchet._ - -Duguay-Trouin is an almost mythical character, but many of his -legendary exploits sound plausible. He took an English ship mounting -forty guns when he owned to but sixteen years, and in a following -campaign--practically on his own account it would seem--he captured -two vessels of war and twelve merchant-ships from under the guns of -a British squadron. This, at least, is the French version, and since -all of us, in our agile days, love a daring hero,--even if he be a -bloodthirsty one,--it seems a pity to probe the assertion too deeply. - -Such a man as Duguay-Trouin was, of course, popular, and his sailors -sang his praises in the street in lines which came to be taken up by -the “stay-at-homes” and incorporated into a kind of folk-lore. Indeed, -gentle mothers sang their infants to sleep with them, much as did old -Mother Goose of the nursery rhymes: - - “Monsieur Duguay t’envoyé - Un tambour de l’Achille - Pour demander à ces braves guerriers - S’ils veulent capituler. - - “Les dames du château - S’sont mis à la fenêtre, - Monsieur Duguay apaisez vos canons, - Avec vous je composerez.” - -Not always does the stranger to St. Malo hear exactly this offhand, but -invariably he is met with a singsong of sailors’ chanteys which at once -call up memories of seafarers of other days. - -One enters St. Malo, whether by boat or train, through the city walls. -The boat lands you directly under the frowning ramparts, and a worthy -porter will take your portmanteau and carry it twenty steps to the door -of your hotel, just within the gateway of the city--and charge you -twenty sous for the job. “A franc, really,” the man with the brass badge -tied on his right arm will reply to your query as to whether you have -heard aright. - -“Twenty cents for twenty steps is a little high,” says the hostess of -your hotel, but it is the tariff from outside. - -St. Malo is still a walled city, much as it was in the days when Francis -I., in 1518, and Charles IX., in 1570, held court here. - -Charles IX., his mother Catharine, and his sister Margaret spent a part -of the month of May here in this city by the sea. The Malouins gave the -court a spectacle of an imitation naval combat, in which a galleon was -sunk; too realistically, one thinks, for its occupants were drowned. - -At one time, it is said by the chronicles, St. Malo was guarded by -fierce mastiffs, the descendants, it is to be presumed, of the Gallic -dogs of war. These municipal watch-dogs were suppressed in 1770, because -of their having bitten the “calves of gentlemen.” Presumably there was a -complaint of some sort, but the only record of the incident is one in -verse sung by Désaugiers as follows: - - “Bon voyage, - Cher du Mollet, - A Saint-Malo débarquez sans naufrage, - Et revenez si ce pays vous plait.” - -The disappearance of the watch-dogs in 1770 made necessary the adoption -of a new coat of arms for the town, when the blazoning of argent, a dog -gules, gave way to a “portcullis surmounted by an ermine passant.” - -One has heard before now the phrase, “I like St. Malo in spite of its -smell,” and, in spite of the truth of it,--and there is a very apparent -justification of the word,--the old city is one of the most lovable in -all Brittany. - -The House of Duguay-Trouin at St. Malo is one of its chief romantic -shrines before which strangers are wont to linger. It is simply an old -wooden-fronted house, sombre and austere in its upper stories, but -resplendent in white paint below. A shoe-shop and a coffee-room occupy -the lower floor, and if one would conjure up the days of the past, when -pirates bold discussed their venturesome plans in the very same room, -let him enter and drink his after-dinner coffee by the pale light of -a guttering candle in this old abode of romance. There is nothing of -luxury about it; in fact, most worshippers are content to bow before the -shrine from without; but to awaken the liveliest emotions, one must -really enter and see it from the inside. - -[Illustration: <u>_House of Duguay-Trouin, St. Malo_</u>] - -St. Malo, besides its stock sights of romance and history situated -within the city itself, has a literary shrine of the first rank in the -island of Grand Bé just offshore. Here is the tomb of Chateaubriand, -ambassador, minister, journalist, and author. One need not inscribe the -dates and titles of his works here; it is enough to mention his name. -Suffice to recall that, as a conclusion to his labours, he wrote the -“Mémoires d’Outre-Tomb,” which, like the simple, rough-hewn cross which -crowns the summit of Grand Bé, is a fitting monument to the genius of -the man whose theories, it is to be feared, have now become somewhat out -of date. - -Chateaubriand’s verses on his native land give an ample proof of his -love for her, and, moreover, so well express the regard which nearly -every one has for the Emerald Coast, that it is certainly pardonable to -quote them here: - - “MON PAYS - - “Combien j’ai douce souvenance - Du joli lieu de ma naissance! - Ma sœur, qu’ils étaient beaux, les jours - De France! - O mon pays, sois mes amours, - Toujours! - - “Te souvient-il que notre mère, - Au foyer de notre chaumière, - Nous pressait sur son cœur joyeux, - Ma chère, - Et nous baisions ses blancs cheveux - Tous deux? - - “Ma sœur, te souvient-il encore - Du château que baignait la Dore? - Et de cette tant vieille tour - Du Maure, - Ou l’airain sonnait le retour - Du jour? - - “Te souvient-il du lac tranquille - Qu’effleurait l’hirondelle agile, - Du vent qui courbait le roseau - Mobile, - Et du soleil couchant sur l’eau, - Si beau? - - “Oh! qui me rendra mon Hélène, - Et ma montagne et le grand chêne? - Leur souvenir fait tous les jours - Ma peine: - Mon pays sera mes amours - Toujours!” - -St. Servan, like St. Malo, is steeped in antiquity; practically they -form one town, although separated by the narrow strait which forms an -entrance to the outer harbour of St. Malo. St. Servan registers over a -hundred St. Malo craft engaged in fishing and in the coast trade. As the -ancient Gallo-Roman town of Alethum, St. Servan, from very early times -an archbishopric, was ravaged by barbarians and by floods and had a -varied career, but at last the steady growth of the comparatively modern -St. Servan made it a prosperous town of perhaps twelve thousand souls. - -The chief of St. Servan’s architectural monuments is the great Tower -of Solidor, built far out upon the rocks at the mouth of the Rance. It -was built in 1384 by Duke John IV., at the epoch when he was combating -the pretensions of Josselin of Rohan, Bishop of St. Malo, for the -sovereignty of the town. - -It is a great triangular hold with a cylindrical tower at each corner. -Within is a stone staircase winding spirally upward and giving access to -various vaulted chambers. It could oppose no great strength to modern -artillery, and even in the olden time could not have been very secure, -could the besiegers but get to the base of its walls. At the same time, -from its isolated position, it served admirably as an outpost which at -least offered a superior vantage against an attacking force, and it is -unlikely that it could have been taken except by siege or by the fall of -the supporting city at its back. - -[Illustration: <u>_Tower of Solidor, St. Servan_</u>] - -The Chapel St. Peter of Aleth has built into its fabric some fragments -of the ancient ninth and tenth century cathedral of the same name. - -[Illustration: <u>_Plans of the Tower of Solidor_</u>] - -There are many remains of the old city walls, and St. Servan ranks with -St. Malo as a vivid reminder of other days. - -There is one popular sight of Brittany near St. Malo, which cannot be -ignored,--the rock-carved tomb of St. Budoc. This holy man lived in the -days when Celtic was a living tongue, and Irish, Scots, Welshmen, and -Bretons, one and all, used the same speech. - -Many a year has passed, and St. Budoc has been all but forgotten. -Besides his religious fervour, the memory of which exists but vaguely, -there is left as a reminder of his existence his tomb and a prophecy -which has come down by word of mouth through the natives. - -To-day there is a modern hermit who lives near the tomb of the saint, -and carves a sort of symbolical prophecy in stone for his own amusement -and the marvel of tourists. - -It is rather a cheap sort of a shrine, and one that is wholly visionary -so far as its real significance goes, but it is a very satisfying one -to most who view it, like the “Blarney Stone” and St. Patrick’s grave, -which are frauds of the first water. - -One comes to Rothéneuf--a little Breton coast village--by road, tramway, -or carriage from Paramé, if he comes at all. Here just beyond the -village itself the cliffs are curiously carved into all manner of human -shapes,--the work of the aforesaid hermit, who, although he be not a -young man, certainly is not so old as to have carved all the stones -which here exist; at least they look much older, though the stress of -weather may account for that. - -Evidently there is a devotion for St. Budoc, and belief in his prophecy -of the downfall of France is one day or another to become true. The old -monk or priest--for in reality this hermit of to-day is a churchman--is -evidently the chief disciple of the cult, for he perpetuates his version -of this long-lost legend in his modern carvings. - -The text of this old prophecy was vague and visionary, but enough has -come down to place definitely the fact that a Napoleon was to rise and -fall in the beginning of the nineteenth century, and that the Church was -to be parted from its children,--referring presumably to the Concordat -of 1802. - -No version of the prophecy exists in Celtic literature, but the monk -Olivarius published, in Luxembourg in 1544, a version which was supposed -to have been handed down from the old Celtic monk himself. Since that -time contemporary literature has had various references thereto, the -last apparently in 1904, when one appeared in Gaston Medy’s “Echo of the -Marvellous.” - -This last version, or promulgation, of the Celt’s prophecy carries -us even into the future, 432 moons from the foundation of the present -French republic, _i. e._ thirty-six years, which would be in 1906. “Woe -to thee, great city,” is a phrase which is supposed to refer to the fall -of Paris; whether as Rome fell, from an excess of glory, or into the -hands of the invader, is not stated. At any rate, the event is to come -to pass in the year of our Lord 1906, 432 moons from the beginning of -the great Republique Française. Let all who will be mindful. - -On the opposite bank of the Rance from St. Malo is Dinard-St. Énogat, -occupying a magnificent site known in part as the Bec de la Valle. The -country-houses of Dinard are famous, though they are built in that -vague architectural style accepted the world over as being something -appropriate to a species of residence less sumptuous than a palace or a -château. - -It is a pity that the word is not better understood by the people, -and a pity, too, that most villas in France--and in England, for that -matter--are abominable, queer chicken-coops, with names like Villa -Napoli, Villa Saint Germain, Villa la Belle-Issue, Villa Belle-Rive, and -Villa Bric-à-Brac. All these are found at Dinard, and more, and, as may -be imagined, the summer life of this town of country-houses is in many -respects as gay and bizarre as the architecture and names of the villas -themselves. - -The aspect of the waterside of the charming little place--for Dinard is -charming, in spite of it all--belies these strictures somewhat, with -the warm glow of the sinking sun gilding the roof-tops, as the emerald -waters of the great bay ebb and flow beneath their feet. - -Dinard has another and more interesting side in an admirable -architectural monument,--the ruins of an ancient priory, founded in -1324 by Olivier and Geoffroy de Montfort. The fine Gothic chapel is now -ruined and moss-grown, but there are still to be seen the tombs of the -Chevaliers de Montfort, who were mighty chieftains in their day. Within -the grounds also is a curious statue of the Virgin placed beneath the -enormous fig-tree. - -The beach is of course the great attraction of the summer resident, -when he is not drinking cool drinks at the casino or eating at the café -restaurant on the terrace. - -St. Énogat, which is usually linked with the mention of Dinard by a -hyphen, has much the same aspect as its partner,--villas, Swiss châlets, -and cottages. St. Énogat bears the name of one of the first bishops of -Aleth, and its proximity to the great cliffs fringing the coast, and -the high rocks just offshore, make its location even more beautiful than -that of Dinard itself. Westward of St. Énogat are St. Jacut, St. Cast, -and Cap Fréhel, and nearer St. Lunaire and St. Briac. - -All are very popular resorts during the summer months, and are -attractive spots--or would be but that accommodation in all is limited, -and what there is is sadly overcrowded for the three fine months of the -year. - -St. Lunaire has an ancient eleventh-century church, placing it somewhat -on the plane of an artistic shrine. Practically, the edifice is -abandoned to-day, but it contains the tomb of St. Lunaire, a work of the -thirteenth or fourteenth century, made up of some fragmentary sculptures -thought to have come from the primitive church. - -St. Briac has much the same characteristics, though of itself it counts -an all-the-year-round population of two thousand or more souls. - -It owes its name to a Celtic hermit-saint, who came from Ireland in -the early days of the evangelizing missions of the Irish monks, and -has the ruined Château of Pontbriant for an attraction. It has not the -misfortune to have become as fashionable as Dinard-St. Énogat, and is -therefore the more enjoyable. Truly is it a delightful little corner -of the world, where those who are town-weary may take their ease and -ruminate on the futility of attempting to put order into the universe. - -This whole region is a wonderful galaxy of natural beauties, to be -discovered and appreciated only by oneself. They shall be nameless here -that that pleasure may not be curtailed. - -The route to Dinan from St. Malo by the tidal river Rance is one of -those enjoyable journeys which impress the mind in an indelible fashion. -It is a matter of twenty-four kilometres as the crow flies, and about -the same by the water route of the fishes. - -Dinan is a real mediæval town, with a wall or rampart something over a -mile in length. It is a most interesting centre for the charming country -round about, and is in itself a typical feudal relic of the days when -cities were enclosed by walls and only entered through fortified gates. - -Originally the thirteenth-century ramparts were defended by twenty-four -towers, of which a dozen, perhaps, still remain. Three great gateways, -the gates of Jerzual, of St. Malo, and St. Louis, still remain in all -their fortified splendour; the fourth, the Porte de Brest, has been -demolished. - -[Illustration: <u>_The Valley of the Rance_</u>] - -The old streets of the mediæval city still exist, too, much in the same -state as they were in mediæval times. - -The porches or covered passages are a feature of many of the old-time -houses, and are most quaint and artistic. - -The church of St. Malo dates from 1490, and that of St. Sauveur from -the twelfth to the fifteenth century. The chief historical figure of -Dinan’s past was Bertrand Duguesclin, the young Breton noble who so -distinguished himself in the fourteenth century on the side of France -against the English. - -[Illustration: _Duguesclin, from his statue in the Abbey of St. Denis._] - -He was born at Motte-Broons, near Dinan, toward 1320. “He had a -sunburned face, with a snub nose, and green eyes, an awkward gait, and -a rough and untractable nature,” one reads in the words of Simeon Luce; -and from the existing portraits of him, all this is true. - -He was a warrior, from his earliest days, of the most thoroughgoing -type. He was the sort of small boy whom mothers find looking for -trouble. He would lead on the village lads to fight, and, when victory -had all but appeared, on one side or the other, he would throw himself -into the breach to start the fight again, just like a wolf, after which -he would lead both sides to a tavern to drink, and heal old sores. - -On the ninth of July, 1812, the heart of the redoubtable Duguesclin was -brought to Dinan and placed in the north transept of the Church of St. -Sauveur amid an imposing assemblage. - -The sarcophagus bears the following inscription, which shows that the -warrior who really was responsible for the banishment of the English -from France “ranked in company with kings,” as his French admirers put -it. - - GY : GIST : LE CUEUR : DE - MESSIRE : BERTRAN : DU GUEAQUI - EN : SON VIVAT CONETITABLE DE - FRACE : QUI : TRESPASSA : LE XIIIe - JOUR : DE : JULLET : L’AN : MIL IIIe - IIIIxx : DONT : SON : CORPS : REPOS - AVECQUES : CEULX : DES : ROIS - A SAINCT : DENIS EN FRANCE. - -The great clock-tower, a fine fifteenth-century building with a massive -spire, is found in the Rue de l’Horloge. It was given to the town by -Anne of Brittany in 1507. - -The Château of Dinan was built by the Breton dukes (1382-87). Its -history was varied and vivid, as one reads in the pages of M. Gaultier -de Mottay. - -[Illustration: _Rez-de-Chausée of Donjon--DINAN_] - -Oliver Clisson, Gilles of Brittany, Viscount Rohan, Duchess Anne, -Laurent Hamon, and many others whose names are famous in the history of -Brittany have walked through these halls, of which only the hold to-day -remains as a tourist “sight.” - -The Tower of Coëtquen, one of the ancient towers of the city wall, -forms practically a part of the old castle, but the keep, or the Queen -Anne’s Tower, a hundred or more feet in height and of four stories,--the -topmost reached by a spiral stairway of 148 steps,--is the most distinct -feature still standing. - -In the interior are a number of obscure cells which were, and indeed are -still, terrible dungeons. The guard-room is on the second floor, with -also a little room, which served as an oratory for the Duchess Anne. The -third floor is occupied by the Constable’s Hall, and the fourth by a -Hall of Arms, a fine vaulted apartment. - -To-day the castle is a prison, and the rank and file of visitors may -not enter this fine mediæval monument, but, if one have a proper -appreciation of the architectural delights of a mediæval fortress, and -be diplomatic in his request, very likely his wish to enter will be -gratified. - -One of the principal industries of Dinan is the fabrication of -sail-cloth. It is an admirably placed industry, with its market close -at hand, and most of the Breton and Norman fishing-boats of these parts -sport a full suit of Dinan manufacture. - -In the environs of Dinan are innumerable charming excursions mostly -neglected. One such must surely be included in one’s itinerary,--a visit -to the old Priory of Lehon, a dependency of the Abbey of Marmoutier. - -It was founded in 850 by Nominoë, in honour of St. Magloire, whose -relics were brought from the Isle of Jersey to Dinan. The ruins, -as seen to-day, are most ample and beautiful, showing the best of -thirteenth-century Gothic. - -Besides this, Lehon has the picturesque ruins of a twelfth and -thirteenth century castle perched high upon the summit of an eminence -overlooking the headwaters of the Rance. The castle came to the hands -of the Dukes of Brittany; Charles of Blois stayed there in 1356 after -his return from England, and Raoul Coëtquen was made captain in 1402, -since which time its history has been lost or hidden in the pages of the -untranslated chroniclers. - -In 1624 the priory monks robbed the castle for material with which to -construct their beautiful cloister, but enough remains to-day, hidden -away among a mass of ivy and lichen-grown ruins, to indicate its former -prominence. - -Altogether Lehon and its two romantic memories of other days is a -“sight” not to be missed. - -An old custom formerly prevailed here at Pentecost, when the newly -married were supposed to present themselves before the prior of the -monastery for a sort of last blessing, as it would seem. - -They sang the following refrain, and went back to their home, or to the -festival in the neighbouring village, with never a care beyond to-day: - - “Si je suis mariée vous le savez bien; - Si je suis mal à l’aise vous n’en savez rien. - Ma chanson est dite, je ne vous dois plus rien.” - -This seems a philosophical way of looking at things, and shows an easy -conscience and open mind on the part of all concerned. - -Seated upon the western shore of the great Bay of Mont St. Michel is -Cancale, whence come the oysters. The six thousand inhabitants of this -quaintly rock-environed place have a physiognomy so distinctly their own -as to mark them for a type. Feyen-Perrin and his brother have painted -the Cancale people in a manner never to be forgotten by those who are -familiar with their work. - -Anciently Cancale was known as Cancaven, and is a survival among -neighbouring settlements which have succumbed to the encroachments of -the ocean. - -In 1032, it became a dependency of the Abbey of Mont St. Michel. In -1758, it was pillaged by the English under the Duke of Marlborough, and -the English fleet again bombarded it in 1779. - -La Houle is the real port of Cancale, and the centre for the oyster -industry. At low tide the boats of the fishers are drawn up on the -yellow sands, there to remain until the return of the tide. At low -tide all the village comes from the town above and repairs to the -oyster-beds. The general outgoing, which seems to the stranger the -emigration of the whole population, has been described by a Frenchman -as: “_Un défile, interminable, bruyant, cadencé, le bruit des pas coupé -de paroles et de rires._” - -This great outpouring continues until quite all the available help of -the female persuasion has departed, leaving practically only the old and -infirm to guard the houses and shops until the return of the tide. - -Cancale is one of the most celebrated oyster-rearing districts of -the world, but, if the tourist arrive there during the summer months -which lack the “R,” he will eat not of them; the natives look upon it -as downright crime even to think of serving them to you; the mussel -will have to be your substitute. It is always in season, though it -looks about as perishable in hot weather as the oyster, and probably -is so. Tradition and superstition account for the upholding of many -institutions in this world, and the oyster season appears to be one of -them. - -The celebrated Rocks of Cancale lie just below the town,--a black mass -of rocks, about which the waves of the ocean fawn and growl like a -parcel of wolves. - -The Point of Grouin is simply an exaggeration of the same rocky -formation as that of Cancale, and the same which unrolls itself all -around the coast up to Cape Fréhel. To the west is the Bay of St. Malo, -and to the east the Bay of Mont St. Michel. - -Michelet wrote of this famous mount off the Breton coast as follows: - -“The gigantic rock is an abbey, a cloister, a fortress, and a prison, -with exquisite sublimity and true dignity. It rises like a titanic -tower, rock upon rock, keep upon keep, and century upon century. Below -the monks; higher the iron cage of Louis XI. (who, it seems, left these -details rather numerously about his domain); higher yet the cell of -Louis XIV.; higher yet the prison of to-day. All is in a whirlwind; -Mont St. Michel is a very sepulchre of peace.” - -Michelet’s was not wholly a cheerful view. He was rather a gloomy man, -it would seem, but it is perhaps proper enough to record his views -here, as most of us will praise this wonderful work to the limit of our -imagination. - -Really Mont St. Michel is not of Brittany. To-day the changing of the -boundary westward to the little river Couesnon brings it just over the -line into Normandy, though both ramblers in Normandy and ramblers in -Brittany may properly enough include it in their itineraries, and should -do so. - -To such spirits as like that sort of thing, there is a way open to the -landing, high up in the tower of the abbey, whence there is a wonderful -view. Michelet wrote of it, on the occasion of a visit, that it was -a place for fools; that he knew no spot more suitable to bring on an -attack of vertigo. - -Michelet’s description of the quicksands which surround the mount is -distinctly good. The native will tell you that you must not venture upon -them, but he himself does so, and nothing happens. In spite of this, -let the visitor so much as leave the causeway a dozen yards--to focus -his camera--and a half-dozen burly fellows will hurl themselves upon -him and drag him back, declaring they have saved his life, which means -that one ultimately pays them something; a franc each is about the price -that they apparently consider a life worth. Sometimes some poor soul is -engulfed, but it is a first-class scare in most instances. Michelet says -of these quicksands (“_cendre blanche_”), “It is not land; it is not -sea; I myself only just escaped being engulfed.” - -As a sort of side-show to the wonderful Abbey of Mont St. Michel is the -stern and barren Isle of Tombelaine. - -It lies, also amid its own desert of sand or water, according to the -state of the tide, about a mile, or perhaps a little more, to the -north-east of the mount. - -It is a simple islet of granite, uncultivated, and as wild as it always -has been. It rises perhaps 125 feet above the sea-level, like a giant -stepping-stone, between the mount and the neighbouring coast before -Avranches in Normandy. - -Its history is intimately bound with that of the mount itself, but -to-day it has few, if any, visitors. It played a certain minor part in -the war of the Hundred Years, when it served as a sturdy buttress for -the English fleet. - -From the tenth to the seventeenth century it was occupied by a religious -colony from the abbey of the mount, and held a diminutive priory -bearing the vocable of Our Lady la Gisant; “a gentle Madonna,” says an -imaginative Frenchman, “standing beside the archangel with the sword.” - -In the midst of the Marsh of Dol--the great Bay of Mont St. Michel--is -a granite eminence some two hundred feet above the surrounding plain, -at the summit of which is built the little village of Mont Dol. It is -supposed to be the site of an ancient shrine consecrated to the druids. - -Two kilometres from Mont Dol is the great menhir of Champ Dolent, a -relic of the stone age which was pagan, but is to-day surmounted by a -Christian cross, which seems paradoxical. It has no pretence to beauty -or architectural grandeur, and is to be regarded only as a mysterious -curiosity. - -When one first comes to Dol in Brittany he is in a quandary. Which is -it, city or village? The writer does not know even yet. It has all the -quaintness and rustic picturesqueness of a mere hamlet, and again, -in its station, its hotels, and its tree-lined boulevard, it takes -on the aspect of a city. At any rate, if it belongs to the latter -classification, it is somnolent, and accordingly delightful. - -“Here, my good fellow, can you direct me to the Hôtel de la Poste,” one -says to the first native he meets after leaving the station. “Certainly, -my good man,” he replies in an equally patronizing tone, “I will take -you there.” He declines all remuneration, of course, and will not be -patronized in any way. Decidedly he is a most independent individual, -but polite withal. - -Stendhal, in his “Traveller’s Memories,” said of the great frowning -cathedral of the episcopal city of Dol: “It is the most beautiful -example of a Gothic edifice which I have seen.” It is not difficult to -follow his reasoning, for the grim walls of its façade, in the simplest -and severest style, are indeed magnificent examples of the undecorated -Gothic of a very early period. Most folk, however, will not call it -beautiful when Chartres, Rheims, Beauvais, or even Sées are in mind. - -Dol, at any rate, forming the gateway to Brittany, from Normandy through -the Cotentin, was a most important centre of Christianity in the sixth -century. - -The foundation of Dol dates from 548, when a colony of Britons coming -from Ireland settled here under the leadership of St. Samson, from -whom the present cathedral is named. This is but another of those links -which bind the history of Brittany with that of the Celts from overseas. -Legend continues the story thus: “Thou goest by the sea” (St. Samson was -told), “and where thou wilt disembark, thou shalt find a well. Over this -thou wilt build a church, and around it will group the houses forming -the city, of which thou wilt be bishop.” - -All this came to pass, and for long ages the town has been known as the -episcopal city of Dol. William the Conqueror besieged Dol in 1075, but -retired after forty days, having failed to sustain his attack. Henry II. -of England invaded the city, and Jean Lackland fortified himself here in -1203, but it was retaken by Guy de Thouars in the year following. - -Up to Revolutionary times the career of Dol was unceasingly riotous -and bloody, but little evidences of a part so played remain visible -to-day. All that reminds one of its antiquity is the charmingly severe -and simply outlined Cathedral of St. Samson, and the numerous timbered -houses with their street-front galleries, always a most interesting -feature of a mediæval town. - -Sixteen kilometres south of Dol is Combourg, not an important town in -many ways, and yet very important, if one demands a sixteenth-century or -earlier label on all he admires. - -As a French visitor to Combourg has said, “La gare de Combourg is -not Combourg; you have yet fifteen hundred metres to go.” This is -not a great distance, but, as the town is so completely hidden from -the railway, the sensation is that of alighting far from a centre of -civilization. - -The Château of Combourg is one of those indescribable picturesque -fourteenth and fifteenth century structures which owe much to situation -and environment. It has a picturesquely disposed market clustered about -it, so that the cries of porkers and their venders mingle with the -stately pealing of the bell of the great clock, which rings out not only -the hour, but the “quarters” in a most sonorous note. - -The costumes of both the men and women of the region around Combourg -are exceedingly picturesque and novel; the men with blouse and jacket, -and the women in black and the coifs of Becherel, Hédé, Tentêniac, and -Miniac; all somewhat resembling one another, and that of Miniac looking -more like a great white-winged bishop’s mitre than anything else. - -[Illustration: <u>_Coif of Miniac_</u>] - -More anciently Combourg Château was a feudal fortress, in an old -building of which, now swallowed up in the surrounding structures, the -infancy of René Chateaubriand was spent. There is also an old tower -dating from 1016, built by Gingoneus, a bishop of Dol. The present -château belongs to the Countess of Chateaubriand, and is visible to the -curious public on Wednesday afternoons. - -The hall, the library, which contains the writing-table of the author of -the “Genius of Christianity,” and his bedroom, where is the little iron -bed on which he died in Paris,--all go to make of this a literary shrine -of prime importance. - -The Château of Combourg has a legend, too, but since it concerns -only the skeleton of a cat, which in life was supposed to be the -reincarnation of a former Count of Combourg, it seems unworthy of -repetition here. - - - - -CHAPTER X. - -ON THE ROAD IN BRITTANY--MAYENNE, FOUGÈRES, LAVAL, AND VITRÉ - - -In general aspect a Breton country-side differs widely from those of -Normandy. Here one comes upon hedgerows and an occasional bit of stone -wall, quite as one sees them in England. - -The towns and communities of Brittany are less numerous and less -populous, too, than those of Normandy, and paving is uncommon in the -towns, and were it not for the steep ascents and descents, by which one -leaves such places as Mayenne, Fougères, Josselin, Auray, or Quimperlé, -this would prove quite a blessing to the automobilist. As it is, while -they give variety to one’s journey by road, they do not by any means -permit of “plain sailing” at all times. - -The great national road from Paris to Brest crosses mid-Brittany, after -leaving Normandy, at Pré-en-Pail just beyond Alençon. It passes through -the great towns of Mayenne, Fougères, and Rennes, where it joins the -highway from Paris by way of Chartres, Le Mans, Laval, and Vitré. - -From Rennes this road, No. 24, runs straight, almost as the crow -flies, to the tip of Finistère, by Montfort-sur-Meu, Loudéac, Carhaix, -Huelgoat, and Landerneau to Brest. - -This takes one through the very heart of Brittany, though by no means -is it the most interesting or the most prosperous. Mayenne, Fougères, -Vitré, and Laval form a quartette of Breton towns which, taken as a -whole, have characteristics quite similar, and yet different from those -in other parts. Virtually, they are all hill-towns, and therein lies -their resemblance, though their careers have been varied indeed. - -The run down into the valley of the river Mayenne, as one comes into the -town of the same name, is a wonderfully delightful and gentle descent -of perhaps a dozen kilometres. There is nothing very terrific about -it, nor is it of the frankly mountainous order, still the eminence to -the eastward is sufficiently elevated to give a singularly spacious -appearance to the landscape above the river valley itself; indeed, next -to that magnificent run down into Rouen--from the height of Bon -Secours--it is one of the most splendidly scenic roads in all North -France. - -[Illustration: <u>_Mayenne_</u>] - -At the bottom flows the Mayenne, joining the Loire at Angers, and on -its banks is nestled snugly the town of Mayenne itself, with a truly -delightful riverside hotel and church. - -Just below it is the ancient castle built on a rocky escarpment -overhanging the river. There are five great towers on the riverside, and -three others on the north, of which one alone has preserved its conical -roof. To-day it serves as a prison, but there are yet to be seen in its -interior some fragments of the ornamentation of the thirteenth century. -The terrace of the château forms a delightful promenade overlooking the -river. - -William the Conqueror besieged Geoffrey III. here in 1064, but the most -celebrated siege which the château underwent was that by the Count of -Salisbury in 1424. - -The Hôtel de Ville is an admirable relic of other days, though by no -means pretentious. It is a small, rectangular structure, its front -ornamented with two enormous solar devices, and the whole surmounted -by a graceful bell-tower. Behind the Hôtel de Ville stands a bronze -statue of Cardinal Cheverus, first Bishop of Boston. The Church of -Notre Dame is really a grand structure, with its fine showing of splayed -buttresses. Its foundation dates from 1110, and it admirably exhibits -the best traditions of its time. - -Five kilometres away are the remains of the old Cistercian Abbey of -Fontaine-Daniel, founded in 1204 by Juhel III. There are some remarkable -fragments of its old foundation still remaining, but a large part of the -present edifice is of the seventeenth century. From Mayenne to Fougères, -still on the highroad to the west, one passes Ernée, whose name is not -known to many travellers and which is not marked on every map, though it -is a bustling town of five thousand inhabitants. - -The origin of this place is due to the foundation of a château--on the -site of the present quaint church--by the Lords of Mayenne, who were, in -the sixteenth century, of the house of Lorraine. - -Henri of Lorraine was killed by a musket-shot at the siege of Montaubon, -and was brought here to die in 1654. - -Some years later the Seigneury of Mayenne and Ernée passed to the hands -of Cardinal Mazarin, who transmitted it to his niece, and gave the old -château for transformation into the present church. - -Javron, also on the way to Fougères, is a small town of two thousand -inhabitants, and the former site of a monastery, founded by Clotaire for -an anchorite named Constantin. The present church is built over the tomb -of this saint. - -The situation of Fougères is truly remarkable. It is, moreover, a -remarkable place in itself, and is to be reckoned as one of these -delightful spots to visit, which, if not exactly popular tourist -resorts, are at least as satisfying to the curiously inclined. - -Fougères in all ways is this, and more. It is almost the best example -of a walled and fortified town of the middle ages existing in all North -France. Its situation, on a great hill, with its tower-flanked walls and -gates, is one of surpassing impressiveness, although to-day the general -aspect of the little city of twenty thousand inhabitants is modern -enough. - -Fougères was one of the original nine baronies of Brittany, and owes -its origin to a château which Méen, the son of Juhel Béranger, Count of -Rennes, constructed at the beginning of the ninth century. - -To-day the city walls, the remains of the château, and the gates and -watch-towers are admirably preserved. The castle itself is nothing more -than a vast ruin, whose entrance, formed by three towers, plainly shows -it to date from the twelfth century. - -[Illustration: <u>_Plan of the Ancient Walls and Towers of Fougères_</u>] - -There is a great tower yet remaining--one of a twin pair--known as the -Tower of Coigny, from a former governor, and within this tower is an -ancient chapel. - -There are three other celebrated towers, well-nigh as perfect as they -were in the middle ages as far as their general outlines are concerned. -The keep was razed in 1630, but the inner wall which surrounded it, with -its three angular towers, is still to be seen. The Tower of Melusine -encloses a museum in which are many relics and curiosities of a period -contemporary with the castle itself. The ramparts of the town are -more or less ruinous, but are still to be seen throughout its whole -circumference. No part of this feature, however, dates from before the -fifteenth century. - -There are two admirable churches,--relics of the middle ages,--St. -Sulpice and St. Leonard, also the ancient convent of the Urbanists, -dating from 1689, now barracks. - -There are many fine old houses in wood and stone scattered about the -city, and an octagonal tower, in which is a great clock whose bell was -cast in 1304 by Rolland Chaussière. - -North of the town is the Forest of Fougères, composed principally of -great beeches. Within the forest are the ruins of an ancient convent of -the Franciscans, and near the little hamlet of Landeau are the famous -“Caverns of Landeau,” constructed, it is said, in 1173 by Raoul II. of -Fougères, to hide his riches and those of his vassals from the rapacity -of the troops of Henry II. of England. - -Dropping down again to the main route from Paris, which joins with that -by the way of Mayenne and Fougères at Rennes, one enters Laval, the -first Breton town of any magnitude on this route, as one comes westward. - -It is a veritable local metropolis, and, like Mayenne, farther up the -river, it spreads itself amply on both sides of the stream which flows -southward to join the Loire at Angers, just below the country. - -The first Château of Laval was built by the Count Guidon or Guy to -protect the Bretons from the invasion of Charlemagne or his successors. -The second Guy received a charter from the Bishop of Mans, dated in the -fifth year of the reign of King Robert (1002), and this designates him -as the real founder of the Château of Laval. The town became the seat of -a barony, afterward a county, of which the possessors were ever famous -for their personal valour and their high lineage. Among them were the -Montmorencys, the Montforts, and the Colignys. - -When, in the fifteenth century, the English had become virtual masters -of Maine, Laval alone resisted their efforts, thanks to the energy of a -certain Anne of Laval. - -The historical records of the town and the château are ample and -eventful, even down to as late a day as 1871, when, after the battle of -Mans, General Chanzy retreated upon Laval. - -It was in the environs of Laval that the four ancient smugglers, the -brothers Jean, François, Pierre, and René Cottereau, known as the -Chouans (because of their owl signal, as the French give it), first -rallied and organized the bands of partisans which gradually adopted the -name. - -The keep of the château is a great cylindrical tower of the twelfth -century, remarkable for its height, its size, and the wonderful -carpentry of its roof. The great interior court is bordered on two sides -with a magnificent Renaissance structure attributed to Guy XVI., Count -of Laval and Governor of Brittany in 1525. The chapel has now been given -up to the prisoners sheltered within the castle. It is the masterpiece -of the whole work, and dates from the eleventh century. - -The Church of the Trinity, made a cathedral in 1855, was in 1790 the -seat of the Assemblée, but in its most ancient parts dates from the -episcopate of Hildebert of Lavardin (1110). - -There are some remains of the town’s ancient fortifications yet to -be seen, such as the Renaise Tower and the Spur Tower, which are in -every way as suggestive of former importance as the remains of the -castle itself. The Beucheresse Gate is another fragment of these same -fortifications. - -In Laval are ten thousand workmen engaged in the production of tent -and awning cloth. Laval is a great wheat market for the prolific -wheat-growing region round about, so its commercial importance of to-day -is quite as firmly established as is its historic past. - -Laval was the birthplace of Ambroise Paré, the founder of French -surgery. It was he who drew the spear-head from the cheek of Balafré, -and he who declared the malady of Francis I. to be incurable. - -His statue bears the following inscription, “I dressed the wound, and -God healed it.” - -One cannot say too much in praise of Vitré, though it does smack of -the popular tourist resort, with hotels whose runners tout for your -patronage, and picture post-card sellers, who seem to think that you -prefer their wares to viewing the sights themselves; but the hotels are -amply endowed with those creature comforts that most of us value highly, -and, if you wish, you will be put to sleep in a hygienic bedroom, -which is something like a prison-cell, but which must truly be hygienic, -judging from its get-up. - -[Illustration: <u>_Beucheresse Gate, Laval_</u>] - -These rooms, installed by the “Touring Club of France,” are now to -be found sprinkled here and there throughout the land, and, if white -lacquered walls and ceilings and iron beds, and simple draperies and no -carpets,--but highly waxed floors instead,--can ensure a superlative -cleanliness and airiness, why, so much the more welcome they are; -and surely the weary tourist ought not to mind whether he sleeps -in a cubicle or not. Again, the fare of this particular hotel (the -Travellers’) is so excellent that he ought to be willing to sleep on the -proverbial plank. - -Vitré, in spite of all novelty, is a true city of the past, and one -literally walks the by-paths of history when he traverses its streets. -All at once one comes to the ancient and theatrical-looking Château of -the Tremoilles, Vitré’s most noble family of other days. - -The town has undergone many sieges. Charles VIII. captured it, and in -1488 sojourned in it for some days. During the wars of the League, the -Rieux and the Colignys led the revolt, and it served for some years as a -strong place of resort for the Huguenots. Within the two hundred years -following, the Breton Parliament, alternately presided over by the Dukes -of Vitré and of Rohan, met here many times, always amid a great and -joyous festival given by the town. - -[Illustration: <u>_Plan of Vitré in 1811 Showing City Walls_</u> - - A--Château - B--Place du Château - C--Fosses - D--Dependencies of Château (non-existent to-day) - F--Porte d’Enhayt - G--Porte de Gastesel - H--Eglise Notre Dame -] - -All the activity in the past has worked for the preservation of many -ancient memorials. - -The aspect of the town is not so ruinously picturesque as Fougères, nor -again so trim and neat as Mayenne or Laval, but more than either of -these it preserves to-day its ancient outlook at every turn. - -“_II n’est plus que Vitré en Bretagne, Avignon dans le Midi, qui -conservent au milieu de notre époque leur intacte configuration du -moyen-âge_” (Victor Hugo). - -The château itself has been recently restored, and ranks as one of the -most perfectly preserved specimens of military architecture in all -Brittany. One may visit the interior of this old fortress-château in the -care of a painstaking porter. - -The principal mass, known as the châtelet, is the best preserved, -and, flanking it on both sides, are series of crenelated towers and -machicolated walls. In the courtyard is the eleventh-century château, -now incorporated in the later work. - -On the same side is a charming Renaissance tower, built by Guy XVI., and -known as the “Tribune of Tremoille.” The five sides of this admirable -architectural detail are charmingly decorated in sculptured stone, and -on one is the inscription taken from the Book of Job: “POST TENEBRAS -SPERO LUCEM,” the Tremoille motto. - -[Illustration: <u>_Château de Vitré_</u>] - -Within is a museum with divers collections of many things of an era -contemporary with the structure itself. - -[Illustration: <u>_Tower of St. Martin, Vitré_</u>] - -Opposite the great entrance gateway to the castle is a modest little -house, once the residence (or temporary abode) of Madame de Sévigné, and -now occupied by the “Cercle Militaire.” - -In the environs--five kilometres to the south--is the Château of -Rochers, better known as the domicile of Madame de Sévigné, and one of -the stock “sights.” It was from the Château of Rochers that she dated so -large a number of her letters in 1670-71. - -In a letter bearing date of the twenty-second of July, 1671, she writes -thus to Madame de Grignan: - -“Madame de Chaulnes arrived on Sunday, but in what manner think you? On -her beautiful feet, between eleven and twelve at night. One might think -that Vitré was in Bohemia. - -“She made no ceremony of her coming.... She had come from Nantes by La -Guerche, and her carriage stuck fast between two rocks half a league -from Vitré.” - -[Illustration: CHATEAU de ROCHERS] - -It was from the Château of Rochers that Madame de Sévigné wrote to her -daughter: “On Sunday last, just as I had sealed my former letter, I saw -enter our courtyard four chariots with six horses, with fifty mounted -guards, many led horses, and many mounted pages.” - -These were gallant days at Madame de Sévigné’s Breton home, and to read -all of her letters from Rochers--mainly to her daughter--is to get a -wonderful epitome of the seventeenth-century social life in this part of -France. - -On the above occasion the company included M. de Chaulnes, M. de Rohan, -M. de Lavardin, M. de Coëtlegon, and M. de Locmaria, the Baron de Guais, -the Bishops of Rennes and St. Malo, “and eight or ten I knew not,” she -continued. - -Throughout the château and its dependencies, the illusion of Madame de -Sévigné’s time has been well kept up unto to-day. One learns that the -château became the property of the Sévignés upon the marriage of Anne of -Mathefelon, “Lady of Rochers,” with William of Sévigné, chamberlain to -the Duke of Brittany. - -The kindly and well-meaning concierge, or cicerone, or whatever one -chooses to call him or her who conducts him over the château and its -grounds, is somewhat of a bore, though one has not the courage to cut -off the prattle for fear he may lose something which may not have been -offered to others. - -[Illustration: <u>_Arms of Madame de Sévigné_</u>] - -It is somewhat disconcerting and even annoying to be told, -however,--when about to stroll down a tree-alleyed path,--that “the -marchioness never went there.” Of course it’s pure conjecture on the -part of this twentieth-century guide, since the noble marchioness -has been dead some two hundred years or more, but, as aforesaid, the -interruption fascinates one with its coolness. - -At the right of the château are the gardens traced by the famous -Lenôtre. In the “Letters” one reads frequent references to these great -gardens with their vast and ancient forests of tall timber. - - - - -CHAPTER XI. - -RENNES AND BEYOND - - -Rennes was once a great provincial capital, as great politically, -perhaps, as Rouen, but it has not a tithe of the fascination or wealth -of attraction of the Norman metropolis, and never had. Its Cathedral of -St. Pierre is a cold, unfeeling thing, and its eighteenth-century town -hall, its great military barracks, and its palace of a university are in -no way great or lovable architectural monuments. As an offset against -the mediocrity, is the somewhat bare exterior of the court-house, built -in 1618 for the Breton Parliament, and furnished now, as then, in most -luxurious fashion. - -The Salle des Pas-Perdus is a vast apartment, most delightfully planned -and decorated, and of the Grand Parliamentary Chamber the same may be -said. Above the floor of this chamber are still to be seen the tribunes -where the dames of other days, of the days of Madame de Sévigné, -assisted at the sessions. - -The town hall contains a library of eighty thousand volumes, of which -one hundred or more are first editions, and six hundred manuscripts. - -The museums of the university palace are exceedingly rich in treasure, -and are in every way worthy of a great provincial capital. - -For the rest, Rennes is a most ordinary, uninteresting town, though it -does possess two mediæval monuments of remark: the Porte Mordelaise, -a historic souvenir of the military architecture of the middle -ages, and Church of Our Lady, the ancient chapel and cloister of an -eleventh-century monastery founded by the Bishop St. Mélaine. - -There are many fine old Renaissance houses scattered here and there -about the town, but the general aspect is modern, and mediocre at that. -Rennes would have been called by century-ago travellers “a well-built -town,” and such it certainly is, as becomes the ancient capital of the -duchy of Brittany. - -In later days it is mostly known to the general reader as the scene -of the famous Dreyfus trial, and its only liveliness comes from the -officers of the tenth army corps, who, of a summer’s night, frequent the -coffee-rooms opposite the court-house or the theatre, or promenade in -the Thabor and the flower-garden, the old gardens of the Benedictine -convent. - -[Illustration: <u>_Monastery of St. Melaine, Rennes_</u>] - -Just previous to the Revolution, there were stirring times in Rennes, -when a marshal of France commanded the troops camped within the city. -The discontent of the people had arisen from two distinct causes, the -price of bread and the abolition of its ancient parliament. The former -seems a good enough excuse, but the latter is inexplicable, except, -perhaps, as the snuffing out of an ancient source of local pride. It was -to Rennes that Père Caussin, the father confessor of Louis XIII., was -sent by Richelieu, when he proved himself incapable of becoming the tool -of the cardinal. The prison of state at Rennes was a terrible place in -those days, but the true churchman preferred it to exile as a missionary -in the wilds. - -All this and much more of political history made Rennes a famous centre -in times past, but to-day it is so much like a bad imitation of Paris, -that in desperation the stranger within the gates finally takes his -departure for more idyllic parts, with the vow that never again will he -seek to learn of present-day Brittany from the cafés and boulevards of -Rennes. - -One other comment may be made on the unloveliness of Rennes as a place -of temporary sojourn; and that is on its cab-drivers. The driver of a -fiacre in the average Breton large town is like his fellows of Paris. -He drives with a loose rein, and rushes helter-skelter down narrow -streets with never a care for other traffic, or for foot-passengers, -save a shouted, “_He, la-bas!_” which is so sudden and unforeseen that -it is quite useless as a warning. There have been those who have said -that the hoot of an automobile’s horn would drive even the “_sense of -traffic_”--a new sense recently discovered by the Parisian medical -journals--from out of the brain of even the most careful of persons! -This is as naught compared to the Breton cab-driver’s stentorian “_He, -la-bas!_” - -As one comes to the open country again, he leaves all these distractions -behind, and revels in nature, and if he be travelling by road, in the -stubbornness of cows and sheep and the aggressiveness of geese and -ducks, all road-users like himself. - -Westward of Rennes, twenty kilometres by road, is Montfort-sur-Meu, -a charming small town, situated upon the banks of two tiny rivers. -Its origin dates back to an ancient eleventh-century fortress, which -remains to-day in the form of a great cylindrical machicolated tower. -The Seigneury of Montfort, since the fifteenth century, has passed -successively, by marriage or by heritage, through the houses of Laval, -Rieux, Coligny, and La Trémouille. - -Next is Montauban, with a fine, moss-grown ruin of a château, dating -from the fifteenth century; the town itself numbers three thousand -inhabitants, but it does not look it. - -St. Méen, a dozen kilometres farther on, was born of a monastery founded -in the tenth century by a holy man of its name. It was destroyed and -rebuilt many times in the years to follow, but its old abbatial church -still exists, one tower coifed by a dome, and another smaller and flat. -But no one comes here to see this fine old monkish relic but the farming -folk from round about, though St. Méen is a town of three thousand souls -and an idyllic artists’ sketching-ground. No colony of painters has yet -settled here, leaving it a wholly new field to exploit by any painter -looking for new worlds to conquer. - -Loudéac and Pontivy, the one in the Côtes du Nord, and the other in -the Morbihan, are two characteristically Breton towns bearing no -relation whatever to the outside world. It seems doubtful indeed if the -inhabitants of these two centres are aware that there is any outside -world, so taken up are they with their own little affairs. - -Loudéac has some six thousand inhabitants, but it has no apparent -industries to hold all these people together, and it seems as if they -had simply grouped themselves at the crossing of five great routes and -built a town. Its foundation does not go very far back into antiquity; -its parish church is only 150 years old, but the Chapel of Notre Dame -Vertus dates from the thirteenth century. - -In October, November, and December are held great cider-apple markets, -which, from their magnitude, would seem to be the chief source of income -of the population. - -The ancient slogan of Pontivy, born of Revolutionary times, was “Freedom -or Death,” which is not far different from the battle-cry of socialists -the world over to-day. The condition of the inhabitants of Pontivy, -however, does not differ from most folk elsewhere, and the frowning -walls of its old castle ironically point to the fact that the time has -not yet come when a successful social revolution can be steered through -the breakers ahead--not even in France, where indeed there are even -more advanced ideas on the subject than in Germany itself. - -The memory of this event, though the “Treaty of Pontivy” was sent -broadcast through all the communes of France, has quite died out, and -the serenity of a little Breton market-town long ago settled upon -Pontivy, with nothing but a dim memory existing to neutralize the -admiration one is bound to have for the town’s wonderfully picturesque -castle. It is a grand ruin with crumbled roof and walls, but its -outlines are as clear as ever they were, and if it has not the magnitude -or magnificence of many others of its class, it looks far more imposing, -and forms an exquisite stage setting for any mediæval romance one is -able to conjure up. The history of Pontivy and its castle is this: - -The town owes its origin to a monastery built here in the seventh -century by St. Ivy, an English monk. The castle, however, was a -foundation of seven hundred years later, by John of Rohan, in 1485. At -the creation of the duchy of Rohan, in 1663, Pontivy became the first -seat of this jurisdiction. - -At the Revolution the famous Pontivy treaty mentioned came into -being, with the result that in 1802 a consuls’ decree prescribed the -construction of a vast barrack at Pontivy, and the canalization of the -river Blavet, upon which it sits, down to the sea. - -Napoleon, however, by a decree given at Milan, sought to create a new -town south of the present city, whose name should be Napoleonville. -All this because Pontivy had declared for the rights of man. When the -Revolutionists sought power Pontivy had every chance, but with Napoleon -his desire was to efface it. - -Pontivy is distinctly Breton in every aspect; its manners, customs, and -above all its costumes. Decidedly one’s itinerary in Brittany should be -made to include it. - -Rostrenen is a delightful old town banked high upon a hillside some -six hundred feet above the valley. The old-time collegiate church is a -thirteenth-century foundation, which, though restored in our day, has -all the loveliness of the era of its foundation well preserved. - -Like the church at Josselin it is called Our Lady of the -Blackberry-bush, from a miraculous Virgin found beneath a -blackberry-bush. The great day of pilgrimage to this shrine is the -fifteenth of August. - -Carhaix is a little Breton town now all but shorn of its former -importance, though its breed of cattle is prized above all others in -Brittany,--as if that were enough to keep its memory alive. Anciently -Carhaix was the capital of the Vorganium, whose peoples took an active -part in the wars against Cæsar. Seven Roman ways centred here, and there -are yet to be seen the remains of an ancient Roman aqueduct. - -Vorganium ultimately lost its rank, and was made a part of the realm -of Cornouaille founded by King Grollo, who gave Carhaix its present -name--then Ker-Ahès. - -Carhaix is the birthplace of La Tour d’Auvergne, “the first Grenadier of -France.” His career was almost legendary, and after his famous infernal -column which went up against the Spaniards in the Pyrenees, he retired -to the city of his birth, and took up the study of the Celtic tongue. In -1796, when the Terror broke out, at the age of fifty-two, he took the -haversack and cartridge-box of a simple soldier, to replace the son of -an old friend who had been drawn by conscription. He would never advance -a single grade, but remained in the ranks from this time forward, -and was killed at the battle of Oberhausen in Bavaria. His heart is -enshrined in the Hôtel des Invalides at Paris, having been brought -there and buried with great pomp in 1904. - -Carhaix has a real novelty in its horse-market, held before the Church -of St. Trémeur. There is nothing actually profane or sacrilegious -about this perhaps; but yet again, perhaps there is. Certainly it is -incongruous to see a long string of horses tethered to the very church -door-knob itself, with the breeders seated back against the church wall -smoking tobacco and eating and drinking. - -Huelgoat is in the very heart of Finistère. It is as typical in the -manners and customs of these parts as is Pont l’Abbé in Cornouaille or -Auray in Morbihan. It has one of the finest sites given to a town in all -Brittany, and abounds in quaintness and beauty. - -There are various ecclesiastical monuments and religious shrines in and -near the town, of which the guide-books tell, and all are well worth -visiting. - -The market-place of Huelgoat does not differ greatly from other -market-places in Brittany. The costumes are brilliant in magpie -colours,--if white coifs flashing in the sunlight can be said to make -colour,--and the little life and the little affairs of the peasant -people scintillate and fluctuate from day to day as if they were the -most serious and momentous things in all the world. - -Above, on the right, rises the quaint bell-tower of the -sixteenth-century church, not beautiful of itself, perhaps, but grouping -wonderfully with the moving foreground. - -Huelgoat is a great place for ducks, evidently, for ducks big, little, -and of all colours of the rainbow are apparently the chief and staple -article of trade. What the value may be to-day, as compared with what it -was last market-day, no one can prognosticate. Two francs is certainly -not much for a nice fat duck, just waiting to be plucked and garnished -with green peas, but two francs for a brace is cheaper still, and two -francs for a whole flock or bevy, or whatever formation ducks group -themselves in, is a still better bargain, and on occasions you may -buy a whole duck and drake family--father and mother and two or three -youngsters--for a matter of _une pièce_, which is the Breton’s way of -counting a hundred sous or five francs. - -From Huelgoat the highroad branches to Morlaix in the northwest, and -Landerneau, directly to the west, when one comes once more on the -national road, running westward from Alençon by way of Fougères and the -north to Brest. - -[Illustration: <u>_Huelgoat_</u>] - - - - -CHAPTER XII. - -RELIGIOUS FESTIVALS AND PARDONS - - -Brittany has been called “the Land of Calvaries and Pardons.” This does -not mean much to one who has never come under the spell of these strange -sights and survivals, but it means a great deal to those who realize to -the full the real significance of the devoutness and religious motives -which inspire the Breton folk to worship God in a manner which, in the -present age of disregard for the Christian religion of our forefathers, -seems to be playing less and less a foremost part. - - “Venez donc un tour au Pays de St. Yves. - - * * * - - Au pays du Creizker finement dentelé. - Venez donc faire un tour au Pays de Calvaires, - Au Pays des Pardons mystiques et joyeux.” - -So sang Theodore Botrèl in a charming series of verses written as an -invitation to his fellow Frenchmen to know more of the ancient province -of Brittany. Since Brittany is so very religious, the most devout of -all the provinces of the France of to-day, the following account of -the disposition of certain observances under the care of the state is -apropos. - -France is said to be Catholic, because the majority of the people -profess Catholicism, which apparently answers their wants better than -any other. As a matter of fact, however, there is the coëstablishment -of four religions, all of which are recognized by the state and their -ministers paid by the state. So, virtually, there are four state -religions, if they can be so called. In truth, there is no religious -head in France; neither the chief of state, the Archbishop of Paris -(there are three other heads of religions, so manifestly one could not -be chosen), nor the minister of public worship can be called upon to -fill the office, hence there is no national religion, though the Roman -Catholic faith predominates to-day as in the past. - -Since we are concerned herein with Brittany alone, and since the Breton -is accounted the most devoutly Catholic of all Frenchmen, it is enough -to define the organization of the Roman Catholic religion alone, leaving -the question of the Calvinists, the Lutherans, and the Israelites quite -apart, as they exist not at all in Brittany as a factor of the local -conditions of life. - -The parish is the unit in the Catholic Church organization in France, -as the _commune_ is the unit in civil administration; the parishes are -divided into _curés_ and _succursales_. - -The first class, which number forty-five hundred throughout France, have -for their pastor a priest who is immovable, nominated by the bishop with -the approval of the government. The second class have a pastor who is -nominated by the bishop, but who can be removed or replaced. The parish -priest may have one or more assistants. Above the parish priest in rank -is the bishop. - -In general the bishoprics correspond with the departments, though there -are eighty-four dioceses and but sixty-seven bishops, the archbishops of -the “ecclesiastical provinces”--which often include several departments -and dioceses--making up the number. - -In Brittany the Departments of Ille-et-Vilaine, Côtes du Nord, -Finistère, Morbihan, and Loire-Inférieure have a bishopric, with an -archbishopric at Rennes. - -The bishops are nominated by the chief of the state, but are invested -canonically by the Pope. They are assisted by vicars-general, who -undertake the administrative functions of the diocese. The canonical -chapter of the cathedral, the diocesan seminary, and all other -seminaries are under the authority of the vicar-general. - -Above the bishops are the archbishops, who administer to the wants of -their diocese in the same way as the bishops, and, in addition, preside -at all provincial councils, ordain the bishops, and in general have a -certain jurisdiction over the bishoprics of their sees. - -The ecclesiastical provinces, as the great administrative districts of -the Church are known, correspond to-day, in a great part, to the ancient -provinces of the Roman epoch in Gaul, as the bishoprics themselves -correspond with the ancient cities and towns. - -Higher up even than the archbishops are the cardinals, nominated by the -Pope with the concurrence of the head of the French nation. To-day there -are five cardinals in France, all being titularies of one of the Roman -churches and members of the Sacred College which elects the Pope. - -Those who know Brittany will recognize as the foremost trait and -characteristic of the people their devotion to religious forms and -ceremonies. - -It has been said that by nature the Bretons are conservative. This is -indeed true enough, but they are something more, they are superstitious, -not only with regard to certain phases of their religion, but also -with respect to many of their local customs, which have naught to do -with religion. It is said that belief in witchcraft still endures, and -certain it is that folk-lore and fairy-lore are, in some parts, quite as -much of the life of the people as is the case in the bogs of Ireland. -The Celtic imagination, which is the same in both instances, doubtless -accounts for this. What the Bretons really are, or have been, though -they have not often been accused of it, is pagan,--at least some of them -are. It was only in the seventeenth century that the pagan cult--as a -body of magnitude--was suppressed. This again was a survival, of course, -from the barbarous rites and practices of the druids, which indeed were -the same elsewhere, so it need not be laid up against the Bretons alone. - -Probably those vast colonies of megalithic monuments at Carnac, and -their orphaned brothers and sisters scattered elsewhere throughout -Brittany, did much to keep the flames aglow on pagan altars, and -even to-day it is easy to perceive with what awe and veneration the -simple-minded Breton peasant regards these weird survivals of other -days. At any rate, Breton religion to-day is a devotion to many forms -and ceremonies. - -Brittany has been called the land of pardons (_pays des pardons_). Every -one knows of these great Breton festivals and of their significance. If -one travel between May and October, scarcely a week will pass without -his falling unawares upon one or another of these great sacred fêtes. - -All Bretons do not give to these rites the sacred regard with which -they were originally intended to be endowed. Decidedly they have been -profaned only too often, and at times there is a little too much -license. The Breton pardon is by no means to be thought of in the same -manner as the kermess of Flanders, which is a merrymaking pure and -simple, with not even a side-light of religion thrown upon it. - -The five great pardons of Brittany are held each year as follows: - -“The Pardon of the Poor,” at St. Yves; “The Pardon of the Singers,” at -Rumengol; “The Pardon of the Fire,” at St. Jean du Doigt; “The Pardon -of the Mountain,” at Troménie de St. Ronan; “The Pardon of the Sea,” at -Ste. Anne de la Palude. - -It is a moot question as to just how much of romance is in the make-up -of the Breton character. Emotional the people are, but the emotion -that leads them into the enthusiasm which they exhibit at their great -religious festivals and pardons is more superstitious than romantic. - -The druidism, or paganism, or whatever the religion (_sic_) of the -ancient peoples of the Armorican peninsula may have been, bears not the -least traditional resemblance to the fervour of the devotees of the -pardons of to-day, but one can readily believe that the same spirit, if -with a different motive, does exist even now. - -The blessing of the boats, the birds, the cows, and what not, which -takes place periodically at different points along the Breton -coast,--for it is mostly along the coast that these observances take -place,--smacks not a little of something that is of more psychological -purport than mere religious devotion. - -From whatever tradition these great religious observances have -descended, there is no question of the sincerity of the participants, -though there is a wide difference between the “sacred” and “profane” -elements which meet on these occasions. - -Brittany, perhaps as much as any other of the ancient provinces of -France, has preserved its local customs and traditions, unblushingly -indifferent to the changing conditions round about them. Of course there -is no reason why religion and its observances should change with the -march of time, but they do, nevertheless, in France as much as in any -other land. Only in Brittany, apparently, do the congregations of men -and women--for elsewhere the congregations are mostly women--of great -churches approach to anything like the numbers that the churches were -built to contain. - -Throughout this land of calvaries, too, there will be found at all times -of the day, and often at night, a tiny congregation of one, two, or -perhaps a half a dozen, peasant or fisher folk kneeling before one of -these wayside crosses, and invoking their God after the manner they have -been taught, in a truly devout and sincere fashion, which is more than -can be said of some parts, where the peasant, when on a visit to town on -the market-day, rushes in and out of a church with hardly time enough -devoted to the whole process even to have used the holy water. - -Brittany may be a poor and impoverished province, and in many respects -it has not the abundance of the good things of life which one finds -in Touraine, Burgundy, or the Midi, but there is a general air of -prosperity in the gay accoutrements of the men and women who shine forth -on the occasions of the great pardons, showing a snug wardrobe stowed -away somewhere. - -As one leaves Normandy, at Pontorson, he enters Brittany--the land of -calvaries. These fine monuments are not the calvaries which have made -the old province famous,--the great stone crosses of Finistère,--but are -for the most part unpretentious pieces of wood put together in the form -of a cross, or a like symbol, rudely hammered out of a piece of iron by -the local blacksmith. - -One notes many of these simple crosses throughout Brittany; simple as -compared with the more elaborate calvaries, though they may have one, -two, or even more sculptured figures in the arms or branches of the -cross. One of the most ancient of these, dating from the fourteenth or -fifteenth century, is at Scaër in Finistère. - -It is a question as to whether any of the great monumental calvaries of -Brittany can be considered really artistic. They are imposing,--some of -them even terrifying in their strange grandeur,--but all of them seem -theatrical, however sincere and devout the motive for their erection -may have been. The chief and most elaborate examples are those at -Plougastel, near Brest, and St. Thégonnec in Finistère (dating from -1610). - -Besides these really great and celebrated functions are many others -of minor purport, such as the “Benediction of the Boats” and the -“Benediction of the Fields.” The latter occurs when the caterpillars and -earthworms fall upon and ravage the land. The local _curé_, with the -permission of the bishop, then blesses the fields. In the midst of the -fields the _curé_ takes up his position on some slight eminence, clad -in a white surplice, with a violet stole, and begs God to exterminate -the noxious insects, the prayers meanwhile being accompanied with the -sprinkling of holy water and burning of incense. - -The Pardon of St. Jean du Doigt, on the twenty-second of June, is -perhaps the most solemn of all its species, and for that reason is -described here. - -The Pardon of St. Yves, in the Tregarris, of Rumengol and Ste. Anne de -la Palude, in Finistère, are especially religious and severe, while that -of Notre Dame de la Clarté, in the Morbihan, has the double purpose of -homage to Our Lady and the facilitating of marriage. - -Here the young peasants in search of a spouse promenade around the -church, and when they have made their choice they address the young lady -and ask her if she will accept the gift; the boy having meanwhile bought -a large round cake. “Will mademoiselle break the cake with me?” says he. -If she accept, they consider themselves as engaged, after which their -families meet together and discuss the conditions of the marriage. - -At Creac’higuel, near Rosporden, the pardon endures for three days, and -here one sees the wonderful ’broidered waistcoats and collarettes and -beribboned hats of the young men of Pont Aven, Quimperlé, and Scaër, -unique in all Brittany. - -In July, at Guingamp, is the procession to Our Lady of Good Help, with -the inevitable salute of firearms, and a torchlight procession of ten -or twelve thousand pilgrims--and some others who are merely profane -lookers-on. - -The “Benediction of the Sea” at Concarneau, Douarnenez, Trébone, -and many other seacoast villages and hamlets, is another religious -manifestation which is always attractive to the curious. - -At the pardon of St. Jean du Doigt the precious relic of the saint is -guarded before the high altar of the church by an abbé clad in his -surplice and holding in his hand the precious finger enveloped in fine -linen. One by one the faithful pass before the abbé and touch, for an -instant, the sainted relic. - -Near the choir, another cleric holds aloft the skull of St. Mériadec, -before which the pilgrims bow their heads as they pass. Before leaving -the church, in response to the call, “_Dour ar bis! Dour ar bis!_” sung -in a strident Celtic voice, the pilgrims repair to a fountain attached -to the side wall, in which the finger has previously been bathed at the -end of a gold chain. Immediately this operation is over, the devout -plunge their palms deep into the sanctified water and vehemently rub -their eyes. Then the pardon is finished, and the profane festivity -begins. - -“Whence come you?” was asked of a happy family of three at St. Jean du -Doigt. “From St. Jean-Brevelay,” they replied, mentioning a village -a hundred kilometres away, in Morbihan. “We have walked three suns -and three moons,”--which sounds like the American Indian’s method of -reckoning by moons, but which in this case meant merely that they had -been on the road three days and three nights. - -[Illustration: _<u>Pardon of St. Jean du Doigt</u>_] - -The little Church of St. Jean du Doigt offers complete and perfect -example of what a village church should be. The building itself is -surrounded by the churchyard, with its monumental portal, or triumphal -arch, as it is always called hereabouts, its sacred fountain, its -calvary, its ossuary, and its open-air oratory for the celebration of -the mass for the pilgrims. - -The triumphal arch is a great fifteenth-century gateway surmounted by -two niches containing two ancient Gothic statues, one of St. John the -Baptist, and the other of St. Roch. - -With the coming of twilight, when the mists roll in from the sea, the -silhouetted couples (lovers), following the ancient custom, promenade -arm in arm, or rather hand in hand, each holding the other by the little -finger, in deference to the finger of St. John. - -When the darkness has actually fallen, the bonfires flame out on the -far-away sands, the light reflected in the waves in truly eerie fashion, -and so the great day of pardon and festival departs into the past. - -Chant and song play a great part in all these religious festivals, not -only the officiating priests, but the public singing. These religious -chants seem to give rise to others less devout, of which the two -following are typical. - -If one is in South Finistère on the occasion of the celebration of -the “Pardon of the Singers,” he will hear the following lines sung -tumultuously by the local swains: - - “Entre Brest et Lorient - Leste, leste, - Entre Brest et Lorient - Lestement. - - “Les gabiers de la misaine - Sont des filles de quinze ans. - Entre Brest et Lorient - Leste, leste.” - -At the “Pardon of the Sea,” in the Paimpol country, one hears these -sombre words: - - “Tais-toi! tais-toi! maîtresse exquise! - Je vois ma mort dans l’eau.” - -The great extent to which the Breton people carry their respect and -devotion to religious ceremony of all sorts is no better exemplified -than in the observance of the Miz-dus (the black months, or the mourning -months) by those who have banded themselves together and formed a sort -of “cult of the dead.” In reality, however, it is merely a mourning for -the departed, by the widows or mothers of the fishermen and sailors. - -In November, when the Miz-dus begin, widows in most picturesque, though -sombre, costumes are continually met with in the Morbihan, and such -seacoast towns as Ploubazlanec, Portz--even (where there is a “widows’ -cross,” quite the most frequented shrine of all) Saint Cast, on the -coast of the Channel, or at Pontivy. - -Anatole le Braz, in the “Legend of the Dead,” has written a complete -history of the funeral superstitions which obtain in Brittany at this -season. - -The “Cult of the Dead,” as it is known, is unique among similar -observances in all France. Virtually it is a display of devotion and -respect for one’s ancestors. In the rural and seacoast parishes of -Morbihan, Finistère, and the Côtes du Nord the custom is found most -highly developed. - -The little cemeteries of Brittany are better than mere formal gardens -with rectangular walks and well-clipt trees and hedges. Mostly, they -have winding little alleys, and are set out with apple-trees and -wild-flowers. - -In downright bad taste, these cemeteries, in common with most others in -France, have an abundance of wire and bead memorial wreaths and crowns. -Why it is that the French, with their usually highly developed artistic -sense, affect these artificialities, is a question to which no one has -had the temerity to devise an answer. - -At Ploubazlanec, a tiny village settled upon a cliff overlooking the Bay -of Paimpol, are the funeral monuments of many who have lost their lives -by drowning in a frozen sea, as you will be told. - -In 1901, three ships from these parts disappeared, crew and cargo, -following the sinister local expression, in the cold waters off Iceland, -whither the little fleet had gone for the fishing. In the cemetery, in -the side of the mortuary chapel, is a section known as “the wall of -those who disappeared,” and here you may read, many times repeated, such -inscriptions as the following: - - “En Mémoire de Gilles Brézellec, 17 ans, décédé à Islande. - En Mémoire de Jean-Marie Brézellec, 16 ans, décédé à - Islande. - En Mémoire de Yves Brézellec, 37 ans, décédé à Islande. - Priez Dieu pour eux!” - -A whole family shattered and broken up, leaving perhaps a wife and an -old mother dependent upon charity, or such a scanty living as can be -picked up intermittently. - -At Kérity, also, is an Icelanders’ cemetery, and here one may read the -names, beginning with that of the captain, of the crew of twenty, all -hailing from the home port of Kérity, who were lost in the white fiords -of Iceland in another catastrophe. - -Nowhere in the known world is there anything like the wholesale risk of -life which goes on yearly from the ports of Finistère and the Côtes du -Nord, unless it be that among the American fishermen on the Grand Banks, -hailing from Gloucester, on Massachusetts Bay. - -If the visitor to Brittany has not yet made the acquaintance of the -heroes of Loti’s “Iceland Fishermen,” he should do so forthwith, for it -was at Ploubazlanec that the great Yann Gaos was interred, and near him -reposed his father and little Sylvestre. - -The Celtic spirit of the modern Breton has preserved the legend or -superstition of “An-Ankou,” the spirit of death. In many villages one -may interrogate a peasant or a fisherman, who will affirm that it is -“Ankou” who leads the way for the funeral-car and who waits at the grave -to carry the soul of the departed away with him after the others have -left. - -Among the superstitious signs which presage the coming of the “Ankou” -are, a ball of fire, which rests upon the tiles of the roof over the -stricken one,--a most unlikely thing, one would think,--the theft of -grain by crows, the tapping of a window-pane by the beak of a sea-bird, -the prolonged bellowing of cattle by the light of the moon, a candle -which will not light, or for a peasant to split or cleave two pairs of -wooden shoes in one week. - - -THE END. - - - - -APPENDICES - - - - -I. - -THE PROVINCES OF FRANCE - - -Up to 1789, there were thirty-three great governments making up modern -France, the twelve governments created by Francis I. being the chief, -and seven _petits gouvernements_ as well. - -[Illustration: <u>_The Provinces of France_</u>] - -In the following table the _grands gouvernements_ of the first -foundation are indicated in heavy-faced type, those which were taken -from the first in italics, and those which were acquired by conquest in -ordinary characters. - - NAMES OF GOVERNMENTS CAPITALS - 1. Ile-de-France Paris. - 2. Picardie Amiens. - 3. Normandie Rouen. - 4. Bretagne Rennes. - 5. Champagne et Brie Troyes. - 6. Orléanais Orléans. - 7. _Maine et Perche_ Le Mans. - 8. _Anjou_ Augers. - 9. _Touraine_ Tours. - 10. _Nivernais_ Nevers. - 11. _Berri_ Bourges. - 12. _Poitou_ Poitiers. - 13. _Aunis_ La Rochelle. - 14. Bourgogne (duché de) Dijon. - 15. Lyonnais, Forez et Beaujolais Lyon. - 16. _Auvergne_ Clermont. - 17. _Bourbonnais_ Moulins. - 18. _Marche_ Guéret. - 19. Guyenne et Gascogne Bordeaux. - 20. _Saintonge et Angoumois_[A] Saintes. - 21. _Limousin_ Limoges. - 22. _Béarn et Basse Navarre_ Pau. - 23. Languedoc Toulouse. - 24. _Comté de Foix_ Foix. - 25. Provence Aix. - 26. Dauphiné Grenoble. - 27. _Flandre et Hainaut_ Lille. - 28. Artois Arras. - 29. Lorraine et Barrois Nancy. - 30. Alsace Strasbourg. - 31. Franche-Comté ou Comté de Bourgogne Besançon. - 32. Roussilon Perpignan. - 33. Corse Bastia. - -[A] Under Francis I. the Angoumois was comprised in the Orléanais. - -The seven _petits gouvernements_ were: - - 1. The ville, prévôté and vicomté of Paris. - 2. Havre de Grâce. - 3. Boulonnais. - 4. Principality of Sedan. - 5. Metz and Verdun, the pays Messin and Verdunois. - 6. Toul and Toulois. - 7. Saumur and Saumurois. - - - - -II. - -THE ANCIENT PROVINCES OF FRANCE - - -[Illustration: map of France divided into provinces] - - - - -III. - - -THE PRINCIPAL PAYS AND PAGI OF BRITTANY - - Pays d’Alet Ille et Vilaine - Pays de Briere Loire Infr. - Cornouailles Finistère. - Le Desert Ille et Vilaine. - Dinannois Côtes du Nord. - Pays de Dol Côtes du Nord. - Pays de Grève Côtes du Nord. - Léonais Finistère. - Nantais Loire Infr. - Rennois Ille et Vilaine. - Pays de Vannes Morbihan. - - - - -IV. - - -COUNTS AND DUKES OF BRITTANY - - Nominoë 824 - Erispoë 851 - Salomon 857 - Pasqueten and Gurvaud 874 - Alain I. 877 - Gurmailhon 907 - Juhael Béranger 930 - Alain II. (Barbe Torte) 937 - Drogon 952 - Hoël I. 953 - Guerech 980 - Conan I. 987 - Geoffroy I. 992 - Alain III. 1008 - Conan II. 1040 - Hoël II. 1066 - Alain Fergent 1084 - Conan III. 1112 - Eudes and Hoël III. 1148 - Geoffroy II. 1156 - Constance and Arthur 1171 - Pierre Mauclerc and - Alix 1186 - Jean I. 1213 - Jean II. 1237 - Arthur II. 1286 - Jean III. 1305 - Charles de Blois 1312 - Jean IV. de Montfort 1341 - Jean V. 1365 - François I. 1399 - Pierre II. 1450 - Arthur III. 1457 - François II. 1458 - Duchess Anne, who - married Charles - VIII. and afterward - Louis XI. of France, 1488-1513 - - - - -V. - -THE METRIC SYSTEM - - -METRICAL AND ENGLISH WEIGHTS AND MEASURES - - Mètre = 39.3708 in. = 3.231. 3 ft. 3 1-2 in. = 1.0936 yard. - Square Mètre (mètre carré) = 1 1-5th square yards (1.196). - Are (or 100 sq. mètres) = 119.6 square yards. - Cubic Mètre (or Stere) = 35 1-2 cubic feet. - Centimètre = 2-5ths inch. - Kilomètre = 1,093 yards = 5-8 mile. - 10 Kilomètres = 6 1-4 miles. - 100 Kilomètres = 62 1-10th miles. - Square Kilomètre = 2-5ths square mile. - Hectare = 2 1-2 acres (2.471). - 100 Hectares = 247.1 acres. - Gramme = 15 1-2 grains (15.432). - 10 Grammes = 1-3d oz. Avoirdupois. - 15 Grammes = 1-2 oz. Avoirdupois. - Kilogramme =2 1-5th lbs. (2.204) Avoirdupois. - 10 Kilogrammes = 22 lbs. Avoirdupois. - Metrical Quintal = 220 1-2 lbs. Avoirdupois. - Tonneau = 2,200 lbs. Avoirdupois. - Litre = 0.22 gal. = 1 3-4 pint. - Hectolitre = 22 gallons. - -[Illustration: <u>_Comparative Metric Scale_</u>] - - -ENGLISH AND METRICAL WEIGHTS AND MEASURES - - Inch = 2.539 centimètres = 25.39 millimètres. - 2 inches = 5 centimètres nearly. - Foot = 30.47 centimètres. - Yard = 0.9141 mètre. - 12 yards = 11 mètres nearly. - Mile =1.609 kilomètre. - Square foot = 0.093 mètre carré. - Square yard = 0.836 mètre carré. - Acre = 0.4046 hectare = 4,003 sq. mètres nearly. - 2 1-2 acres = 1 hectare nearly. - Pint = 0.5679 litre. - 1 3-4 pint = 1 litre nearly. - Gallon = 4.5434 litres = 4 nearly. - Bushel = 36.347 litres. - Oz. Troy = 31.103 grammes. - Pound Troy (5,760 grains) = 373.121 grammes. - Oz. Avoirdupois = 8.349 grammes. - Pound Avoirdupois (7,000 grains) = 453.592 grammes. - 2 lbs. 3 oz. = kilogramme nearly. - 100 lbs. = 45.359 kilogrammes. - Cwt. = 50.802 kilogrammes. - Ton = 1,018.048 kilogrammes. - - - - -VI. - - -Sketch Map of Circular Tour in Brittany. Fares from Rennes, 65 francs, -1st class; 50 francs, 2d class. - -[Illustration: Map of Brittany showing routes] - -Itinerary: Rennes, Saint-Malo-Saint-Servan, Dinard, Saint-Brieuc, -Guingamp, Lannion, Morlaix, Roscoff, Brest, Quimper, Douarnenez, -Pont-l’Abbé, Concarneau, Lorient, Auray, Quiberon, Vannes, Savenay, Le -Croisic, Guérande, Saint-Nazaire, Pont-Château, Redon, Rennes. - - - - -VII. - - -[Illustration: <u>_Architectural Names of the Various Parts of a Feudal -Château_</u>] - - - - -VIII. - - -[Illustration: <u>_Tide and Weather Signals in the Ports of -Brittany_</u>] - -By day the signals showing the depth of water--in mètres--at the harbour -entrance are shown by balls or small balloons; at night these are -replaced by lanterns. (See top diagram.) The flag signals of the other -diagrams explain themselves. - - - - -IX. - - -THE PRINCIPAL PARDONS OF BRITTANY - -DEPARTMENT OF FINISTÈRE - -PLOUGASTEL-DAOULAS.--Easter Monday, the Monday of Pentecôte, -29th June, and 15th August. - -PONT L’ABBÉ.--25th March, Monday of Pentecôte, 3d Sunday of -July, 4th Sunday of September. - -CONCARNEAU.--(Ste. Guénolé) First Sunday in May, (Sainte Croix) -14th September, (Pardon du Rosaire) First Sunday in October. - -BANNALEC.--Ascension Day. - -QUIMPERLÉ.--Trinity Sunday, second Sunday of May, last Sunday -of July, third Sunday in September. - -QUIMPERLÉ.--Easter Monday. - -RUMENGAL.--Trinity Sunday. - -LOCTUDY.--Sunday following 11th May, and 2d Sunday of August. - -PONT AVEN.--Second Sunday of May and third Sunday of September. - -SAINT JEAN DU DOIGT.--23d and 24th June. - -ROSCOFF.--Mid-June and 15th August. - -CAMARET (Fête de la Pêche et Bénédiction de la Mer).--Third -Sunday in June. - -LOCRONAN (Petite Troménie every year; Grande Troménie every six -years).--Second Sunday of July. - -ROSPORDEN.--Second Sunday in July. - -LE FOLGOËT.--15th August, and 7th and 8th September. - -QUIMPER.--15th, 16th, and 17th August. - -HUELGOAT.--Three days--first Sunday of August. - -STE. ANNE DE LA PALUDE.--Saturday evening and last Sunday of -August. - -SCAËR.--Last Sunday of August. - -AUDIERNE.--Last Sunday of August. - -PENMARC’H (Pardon du Rosaire).--First Sunday of October. - - -DEPARTMENT OF THE MORBIHAN - -ST. GILDAS DE RHUIS.--29th of January. - -AURAY.--(Ouverture du Pardon de St. Anne) 7th March, (Principal -Pardon) 25th and 26th of July. - -LOCMINÉ.--Three days from the Sunday nearest 27th June. - -STE. BARBE EN FAOUËT.--Last Sunday of June. - -ST. FIACRE PRÈS LE FAOUËT.--Fourth Sunday in July. - -LOCMARIAQUER.--Second Sunday in September. - -PONTIVY.--Second Sunday in September. - -CARNAC.--Third Sunday in September, (Pardon of St. Cornely) the -Sunday nearest the 14th September. - -PONT SCORFF.--Third Sunday in September. - -LE FAOUËT.--First Sunday in October. - - - - -X. - - -A BRIEF LIST OF SOME OF THE MORE IMPORTANT PREFIXES OF PLACE-NAMES IN -BRITTANY, WITH THEIR DEFINITIONS - -_Bod, Bot._--A place surrounded by a wood. Bodilis, Botsorhel. - -_Bras, Bré._--High, elevated. Braspart, Brelevené. - -_Conc._--A harbour or bay. Concarneau, le Conquet. - -_Car._--A manor or château. Carhaix. - -_Coat._--A wood or forest. Coatascorn, Coatreven. - -_Crug._--Amid the rocks. Cruguel. - -_Faou._--A place planted with oaks. Le Faouët. - -_Guic._--Bourg. Guichen (old bourg). - -_Hen._--Old. Henvie, Henpont. - -_Ker or Kaer._--Manor, château. Kerlouan, Kervignac. - -_Lan._--Church or consecrated spot. Lannion, Lanildut. - -_Les, Lis._--Court or jurisdiction. Lesneven, Lezardrieux. - -_Loc._--Oratoire or hermitage. Locmaria. - -_Méné._--Mountain. Méné Bré. - -_Mor._--The sea. Morbihan (_la petite mer_). - -_Pen._--Promontory summit or extremity. Penmarc’h, Paimbœuf (_par -corruption_). - -_Plé, Pleu, Plo, Plou, Plu._--Parish. Pléhédel, Pleudihen, Plouha. - -_Poul._--Hole or basin. Pouldergat. - -_Ros._--Hill or slope. Roscoff, Rosporden. - -_Tref, Tré._--Part of a parish. Trégastel, Trémelior. - - - - -XI. - - -THE BRETON TONGUE IN BRITTANY TO-DAY[B] - - ---------------+---------------+--------------- - | INDIVIDUALS | INDIVIDUALS - DÉPARTEMENT | UNDERSTANDING | UNDERSTANDING - | ONLY BRETON | BRETON AND - | | FRENCH - ---------------+---------------+--------------- - Côtes du Nord | 145,000 | 150,000 - Finistère | 352,000 | 302,000 - Morbihan | 182,700 | 190,000 - ---------------+---------------+--------------- - - [B] This table takes no cognizance of those speaking French only - and not Breton, whilst the three departments given are those - only in which the knowledge of the Breton tongue is in excess - of that in other parts. - -It is a regrettable fact that the Morbihan has the greatest number -of illiterates of any of the departments of France. Among a hundred -conscripts for the army, often thirty or forty are classed as -illiterate, while in Finistère and the Côtes du Nord, the number falls -to thirty or less, and in Ille et Vilaine to less than twenty. - - - - -INDEX OF PLACES - - -Alre, 158. - -Ancenis (and château), 99-101. - -Angers (and castle), 24, 30, 108, 119, 146, 243, 311, 316. - -Audierne, 89, 212, 213-214, 370. - -Auray, 32, 157, 158, 159-167, 172, 175, 178, 192, 309, 370. - - -Bannelec, 194-195, 369. - -Batz, Isle of, 121, 240-242. - -Baud, 157, 158. - -Baule, 127. - -Becherel, 306. - -Beg-Meil, 201. - -Belle Ile en Mer, 27, 34, 36, 171, 173-175. - -Benzec Capcaval, 211. - -Béré, Fair of, 129-130. - -Binic, 267-268, 270. - -Black Mountains, 218. - -Bourg de Batz, 111, 121, 127. - -Bréhat, 43, 259-260. - -Brest, 26, 32, 39, 41, 43, 44, 47, 51, 54, 56, 72, 87, 150, 212, 220, -221-224, 225, 227, 228, 229, 230, 236, 309, 310, 340, 350. - - -Camaret, 89, 219-220, 369. - -Cancale, 298-300. - -Cape de la Chèvre, 214, 217. - -Cap Fréhel, 290. - -Carhaix, 54, 310, 337-339. - -Carnac, 159, 163, 167, 168-171, 345, 370. - -Cesson, Tower of, 266. - -Cezon, 44. - -Champ Dolent, 303. - -Champtoceaux (and château), 104-105. - -Châteaubriant (and château), 128-132. - -Chateaulin, 27, 217-218, 219. - -Chatelaudren, 263. - -Clisson (and château), 42, 111, 114-115. - -Combourg (and château), 305-308. - -Concarneau, 43, 89, 197-201, 202, 205, 212, 215, 216, 219, 224, 351, 369. - -Corseul, 146. - -Creac’higuel, 351. - -Croisic, 42, 111, 121, 127. - -Crozon, 217, 219. - - -Daoulas, 229, 369. - -Dinan (and château), 24, 54, 249, 271, 291-297. - -Dinard, 39, 249, 271, 273, 288-289, 290. - -Dol, 19, 39, 43, 54, 249, 303-305. - -Douarnenez (and bay), 32, 38, 43, 51, 89, 187, 212, 214-216, 217, 219, -351. - - -Elven, 138. - -Ernée (and château), 312. - -Etables, 267. - - -Falaise, 130. - -Faou, 220, 221. - -Faouët (Finistère), 192-194. - -Folgoët, 224, 237-238, 369. - -Fontaine-Daniel, Abbey of, 312. - -Fougères (and forest), 54, 262, 309, 310, 312, 313-315, 316, 321, 340. - -Fouquet, Château, 27, 174. - - -Grand Brière, 125. - -Guérande, 121, 125-127. - -Guibray, Fair of, 130. - -Guingamp (and castle), 54, 86, 87, 250, 260-262, 351. - - -Hédé, 306. - -Hennebont, 146, 179, 182-185. - -Huelgoat, 310, 339-340, 370. - - -Javron, 313. - -Joie, Abbaye de la, 185. - -Josselin (and château), 150, 152-157, 309, 337. - - -Kerérault, 229. - -Kérity, 357. - -Kerlean, Manoir of, 138. - -Kerlescan, 169. - -Kerlouan, 224. - -Kermario, 169. - -Kermartin, Manor of, 255. - - -Lacroix, 44. - -La Houle, 299. - -“La Joyeuse Garde,” Château of, 227. - -Lamballe, 268-269. - -Landeau, 315-316. - -Landerneau, 221, 224-227, 310, 340. - -Landivisiau, 221, 227-228. - -Lannion, 24, 74, 89, 250-252. - -Largoet, Fortress of, 138. - -La Roche-Bernard, 128. - -La Trinité, 177-178. - -Laval (and château), 54, 56, 310, 316-318, 322. - -Le Conquet, 230-231, 236. - -Lehon, 297-298. - -Le Légué, 266. - -Le Mans, 54, 310. - -Locmariaquer, 146, 159, 167, 175-176, 370. - -Locminé, 157-158, 370. - -Lorient, 43, 44, 54, 89, 144, 175, 179-181, 182. - -Loudéac, 310, 334-335. - - -Mayenne (and château), 54, 309, 310, 311-312, 316, 322. - -Ménac, 169. - -Minden, Fort, 44. - -Miniac, 306. - -Molène, Ile, 232-233. - -Montauban, 334. - -Mont Dol, 303. - -Montfort-sur-Meu, 310, 333-334. - -Mont St. Michel (and bay), 34, 39, 43, 46, 54, 60, 249, 298, 300-302, -303. - -Morlaix, 43, 54, 63, 94, 238, 244-247, 249, 340. - -Motte-Broons, 293. - - -Nantes (and castle), 4, 7, 19, 22, 24, 26, 30, 36, 38, 39, 54, 56, 57, -67, 102, 104, 105-110, 111, 112, 115, 116-121, 124, 127, 146, 174, 211, -221, 243. - -Notre Dame de la Clarté, 350-351. - - -Oudon, 104. - -Ouessant, Ile, 43, 44, 232, 233-236. - -Our Lady of Langonnet, Abbey of, 194. - - -Paimbœuf, 42, 111, 112. - -Paimpol, 257-259. - -Palais, 44, 173, 175. - -Paramé, 39, 271, 272, 274-276. - -Penmarc’h, 31, 208, 210-211, 370. - -Penthièvre, 7, 44, 171. - -Pilier, 44. - -Ploërmel, 54, 150-152. - -Ploubazlanec, 355, 356, 357. - -Ploudalmézeau, 236-237. - -Plougasnou, 25, 64. - -Plougastel, 221, 228-230, 350, 369. - -Plouharnel, 167, 171. - -Pointe de Kerpenhir, 145. - -Point of Primel, 247. - -Point of Raz, 212, 213, 214. - -Point Sizun, 212. - -Point St. Mathieu, 212. - -Pont Aven, 82, 187, 201, 202-205, 351, 369. - -Pont Croix, 214. - -Pontivy (and castle), 54, 334-337, 355, 370. - -Pont l’Abbé, 27, 82, 187, 208-210, 369. - -Pont Scorff, 179, 185-186, 370. - -Pornic (and château), 42, 111, 112-114. - -Port Haliguen, 172. - -Port Louis, 44, 181-182. - -Port Maria, 172. - -Port Navalo, 43, 145. - -Portz, 355. - -Pouldu, 190. - -Poulgoazec, 214. - -Pré-en-Pail, 309. - -Primelin, 214. - - -Questembert, 136. - -Quiberon, 44, 163, 167, 170, 171-173, 175. - -Quimper, 19, 27, 32, 38, 41, 53, 54, 60, 72, 75, 82, 93, 128, 205-208, -212, 224, 370. - -Quimperlé, 187-190, 191, 309, 351, 369. - - -Redon, 24, 128, 132-136. - -Rennes, 19, 22, 24, 25, 41, 54, 57, 75, 118, 128, 146, 150, 310, 316, -329-333, 343. - -Rimains, Fort des, 44. - -Rochefort-en-Terre (and château), 27, 136-138. - -Rochers, Château of, 324-328. - -Roc’hquérezen, 229. - -Roc’hquillion, 229. - -Roc’huivlen, 229. - -Roscanvel, 217. - -Roscoff, 43, 75, 238-240, 369. - -Rosporden, 31, 194, 195-196, 201, 351, 369. - -Rostrenen, 337. - -Rothéneuf, 286-287. - -Rumengal, 346, 350, 369. - - -Sauzon, 175. - -Savenay, 41, 124-125, 128, 130. - -Scaër, 349, 351, 370. - -Seven Isles, 256-257. - -St. Briac, 27, 290-291. - -St. Brieuc, 19, 29, 60, 262, 263-266, 268, 270. - -St. Cast, 26, 67, 290, 355. - -Ste. Anne de la Palude, 346, 350, 370. - -Ste. Marguerite, 127. - -St. Énogat, 273, 288, 289-290. - -St. Fiacre, 26, 191-192, 370. - -St. Gildas de Rhuis, 27, 148, 370. - -St. Guénolé, 211. - -St. Jacut, 27, 272-273, 290. - -St. Jean-Brevelay, 352. - -St. Jean du Doigt, 247-248, 346, 350, 352-353, 369. - -St. Lunaire, 27, 290. - -St. Malo (and bay), 9, 19, 27, 39, 43, 44, 54, 56, 57, 61, 63, 67, 94, -249, 271-274, 276-283, 285, 288, 291, 300. - -St. Maurice, Abbey of, 190-191. - -St. Méen, 334. - -St. Nazaire, 39, 109-111, 112, 121, 122-124, 128, 144. - -St. Nicolas, 205. - -St. Pol de Léon, 19, 27, 60, 206, 238, 242-244. - -St. Rénan, 236. - -St. Servan, 27, 271, 272, 276, 283-285. - -St. Thégonnec, 350. - -St. Yves, 346, 350. - -Suscino, Château of, 148-150. - - -Taureau, Château du, 44. - -Tentêniac, 306. - -Tombelaine, Isle of, 34, 302-303. - -Trébone, 351. - -Tréguier, 19, 24, 60, 94, 206, 250, 252-256. - -Trélaze, 29. - -Tristan, Ile, 215-216. - -Troménie de St. Ronan, 346. - - -Val André, 263, 269-270. - -Vannes, 19, 24, 43, 54, 60, 75, 128, 134, 136, 138, 139, 140-148, 150, -175, 187, 221. - -Ville Martin, 44. - -Vitré (and château), 24, 54, 262, 310, 318-324. - - * * * * * - -Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber: - -Le trente-un du mois d’aôut=> Le trente-un du mois d’août {pg 68} - -is by no mean inexplicable=> is by no means inexplicable {pg 3} - -must known these principal provinces by name=> must know these principal -provinces by name {pg 7} - -general eerie espect=> general eerie aspect {pg 138} - -busy litle Breton port=> busy little Breton port {pg 214} - -religious architecure.=> religious architecture. {pg 226} - -in the sixth entury=> in the sixth century {pg 304} - - - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Rambles in Brittany, by Francis Miltoun - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RAMBLES IN BRITTANY *** - -***** This file should be named 42866-0.txt or 42866-0.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/4/2/8/6/42866/ - -Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive) - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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Thus, we do not necessarily -keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. - - -Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: - - http://www.gutenberg.org - -This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, -including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary -Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to -subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. diff --git a/old/42866-0.zip b/old/42866-0.zip Binary files differdeleted file mode 100644 index 590f7bb..0000000 --- a/old/42866-0.zip +++ /dev/null diff --git a/old/42866-8.txt b/old/42866-8.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 10e8d9e..0000000 --- a/old/42866-8.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,8886 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of Rambles in Brittany, by Francis Miltoun - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with -almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license - - -Title: Rambles in Brittany - -Author: Francis Miltoun - -Illustrator: Blanche McManus - -Release Date: June 3, 2013 [EBook #42866] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RAMBLES IN BRITTANY *** - - - - -Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive) - - - - - - -Every attempt has been made to replicate the original book as printed. -Some typographical errors have been corrected. No attempt has been made -to correct or normalize the printed accentuation or spelling of French -names or words. The images have been moved from the middle of a -paragraph to the closest paragraph break. (etext transcriber's note) - - - - - -RAMBLES IN BRITTANY - -_WORKS OF FRANCIS MILTOUN_ - -_The following, each 1 vol., library 12mo, cloth, gilt top, profusely -illustrated. Net, $2.00; postpaid, $2.16_ - -_Rambles in Normandy_ - -_Rambles in Brittany_ - -_The Cathedrals and Churches of the Rhine_ - -_The following, each 1 vol., library 12mo, cloth, gilt top, profusely -illustrated. Postpaid, $2.50_ - -_The Cathedrals of Northern France_ - -_The Cathedrals of Southern France_ - -_L. C. PAGE & COMPANY_ - -_New England Building, Boston, Mass._ - -[Illustration: _<u>Constable's Tower, Vannes</u>_ - -(_See page 147_)] - - - - -Rambles - -in - -BRITTANY - -BY FRANCIS MILTOUN - -_With Many Illustrations_ - -BY BLANCHE MCMANUS - -[Illustration: colophon] - -BOSTON - -L. C. PAGE & COMPANY - -1906 - -_Copyright, 1905_ -BY L. C. PAGE & COMPANY -(INCORPORATED) - -_All rights reserved_ - -Published October, 1905 - -_COLONIAL PRESS -Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds & Co. -Boston, U. S. A._ - - - - -APOLOGIA - - -No promise given to the hostess of one's inn is alleged as an excuse -for writing this book, but it is true that rosy, busy Madame X of the -Soleil d'Or, in the fishing village in which the work received its -final collation and revision, watched its growth for many a week, daily -declaring her hope of some day receiving a volume containing "your -impressions." And, indeed, her hope shall not be vain, for one of the -first copies shall be most speedily despatched to her. Moreover, the -author and artist hope that it may be acceptable to her critical mind, -for she is not likely to be lenient, though she knows full well that to -the many authors and artists who make a refuge of her modest inn for -months she owes her livelihood. - -The book is a record of many journeys and many rambles by road and rail -around the coast, and in no sense is it put forth either as a special or -as a complete survey of things and matters Breton. - -Many lights and shadows have been thrown upon the screen from various -points, but the effort has been made to blend them all into a pleasing -whole, which shall supplement the guide-books of convention. - -It were not possible to do more than has been attempted within the -limits of a volume such as this, and therefore many details of routes, -and historical data of a relative sort, and a certain amount of -topographical information have been scattered through the volume or -placed in the appendix, in the belief that such information is greatly -needed in a work attempting to purvey "travel talk" even in small -measure. - -Some of this knowledge is so little subject to change that it may well -stand for all time, and, in these days of well-nigh universal travel, -may be not thought out of place in a volume intended both for the -armchair traveller and also for him who journeys by road and rail. That -only a very limited quantity of such information can be included is a -misfortune, inasmuch as such a handbook is often used when no other aid -is accessible to the traveller. - -Finally, the illustrative material, the large number of drawings of -sights and scenes, of great architectural monuments, and of the dress -of the people, is offered less as a complete pictorial survey than as a -panorama of impressions received on and off the beaten track,--and more -satisfying and truthful than the mere snap-shots of hurried travel. - -In addition, many maps, plans, and diagrams should give many of the -itineraries a lucidity often lacking in the usual railway maps. - - - - -CONTENTS - - -CHAPTER PAGE - -APOLOGIA v - - -PART I. - -I. INTRODUCTORY 3 - -II. THE PROVINCE AND THE PEOPLE 11 - -III. THE TOPOGRAPHY OF THE PROVINCE 33 - -IV. TRAVEL ROUTES IN BRITTANY 45 - -V. THE BRETON TONGUE AND LEGEND 59 - -VI. MANNERS AND CUSTOMS 70 - -VII. THE FISHERIES 88 - - -PART II. - -I. THE LOIRE IN BRITTANY 99 - -II. NANTES TO VANNES 116 - -III. THE MORBIHAN--VANNES AND THE "GOLFE" 140 - -IV. AURAY AND THE MEGALITHIC MONUMENTS OF -MORBIHAN 159 - -V. MORBIHAN--LORIENT AND ITS NEIGHBOURHOOD 179 - -VI. FINISTRE--SOUTH 187 - -VII. FINISTRE--NORTH 221 - -VIII. THE CTES DU NORD 249 - -IX. THE EMERALD COAST 271 - -X. ON THE ROAD IN BRITTANY--MAYENNE, -FOUGRES, LAVAL, AND VITR 309 - -XI. RENNES AND BEYOND 329 - -XII. RELIGIOUS FESTIVALS AND PARDONS 341 - -APPENDICES 359 - -INDEX 373 - - - - -LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS - - - PAGE - -CONSTABLE'S TOWER, VANNES (_See page 147_) _Frontispiece_ - -THE LOIRE AT NANTES facing 4 - -DEVICE OF ANNE OF BRITTANY 17 - -ANNE OF BRITTANY 18 - -BRETON POST-CARD 21 - -ST. BRIEUC facing 30 - -CROISIC facing 42 - -MAP OF BRITTANY facing 44 - -THE MAIN ROADS OF BRITTANY 48 - -TRAVEL ROUTES IN BRITTANY 55 - -ST. POL DE LON facing 60 - -THE BRETON TONGUE 62 - -GILLES DE LAVAL 66 - -YOUNG BRETONS 78 - -FROM THE ARTIST'S SKETCH BOOK 80 - -LA COIFFE POLKA 81 - -IRONING COIFS 83 - -BRETON TYPES 85 - -DOUARNENEZ facing 88 - -PORNIC 113 - -DONJON OF CLISSON facing 114 - -ST. NAZAIRE 123 - -ANCIENT FORTIFICATIONS OF GURANDE (DIAGRAM) 126 - -CHTEAUBRIANT facing 128 - -CHILDREN OF REDON 133 - -TOUR D'ELVEN facing 138 - -MARKET-WOMAN, VANNES 142 - -THE COUNTRY NEAR VANNES 143 - -ANCIENT CITY WALLS, VANNES (DIAGRAM) 147 - -CHTEAU OF SUSCINO facing 148 - -GENERAL PLAN OF CHTEAU OF SUSCINO (DIAGRAM) 149 - -PLORMEL facing 152 - -SHRINE OF ST. ETIENNE, JOSSELIN 154 - -CHTEAU DE JOSSELIN facing 156 - -INTERIOR OF MARKET-HOUSE, AURAY facing 160 - -SHRINE OF ST. ROCH, AURAY 162 - -THE LINES OF CARNAC 168 - -THE LINES OF CARNAC facing 168 - -MAP OF CARNAC AND THE SURROUNDING COUNTRY 170 - -QUIBERON facing 172 - -HENNEBONT facing 182 - -QUIMPERL facing 188 - -MARKET-HOUSE, FAOUT facing 192 - -MARKET-DAY 193 - -ROSPORDEN 196 - -STONE CRUCIFIX, CONCARNEAU facing 198 - -CONCARNEAU 199 - -PONT AVEN facing 202 - -ENVIRONS OF PONT AVEN (MAP) 204 - -FROM THE MUSEUM AT QUIMPER 207 - -CAPE DE LA CHVRE facing 214 - -WOMAN OF CHATEAULIN 217 - -CAMARET facing 220 - -LANDERNEAU facing 224 - -CALVARY, PLOUGASTEL facing 228 - -LIGHTHOUSE OF CRAC'H, OUESSANT facing 236 - -ROSCOFF 239 - -MA DOUEZ 244 - -CARVED WOOD STAIRCASE, MORLAIX facing 246 - -PROCESSION OF SAILORS, ST. JEAN DU DOIGT 247 - -OLD HOUSE, TRGUIER 253 - -HOUSE OF ERNEST RENAN, TRGUIER 254 - -SHRINE OF ST. YVES, TRGUIER 256 - -A BINOU PLAYER 261 - -BINIC 267 - -RAMPARTS OF ST. MALO facing 272 - -HOUSE OF DUGUAY-TROUIN, ST. MALO 281 - -TOWER OF SOLIDOR, ST. SERVAN facing 284 - -PLANS OF THE TOWER OF SOLIDOR 285 - -THE VALLEY OF THE RANCE (MAP) 292 - -DUGUESCLIN 293 - -REZ-DE-CHAUSSE OF DONJON, DINAN (DIAGRAM) 295 - -COIF OF MINIAC 307 - -MAYENNE facing 310 - -PLAN OF THE ANCIENT WALLS AND TOWERS OF -FOUGRES 314 - -BEUCHERESSE GATE, LAVAL 319 - -PLAN OF VITR IN 1811, SHOWING CITY WALLS 321 - -CHTEAU DE VITR facing 322 - -TOWER OF ST. MARTIN, VITR 323 - -CHTEAU DE ROCHERS 325 - -ARMS OF MADAME DE SVIGN 327 - -MONASTERY OF ST. MLAINE, RENNES 331 - -HUELGOAT facing 340 - -PARDON OF ST. JEAN DU DOIGT facing 352 - -THE PROVINCES OF FRANCE (MAP) 359 - -THE ANCIENT PROVINCES OF FRANCE (MAP) 361 - -COMPARATIVE METRIC SCALE (DIAGRAM) 364 - -SKETCH MAP OF CIRCULAR TOUR IN BRITTANY 366 - -ARCHITECTURAL NAMES OF THE VARIOUS PARTS OF -A FEUDAL CHTEAU (DIAGRAM) 367 - -TIDE AND WEATHER SIGNALS IN THE PORTS OF -BRITTANY (DIAGRAM) 368 - - - - -PART I. - - - - -RAMBLES IN BRITTANY - - - - -CHAPTER I. - -INTRODUCTORY - - -The regard which every one has for the old French provinces is by -no means inexplicable. Out of them grew the present solidarity of -republican France, but in spite of it the old limits of demarcation -are not yet expunged. One and all retain to-day their individual -characteristics, manners, and customs, and also a certain subconscious -atmosphere. - -Many are the casual travellers who know Normandy and Brittany, at least -know them by name and perhaps something more, but how many of those who -annually skim across France, in summer to Switzerland and in winter to -the Riviera or to Italy, there to live in seven-franc-a-day pensions, -and drink a particularly vile brand of tea, know where Brittany leaves -off and Normandy begins, or have more than the vaguest of vague notions -as to whether the charming little provincial capital of Nantes, on the -Loire, is in Brittany or in Poitou. A recollection of their school-day -knowledge of history will help them on the latter point, but geography -will come in and puzzle them still more. - -There are many French writers, and painters for that matter, who have -made these provinces famous. Napoleon, perhaps, set the fashion, when -he wrote, in 1786, that eulogy beginning: "It is now six or seven years -since I left my native country." More familiar is the "Native Land" of -Lamartine. Camille Flammarion wrote "My Cradle," meaning Champagne; -Dumas wrote of Villers-Cotterets, and Chateaubriand and Renan of -Brittany; but head and shoulders above them all stand out Frederic -Mistral and his fellows of the Flibres at Avignon and Arles. - -[Illustration: <u>_The Loire at Nantes_</u>] - -All this offers a well-nigh irresistible fascination for those who -love literary and historic shrines,--and who does not in these days of -universal travel, personally conducted or otherwise? Not every one can -follow in the footsteps of Sterne with equal facility and grace, or -bask in the radiance of a Stevenson or a Gautier. Still, it is given -to most of us who know the lay of the land to discover for ourselves -the position of these celebrated shrines, whether the pilgrimage be -historical, literary, or artistic. - -This is what gives a charm to travel, and even where no new thing is -actually discovered, no new pathways broken, there is, after all, a -certain zest in such an exploration rivalling that to be obtained from -an expedition to the uttermost confines of the Dark Continent, to Tibet, -or to Tierra del Fuego. - -Primarily, the ancient provinces of France have a story of historical -and romantic purport not equalled in the chronicles of any other nation. -The distinctive types are but vaguely limned, but the Norman and the -Breton stand out most distinctly, and such figures as the Norman and -Breton dukes of real history live even more vividly in one's mind than -D'Artagnan and his fellows in the great portrait-gallery of Dumas. - -One need not be of the antiquary species in order to revel in the great -monuments of history abounding in Brittany even as in Normandy. There -are many and beautiful shrines elsewhere,--and doubtless some are more -popularly famous than any in Brittany,--but none have played greater or -more important rles in the history and development of the France of -to-day than those of the two northwestern provinces. - -As has been said, each of the great provinces into which France -was divided previous to the Revolution possessed characteristics, -unmistakable even to-day. As to the topography of any single one, -the question is so vast in its detail that more than mention of -principal features can hardly be made in a book such as this. It is -then perhaps enough that some slight information concerning Brittany -and its principal places should be recorded here, and that the chief -configurations of its territory should be outlined. - -In addition to the principal old-time governments, there were the -ancient fiefs and local divisions, and these in many cases had names -often encountered in history and literature. Sometimes these were relics -of the still earlier day, of Gaul before the Roman conquest, their -ancient names having come down through the ages with but little change. - -If one would understand the economic or agricultural aspect of France of -to-day, he must know these principal provinces by name at least. - -When one is at Chartres, he must be aware that he is on the edge of the -great plateau of Beauce,--the granary of France,--and that as he crosses -into Brittany--perhaps through Perche, whence come the great-footed -Percherons--he enters the country of the ancient Veneti. Farther west -lies rock-bound Cornouaille, which in every characteristic resembles -Cornwall in Britain; Lon on the north, and finally Penthivre. - -The traveller remakes his history where he finds it. If he have a good -memory, this is not a difficult process, but, in any case, the French -guide-books, that is to say, those written in French, not the English or -Anglo-German variety, are sufficiently explicit as to dates and events -to set him on the right track. - -The armchair traveller usually desires something more. He likes -his plain stories garnished with a not too elaborate series of -embellishment, both as to text and illustration, giving him some -tangible reminder of things as they are in this enlightened twentieth -century, when tram-cars have taken the place of the diligence, and the -electric light has supplanted the tallow dip, and one may well say with -Sterne: "Since France is so near to England, why not go to France?" - -Here, in spots all but unknown even in Normandy and Brittany, the -traveller finds for himself monuments of a civilization gone before and -of a local history not yet completely erased, and as interesting as -those of any land made famous by antiquaries whose only claim to fame -rests upon their questionable ability in propounding new theories, of -which the chief merit is plausibility,--a process of history-making -sadly overdone of late in some parts. - -Both in Brittany and in Normandy there are innumerable glorious -architectural monuments of a past from which history may be builded -anew. Character counts for a great deal with cities as with individuals. -One can love Rouen as the capital of the ancient Normandy, or Nantes as -the capital of Lower Brittany, but he will no more have the same sort of -affection for Lyons or for Nice than he will have it for Manchester or -for Chicago. - -In the days of old, when each little town had its dignitaries, who may -have been counts or who may have been bishops, there was perhaps more -individuality than in the present age of monotonous prefects and mayors. -Nantes had its dukes, and Rouen had its prelates, and both of them, -even to-day, overshadow the civic dignitaries of their time; hence it is -the memory of the parts played by them which induces an association of -ideas prompting a desire to know personally the ground trodden by them. - -Normandy and Brittany are supposed to be the happy hunting-grounds of -cheap tourists and trippers, but, as a matter of fact, the former do -not go beyond Dieppe, or the latter beyond the Channel Islands,--with -possibly a day excursion to St. Malo,--so no discomfort need really -arise from the fear of their presence. Furthermore, the tourists from -across Channel that one does meet in Normandy or Brittany to-day are not -so outrageous in their dress and manners as the type pictured by _Punch_. - -It is a generally recognized fact that no special hardship is involved -in modern travel; caravansaries have for the most part given way to inns -which, if not exactly palatial, at least furnish creature comforts of a -quality quite as good or a great deal better than those to which most -travellers are accustomed at home. One may, and most likely will, miss -his or her particular brand of tea or tobacco, but will find substitutes -quite as excellent, and as far as the language question is concerned, -why, that lies at one's own door, unless one wants to go out as a -disciple of Esperanto, the modern successor of Volapuk, dead years ago -of sheer weight of consonants. - -This book, then, is meant to ensure better knowledge on the part of -the casual traveller of that delectable land which may be somewhat -vaguely described as old France, of which Brittany and Normandy are as -representative in their survivals as any other part. - - - - -CHAPTER II. - -THE PROVINCE AND THE PEOPLE - - -Brittany, the ancient province which underwent such a strife of warfare -and bloodshed in the struggle against invaders, and finally against -France, has become one of the most loyal of all the old-time divisions -making up the present republic. Her struggle against a curtailment of -her ancient rights and the attempts to conserve her liberties were -futile, and when the Duchess Anne took Louis XII. for her second -husband, Brittany became a part of the royal domain never to be -separated therefrom. - -It was Duguesclin who saved it for France, Duchess Anne who enriched it, -Chateaubriand, Lamennais, Laennec, and Renan who made it illustrious in -letters, and Duguay-Trouin, Jacques Cartier, Surcouf, Du Coudic, and -many besides who added to all this the spirit of adventure and romance -with which the chronicles of Brittany have ever abounded. - -Commonly it has been called a land of granite, an expression which has -been consecrated by the usage of many years, but it is also a land most -picturesque, melancholy, and dreamy, with immense horizons of sea and -sky, and a climate strictly temperate throughout all the year. - - "O landes, O forts, pierres sombres et hautes, - Bois qui couvrez nos champs, mers qui battez nos ctes, - Villages o les morts errent avec les ventes, - Bretagne! d'o te vient l'amour de tes enfants." - -Brittany in early days had a parliament the most important in France. -Armorica was its more ancient name, which in old Breton signified "near -to the sea," or "on the sea." - -From the beginning of the fifth century, for a matter of perhaps a -hundred years, the peninsula was known as Armorique, and its people -as Armoricans. After this time the name disappeared from general -use, and Brittany and Breton came. From the sixth century onward the -change became permanent, and such chroniclers as Gregory of Tours, for -instance, always referred to Britannia, Britannioe, Britanni, and -Britones, in writing of the peninsula and its people. - -When first peopled from Britain across the Channel, Brittany was the -most thinly populated part of all Gaul. Each wave of immigration, as -the Britons from across the water fled from the invading Saxons, added -to the population of the land, until ultimately it became as a hundred -Britons against ten Armoricans. At least, this is the way the French -historians and antiquaries put it, and so Armorique became Brittany, -and such is the origin of French Brittany, quite independent of the -etymology of the word Breton itself. - -The inhabitants even to-day--more than in any other of the ancient -provinces of France--have preserved the ancient nomenclature of the land -and its people, and everywhere one finds only Bretons whose home is -Brittany. - -Mercator, the map-maker, was more of a success than Mercator, the -historical chronicler. He said of the Bretons, in 1595, that they were -"for the most part avaricious and largely given to making distinctions -between glasses and tumblers." As a matter of record, this is not so -true of the Bretons as it is of the Normans, or of the Germans, or of -the Spaniards. Up to the time of Csar the name Armorica seems to have -been applied to all the coast of Northwestern France of to-day, with a -little strip running as far south as the mouth of the Garonne, but more -particularly it afterward designated the peninsula of Brittany as we -know it to-day. - -The region was early put under the guardianship of a chieftain, who -invariably, here as elsewhere in those days, took advantage of every -opportunity to advance his frontiers. - -This attempted aggrandizement was not so successful here as in other -parts, and by the fifth century Armorica had shrunk to the region lying -entirely between the Seine and the Loire. In the life of St. Germain of -Auxerre one reads: - - "Gens inter geminos notissima clauditur amnes - Armoricana prius veteri cognomine dicta est." - -Finally, at the close of the sixth century, Armorica merged itself in -Brittany, but the "Concile de Tours" makes a remarkable distinction -between the new settlers and those who had previously been known as -Romans. This distinction was also clearly made by St. Samson, who wrote -in the seventh century that Britannia was the name given to Armorica by -the exiled Britons who had fled from the Saxons and the Angles and had -there taken up their home. - -Before the Roman conquest there were five tribes in the country, named -by Csar as the Nannetes, the Veneti, the Osismii, the Curiosolit, -and the Rhedones,--names which, with but slight evolution, exist even -to-day. Things went on quietly under Roman control, but when Clovis -became the master of a part of Gaul he was obliged to treat with the -Armoricans. Finally the Britons from across the sea came "like a -torrent," and established themselves, changing the names of certain -regions to Cornouaille, Lon, Bro-Waroch, etc. Conquered in 799 by a -lieutenant of Charlemagne, the Bretons revolted again some little time -after, and, at the death of the great emperor, successfully withstood -the attacks of the formidable army which Louis the Amiable had sent -against them. For a quarter of a century Brittany now suffered attack -and pillage by the Normans, relieved only when Alain Barbe-Torte drove -the invaders from his territory. Previous to the Norman inroad, the -Bretons lived in petty tribes, of which each formed a "_plou_," a prefix -still often met with in Breton place-names. The chief of a _plou_ was -known as a _machtiern_. - -Up to this time no foreign customs had been introduced, but, after the -victories of Alain Barbe-Torte, tribal organization was succeeded by -that of the fief. - -By the tenth century feudalism was thoroughly established throughout -most of the ancient provinces of France, and the land was covered with -seigniories, great and small, the one more or less dependent upon the -other. Dukes, counts, and seigneurs, each in his own territory, played -the hereditary sovereign in little, and above them was the suzerain -power of which they were vassals. - -After the expulsion of the Normans, the ancient Breton kingdoms of -Domnone, Cornouaille, and Bro-Waroch disappeared, and the sovereign of -all Brittany bore the title of duke. - -Historians write of the nine ancient barons of Brittany, among whom -was divided the governmental control of the country, all of them being -virtually subject to the reigning duke. They were: - - I. Seigneur d'Avaugour or De Gollo. - II. Vicomte de Lon. - III. Seigneur de Fougres. - IV. Sire de Vitr. - V. Sire de Rohan. - VI. Seigneur de Chateaubriand. - VII. Seigneur de Retz. - VIII. Seigneur de la Roche-Bernard. - IX. Seigneur du Pont. - -These original baronies expanded into a round hundred by the fifteenth -century, and the list of them contains the ancestral names of the Breton -nobility. - -Henry II. of England dealt severely with Brittany, but his son Geoffrey -married Constance, the daughter of Duke Conan IV., and this made the -condition of the province more tolerable. - -The first step toward the union of Brittany with the kingdom of France -came when--through the intrigues of Philip Augustus--the daughter of -Geoffrey Plantagenet married Pierre Mauclerc, Count of Dreux, and a -prince of the blood royal of France. Joan of Penthivre also married the -Count of Blois, another lieutenant of the King of France. - -[Illustration: <u>_Device of Anne of Brittany_</u>] - -The war of succession in Brittany between the ducal houses of Blois and -Montfort was, up to the fourteenth century, the principal event of the -province's early history. The Montforts achieved final victory at Auray -in 1364. Upon the death of Francis II., his daughter Anne, the chief -figure in all Breton history, so far as existing memorials of her life -are concerned, became duchess. - -[Illustration: <u>_Anne of Brittany_</u>] - -In 1491, she married Charles VIII. of France, and eight years later his -successor, Louis XII. The daughter of this last marriage, the Princess -Claude of France, married the Duke of Angoulme, afterward Francis -the First, and the fortunes of Brittany and France were thenceforth -indissolubly allied, for, upon becoming Queen Claude of France, the -inheritor of Brittany ceded the province to her royal spouse and his -descendants in perpetuity. Queen Claude died in 1524, which event for -ever assured France of this province,--the most beautiful gem in the -royal crown. The union of Brittany and France was celebrated with much -pomp in 1532. - -The ancient county or duchy of Bretagne was bordered on the east by -Anjou and Maine, on the west by the Atlantic, on the north by the -British Channel and Normandy, and on the south by Poitou. The province -had two territorial divisions, Upper and Lower, and Rennes was the -parliamentary capital. - -Upper Brittany comprised the five episcopal dioceses of Dol, Nantes, -Rennes, Saint-Brieuc, and St. Malo, and Lower Brittany counted four -similar divisions, Quimper, St. Pol de Lon, Trguier, and Vannes. Thus -the political divisions of a former day corresponded exactly with those -of the Church. - -To-day Brittany is divided into five departments: Ctes du Nord, -Finistre, Ille-et-Vilaine, Loire-Infrieure, and the Morbihan. - -The administrative government of Brittany, or rather of its present-day -departments, like that of the rest of France, radiates from the -capital of the department, which is the residence of the prefect, the -tax-collector, the bishop, and, in general, of all heads of departments. -The chief town is also the seat of the General Council and (with few -exceptions) of the assize court. - -The most ancient codified law of Brittany was known as the little book, -but the manuscript copy has been lost. The most ancient work which -recites the "customs" of this great province dates only from 1330. This -curious document is known as the "Very Ancient Law," and contains 336 -articles. "The Ancient Law" was compiled and published at Nantes in -1549, and contains 779 articles. - -Brittany has been, and perhaps ever will be, considered by Frenchmen -an alien land, where, in its great plains and mountainous regions, in -the valleys of its bubbling rivers, and on its rock-bound shores, the -people, one and all, "speak a tongue so ancient and so strange that he -who hears it dreams of a vanished race." - -Yes, Brittany is a land of menhirs, of legends and superstitions, but -all this but makes a roundabout journey the more enjoyable, and one -must really cross and recross it to its uttermost confines in order to -realize its great variation of manners and customs, to say nothing of -speech, for, even though the Breton tongue is dying out as a universal -language, one still buys his post-card with a queer legend on its face, -which looks like Dutch at first glance, but really is Breton. - -In Madame de Svign's time the ladies of Lower Brittany were famous -for their beauty. In "Letter XLIV.," written to her daughter, Madame de -Svign said: "Many beauties of Lower Brittany were present at the great -ball, the brilliant Mademoiselle de L----, a fine girl who dances very -well." - -[Illustration: <u>_Breton Post-card_</u>] - -Things do not seem to have changed greatly to-day, and, although Madame -de Svign wrote of court beauties only, in the Lower Province one -frequently meets such beauty of face as one does not see everywhere in -France. It must be owned that the figures, if not exactly found wanting, -are often too ample. The sternness of the land, like the bleakness of -Holland, has, apparently, added no end of grace to the features of the -women, whatever may have been its hardening effect upon the men. - -In Cornouaille, Latin _Cornu-Galli_, one finds almost the same name -and the same derivation as in English Cornwall, and the topographical -aspect is much the same in both instances. "The people of Cornuaille are -faithful to tradition, and above all others merit the name of Bretons," -says J. Guillon. - -The Province of Lon forms the northern part of the Department of -Finistre. The name was a development from Pagus Legionensis, a large -military colony having been quartered there in Roman times. - -In the south the ancient Breton Province of Bro-Waroch became the -county of Vannes, the counts being in reality dependents of the Duke -of Brittany; their people spoke, and retain even to-day, a distinct -dialect, greatly varying from that of the rest of Brittany. - -In the earliest times, both Nantes and Rennes were the seat of important -administrative governments, but the Counts of Nantes ceded their fiefs -to the Bretons in the eleventh century. Chief of these were the fiefs of -the Baron of Retz, the Seigneur de Clisson, who defended the southern -frontier against Poitou, and the Baron of Ancenis, who was the bulwark -between Brittany and Anjou. - -In the north, the ancient Breton kingdom of Domnone was, in the twelfth -century, divided into two counties, that of Penthivre and Trguier. - -It was Duke Geoffrey who introduced feudalism of the Anglo-Norman and -French variety. In earlier times, when a nobleman died, his children -divided his lands and goods in equal parts among them, but in Normandy -and France the estate went to the eldest of the line. - -It was only in the twelfth century that the Bretons went outside their -own domain. Previously, they were decidedly an untravelled race, but -under Philip the Fair Paris came to know Breton well, though chiefly -through the poorer classes. - -They went to the schools and seminaries of Orleans to become clerics; -sold their cattle and horses in the markets of Paris, and their wheat -in Maine and Anjou, and their feudal lords, it is perhaps needless to -say, bought their dress in the capital of fashion, and their wines in -Gascony. From this time, Brittany may be said to have been opened to the -world. - -Not always were the Bretons a peaceful, law-abiding race, at least -they did not always appear in such a light to their contemporaries. -According to Bouchart, Duke Francis II. received a letter wherein his -brother-in-law, the Count of Foix, said: "Monseigneur, I declare to -God, I would rather be the ruler of a million of wild boars than of such -a people as are your Bretons." - -In 1460, Francis II. founded the University of Nantes, thus doing away -with the necessity of the young Breton's going to Paris, Orleans, or -Angers for his education. - -Printing was discovered in Germany, and all in good time it appeared -in Brittany, at Lannion, and at Trguier. There were establishments -devoted to the art even before they existed in such important places as -Lyons or Montpellier. One of the first books printed in Brittany was a -French-Breton dictionary, published in 1499, and known as the Catholicon -of Jean Lagadeuc. - -By this time, a remarkable form of government, unique in all the -world, was established in Brittany. In some respects it was modelled -on the English Parliament, but in no way resembled that of the French -legislative body. - -The Estates met each year at Rennes, at Vannes, at Nantes, at Redon, at -Vitr, or at Dinan, and at last, under Francis II., Parliament came to -be a fixture at Rennes. - -Even after the union of Brittany with France, the ancient rights, -privileges, and liberties were assured to the old province until the -Revolution. These sittings of the Estates at Rennes were sumptuous -affairs, accompanied by a round of feasting and dancing at which -appeared all the aristocracy who could. - -Madame de Svign wrote to her daughter of one of the grand affairs as -follows: - -"The good cheer is excessive; the roasts are brought on entire, and the -pyramids of fruit are so huge as to make it necessary to take down the -doors for their entrance.... After dinner, MM. de Locmaria and Cotlegon -danced with two Breton girls, taking some amazing steps.... Play is -continuous, balls endless, and thrice a week there are comedies." - -The relations between the nobility and peasantry in seventeenth-century -Brittany were perhaps closer and more affectionate than in any other -part of France. The noblemen frequently visited the peasants on their -farms, and on Sunday the peasants danced in the courts of the castles -and manor-houses. - -"Virtually, under the old system, Brittany was peopled by rural -nobility," says Cambry, and indeed this must have been so, for within a -small radius of Plougasnou were more than two hundred noblemen's houses, -"so poor," says the chronicler, "that their inhabitants might well be -classed with the labourers themselves." - -Brittany's part in the Revolution was equivocal. The Republicans really -had beaten the Royalists, but they had also aided the Girondins, and at -Paris the Girondins were as much hated as the Royalists themselves. The -Convention sent its representatives into the province, not to thank the -Bretons for their help in the great struggle, but with the idea of still -further arousing the passions of the people. - -Among these representatives were Geurmer, Prieur de la Marne, -Jean-Bon-St.-Andre, and the rascally and heartless Carrier, who drowned -his hundreds at Nantes, and guillotined twenty-six Bretons in one day at -Brest. - -The Breton feeling and sympathy was in the main with the Republicans, -though manifestly the majority had no sympathy with the rule of -the Terrorists. It is curious to note, however, the change in the -nomenclature of places in the endeavour to eliminate the religious -and aristocratic prefixes and suffixes with which many of the Breton -place-names were endowed. - -St. Cast became Havre-Cast. - -St. Fiacre became Fiacre-les-Bois. - -St. Gildas became Gildas du Chaneau. - -St. Gilles-les-Bois became Bellevue. - -St. Jacut-de-la-Mer became Isle Jacut and Port Jacut. - -Chateaulin became Cit sur An. - -Pont l'Abb became Pont Marat. - -Quimper became Montagne sur Odet. - -St. Martin des Champs became Unit des Champs. - -St. Pol de Lon became Port Pol. - -Belle Ile en Mer became Ile de l'Unit. - -Chteau Fouquet became Maison-des-Sans-Culottes. - -Isle aux Moins became Isle du Morbihan. - -Roche-Bernard became La Roche Sauveur. - -Rochefort en Terre became Roche des Trois. - -St. Gildas de Rhuis became Ablard. - -St. Briac became Port Briac. - -St. Lunaire became Port Lunaire. - -St. Malo became Port Malo. - -St. Servan became Port Solidor. - -With the incoming of the Empire, most of these names reverted to their -early form. - -In our day, while many of the old provinces of France have suffered--if -they really do "suffer"--from a decreasing population, Brittany has -augmented her numbers continually. It is a well-worn saying among the -political economists of France that the "fine and healthy race of -Bretons is one of the greatest reserves and hopes of the republic." -Three-quarters of all those who man French ships come from the Breton -peninsula. - -Hamerton has said that no race, more than the English, had so strong -a tendency to form attachments for places outside their native land. -There may be many reasons for this, and assuredly the subject is too -vast and varied to be more than hinted at here. Brittany, at any rate, -has proved, in and out of season, a haven, as safe as a home-port, -for the Briton and his family, when they would not wander too far. -Possibly it comes after Switzerland, though France as a whole, "the most -architectural country in Europe," has been sadly neglected, for, as has -been said before, no Englishman ever loved France as Browning loved -Italy. - -The native love of the Frenchman for the land of his birth is, to him, -above all else. It is almost incomprehensible to an outsider; it is -something more than mere patriotism; it is the love of an artist for his -picture, as Balzac said of his love of Touraine. This sentiment goes -deep. After the province comes the immediate environment of his village, -and then the village. "_Rien n'est plus beau que mon village, en verit -je vous le dis._" Thus has written and spoken many a great Frenchman. - -Nowhere in the known world is provincialism so deep and profound a trait -as in France; and the Breton is always a Breton, contemptuous of the -Norman, God-fearing, and peaceful toward all. There is throughout France -always an intense provincial rivalry, though it seldom rises to hatred -or even to jealousy. - -Probably there is no great amount of truth in the following quatrain, -evidently composed by a resident of Finistre, and there first heard -by the writer of this book, but it reflects those little rivalries and -ambitions which have appeared in the daily life-struggle among the -inhabitants of other nations since the world began: - - "Voleur comme un Lonard, - Traitre comme un Trgarrais, - Sot comme un Vannetais, - Brutal comme un Cornouaillais." - -Sometimes the love of one's own country may be carried to an extreme. -We read that for long years, and until recently, the inhabitants of -Trlaze positively refused to assimilate with outside conditions of life -to the least degree, and finding a Breton of this little zone or islet -who spoke French was as improbable as to find one who spoke English. -At St. Brieuc there is a special quarter where the Breton-speaking -folk live to the number of two thousand, and this out of a population -of only twenty-two thousand, while at Nantes the Bretons number ten -thousand. At Angers there is a large and apparently growing Breton -colony; likewise at Havre, in Normandy, where they have a special chapel -in which the priest preaches in the Breton tongue. At Paris, too, there -are various Breton colonies, and the Church of St. Paul and St. Louis, -in St. Anthony's Street, has a Breton priest. It is the same with the -church of Vaugirard. At Havre there are something over three thousand -Breton-speaking persons, and in Paris seven thousand. - -Perhaps Brittany has produced fewer great painters and sculptors than -any other section of France, but all Bretons are artists in no very -small way, as witness their wonderfully picturesque dress and their -charmingly stage-managed ftes and ceremonies. - -The pioneer painter of Breton subjects was doubtless Adolph Leleux, who, -as one of the romantic school in Paris, found in this province what many -another of his contemporaries was seeking for elsewhere, and discovered -Brittany, as far as making it a popular artists' sketching-ground is -concerned. His first paintings of this region were exhibited in the -Salons of 1838-39-40, and Paris raved over them. His peasant folk, -with their embroidered waistcoats and broad-brimmed hats, had the very -atmosphere of Brittany. - -[Illustration: <u>_St. Brieuc_</u>] - -Leleux's success was the signal for a throng of artists to follow in his -footsteps, and to-day their number is countless, and the very names of -even the most famous would form too long a list to catalogue here. - -Among Leleux's most celebrated canvases were "La Karolle, Danse -Bretonne" 1843; "Les Faneuses," 1846; "Le Retour du March," 1847; -"Cour de Cabaret," 1857; "Jour de Fte en Basse Bretagne," 1865; and -successively the "Foire Bretonne," "Les Braconniers," "Le Pcheur de -Homards," "Plerinage Breton," and "Le Cri du Chouan." - -In all these works one finds the true Brittany of Rosporden and -Penmarc'h. - -Fortin's "Cahute de Mendicant dans le Finistre" (1857), "La -Bndicit," and "La Chaumire du Morbihan" follow Leleux as a good -second, then Trayers with "March Breton and "Marchande de Crepes -Quimperl." - -Among other noted pictures are Darjours's "Palaudiers du Bourg de Batz" -and the "Fagotiers Bretons"; Guerard's "Jour de Fte" and "Messe du -Matin, Ille-et-Vilaine"; Fischer's "Chemin du Pardon" and "Auberge -Scar," and Roussin's "Famille Bretonne." - -Gustave Brion, with his "Bretons la Porte d'une Eglise"; Yan -Dargent, with his "Sauvetage Guisseny," and Jules Noel, with his -"Danse Bretonne," and various landscapes of Brest, Quimper, Auray, and -Douarnenez, are on the list of names of those who made the Breton region -famous in the mid-nineteenth century. - -Since then, the followers in their footsteps have been almost too many -to number. - -Most folk call to mind with very slight appreciable effort such -masterpieces as Jules Breton's "Retraite aux Flambeaux" and "Plantation -d'un Calvaire," now in the museum at Lille, and Charles Cottet's -"Bateaux de Pche Camaret" in the Luxembourg gallery. - -In addition, there have been innumerable "great pictures" painted by -English and American artists whose very names form too long a list to -catalogue here. - - - - -CHAPTER III. - -THE TOPOGRAPHY OF THE PROVINCE - - -One reason for the diversified interests of France and the varying -methods of life is the vastly diversified topographical features. "Great -plains as large as three Irelands," said Hamerton, "and yet mountainous -districts quite as large as the whole of the British Isles." This -should have served to disabuse British travellers of some false notions -regarding France, but many of them still hold to the views which are to -be gained by railway journeys across the lowlands of Gaul, forgetting -for a moment that well within the confines of France there are fifty -mountain peaks above eleven thousand feet high, and that majestic Mont -Blanc itself rises on French soil. - -Then there are the two thousand miles of seacoast which introduce -another element of the population, from the dark-skinned sailor of the -Mediterranean to his brother of Finistre, who is brought into the world -chiefly to recruit the French navy. The Norman sailorman is a hardy, -intrepid navigator even to-day, but he is to a great extent of the -longshore and fishing-boat variety, whereas the true Breton is a sailor -through and through. - -Before now, Brittany has been compared, disparagingly, with Provence, -and with some justness perhaps. Provence, however, does not persistently -broil under a "fierce, dry heat," and Brittany is not by any means -"a wind and wave swept land, where nothing nourishes itself or grows -fat." Potatoes are even fattening, and Brittany, in all conscience, -grows enough of that useful commodity to feed all France. In three -things Brittany and Provence more than a little resemble one another. -Both preserve, to a very remarkable extent, their ancient language and -their old-time manners and customs, though in all three they are quite -different one from the other. - -The general topographical aspect of the coast of the whole Breton -peninsula is stern and wild, whether one encounters the dreary waste of -sand, in the midst of which sit Mont St. Michel and Tombelaine, or the -cliffs away to the westward, or the bleak and barren Belle Ile en Mer, -where Fouquet built his famous stronghold. - -On the "Emerald Coast" the sea and sky are often of a true Neapolitan -clearness, and, indeed, the climate of the whole peninsula is, even in -winter, as mild as many a popularly fashionable Mediterranean resort; -but it is not always so bright and sunny; there is a deal of rain in -winter, and often a penetrating dampness, whose only brother is the -genuine Scotch mist. - -Still, in all but four months of the year, there is a brilliancy and -softness about the climate of the coast of Brittany which encourages -violets, roses, onions, and potatoes to come to maturity at so early a -date that the Londoner has ceased to raise the question as to whether or -not they may be "best English," when he sees these products laid out of -an early morning in his beloved Covent Garden. - -To know a country or its people at its best, one should really take one -of its great men for a guide. Hear then what Chateaubriand says of "La -Terre Bretonne": - -"This long peninsula, of a wild and savage aspect, has much of -singularity about it: its narrow valleys, its non-navigable rivers -bathing the feet of its ruined castle-keeps and chteaux, its old -abbeys, its thatch-covered houses, and its cattle herded together in its -arid pastures. One valley is separated from another by forests of oak, -with holly bushes as large as beech-trees, and druidical stones around -which sea-birds are for ever circling. - -"Of an imagination lively, but nevertheless melancholic, of a humour as -flexible as their character is obstinate, the Bretons are distinguished -for their piety, and none the less for their bravery, their fidelity, -their spirit of independence, and their patriotism. Proud and -susceptible, but without ambition and little suited to the affairs of -court or state, they care nothing for honours or for rank." - -The picture is not very vivid, but it is wonderfully true, and of this -one meets continual evidence in a journey around the coast, from the Bay -of St. Michel in the north to Belle Ile or Nantes in the south. - -No part of France has a physiognomy more original than Bretagne; none -has been marked by nature in a more emphatic manner than this ancient -home of the Celts. - - "...la terre du granit - Et de l'immense et morne lande." - -It is indeed a land of contrasts, where ancient, mystical, and weird -menhirs and dolmens, relics of prehistoric times, are mingled with -medival monuments and modern forts, arsenals, and viaducts. - -The country is by no means unlovely, but it partakes of none of the -conventional beauties of other parts. It is not sterile, though it is -stern; it is not very fertile, but its product is ample; and it stands -as the most westerly point of the mainland of Northern Europe, open to -all the wild buffetings of the tempestuous Atlantic which has sculptured -its coast-line into such fantastic forms that a shipwrecked mariner must -think himself fallen upon the most stern and rock-bound of coasts. - -The general aspect of Brittany is green and gray. It is, as the Breton -himself says, an austere heath,--the country-side half-effaced in -demi-tints, and the sea boisterous and wicked. - -This, however, is only one of its moods; to-morrow it may be as -brilliantly sunlit as the Bay of Naples, and may have a sea and sky of -gold and turquoise. But this mood passes quickly, and again it settles -down to a misty softness and mildness of climate that has given its name -to one of the five great climatic divisions of France, the Armorican. - -The sunsets of Brittany are always glorious. Nowhere on the rim of great -ocean's mirror are there more splendid and grandly scenic effects to be -observed. An exceedingly realistic Frenchman once described a sunset in -the Bay of Douarnenez as a "bloody apotheosis," the real aspect of which -is readily inferred. Of this Breton Cornouaille, Branger sang: - - "Faisons honte aux hirondelles. - Tu croiras, sur nos essieux, - Que la terre a pris des ailes - Pour passer devant les yeux." - -The country inland is as original as the coast, and both the peasant on -shore and the sailor on the sea are Breton to the core. Never has -Brittany been called charming or gracious, never lovely or sweet, but -always cold, though not so in climate, which is always terrible and -austere. - -But, for all that, it is delightful, and when one has tired of the -stupid gaieties of Switzerland or the Rhine, let him rough it a bit -among the low hills and valleys of the Ctes du Nord, or the rocky -promontories and inlets of Finistre, or, on the south coast between -Quimper and Nantes, on one of those little tidal rivers such as the -Aven, and let him learn for himself that there is something new under -the sun, even on well-trodden ground. - -Truth to tell, Brittany is not nearly so well known to English-speaking -folk as it should be. There is a fringe of semi-invalid, semi-society -loiterers centred around St. Malo, and enlivened in the summer months by -the advent of a little world of literary and artistic folk from Paris. -Then there is an artist colony or two in Lower Brittany, where the -visitors work hard, dress uncouthly, and live cheaply for four or five -months of the year. At Nantes there is the overflow of tourists of -convention from the chteaux district of Touraine, and up and down the -length and breadth of Brittany, from Mont St. Michel to St. Nazaire, and -from Dol to Brest, are to be found occasional wanderers on bicycles or -in motor-cars. - -The great mass, however, is herded around the conventionally "gay" five -o'clock resorts of Dinard, Param, and St. Malo, and in by far the -greater area of the province the seeker for pleasure and true -edification is far more rare than is popularly supposed. The occasional -rather wretched hotel has hitherto kept the fastidious away, and the -terrific hobnails of the Breton wooden shoe have all but driven -travellers in motor-cars and bicycle riders to despair. Both these -deterrents, real and fancied, are disappearing, however. The hygienic -bedrooms of the Touring Club are found here and there, and the peasants, -or, at least, some of them, now wear a sort of cast-iron sole -apparently clamped or riveted to the wooden shoe; at least there are no -big, pointed, mushroom-headed tacks to drop out, point uppermost, in dry -weather. - -The topographical aspect of Brittany is largely due to the two great -zones of granite formation which come together at their western -extremities,--the mountains of Alenon and the jutting rocks that come -to the surface from Poitou northward. - -In general, the whole aspect of Brittany echoes the words of Brizeaux, -the Lorient poet: - - "O terre de granit, recouverte de chnes." - -One would hardly call Brittany mountainous, but its elevations are -notable, nevertheless, in that they rise, for the most part, abruptly -from the dead level of the ocean. Inland, the topography takes on more -of the nature of a rolling moorland, with granite cropping out here and -there in the elevations. The following quatrain describes it exactly: - - " MON PAYS - - "O ma chre Bretagne, - Que j'aime tes halliers, - Tes verdoyants graniers, - Et ta noire montagne." - --_Corbinais._ - -The greatest altitudes in Brittany are: The Sillon de Bretagne (near -Savenay), eighty-nine metres; La Motte (Montagnes Noires between Quimper -and Brest), 289 metres; Menez Hom (Montagnes Noires), 330 metres; Mont -St. Michel (Montagne d'Arre), 391 metres. - -The Breton rivers are not great rivers as the waterways of the world go, -although they are important indeed to the country which they irrigate. -Chief among them are the Vilaine, navigable to Rennes, the Rance, the -Odet, the Aulne, and of course the Loire, which flanks the southern -boundary of the old province nearly up to its juncture with the Mayenne, -and continues its navigable length in Brittany up to, and a trifle -beyond, the town of the same name. The Couesnon, flowing northward -into the vast Bay of Mont St. Michel, forms the northeastern boundary -separating Brittany from Normandy. - -The great length of irregular coast-line accounts for the continuation -of the generally severe and stern aspect of the interior, the sombre -granite cliffs jutting far out into the open, half-enclosing great bays -and forming promontories and headlands which are characteristically -Breton and nothing else. They might resemble those of the Greek -mainland and archipelago were they but environed with the life and -languor of the South, but, as it is, they are Breton through and -through, and their people have all their hopes and sympathies wrapped up -in the occupations of a colder clime. - -The old territorial limits of the Province of Brittany embraced a small -tract south of the Loire, known as _Le Rais_, or the Retz country. - -Here is Clisson, the feudal castle and estate so constantly recurring in -French history. Pornic, Paimboeuf, and the Lac de Grande Lieu also lie -southward of the Loire in this old appanage, but, in the main, Breton -history was played on the Armorican peninsula north of the Loire. - -The height of the tides on the Breton coast varies considerably. All -this is caused by the flow of the North Sea and the Straits of Calais -meeting the current coming directly from the Atlantic, so that in some -instances the flood-tide rises to a height of from fifty to sixty feet -above "dead water," as the French call it. - -The immense Bay of Mont St. Michel, at low water, is a stretch of bare -sand more than three hundred square kilometres in extent, but it is -completely covered and converted into a great tranquil gulf by the -rising tide. - -[Illustration: <u>_Croisic_</u>] - -At Croisic, at the mouth of the Loire, there is a 5.16 metre rise of -the tide, which around the Breton coast-line varies as follows: - - Port Navalo, Morbihan 4.72 - Lorient 4.60 - Concarneau 4.68 - Douarnenez 6.16 - Brest 6.42 - Ouessant 6.38 - Roscoff 8.22 - Ile Brehat 9.90 - St. Malo 11.44 - Iles Chausey 11.74 - Mont St. Michel 12.30 - -The aspect of the region round about Dol, in the north, is that of a -little Holland, with its flats and windmills and its cultivated ground -protected from the sea by a rim of downs and dikes. It is not so very -great an expanse that follows these outlines, but the likeness is one -to be remarked. To the westward lie the jutting rocks and capes, beyond -which are the isolated islands of Ouessant and its fellows, and all -around the coast extend landlocked bays and harbours sheltering the -great fishing ports of Douarnenez and Concarneau and the commercial -ports of St. Malo, Morlaix, Brest, Lorient, and Vannes. - -From a military and strategic point of view the whole northwest coast of -France, from the mouth of the Loire through Brittany and Normandy, is -exceedingly well protected, with a great port and base of supplies both -at Brest in Brittany and at Cherbourg in Normandy. - -Forts Minden, Ville Martin, and Penthivre, Port Louis, Lorient, and -Brest, and the Forts du Pilier, Le Palais, Lacroix, Cezon, and Chteau -du Taureau, with St. Malo and Fort des Rimains, protect the whole Breton -seashore in practically unassailable fashion, though there are still the -sea fights at Ouessant, in 1778 and 1794, and The Hogue in 1692, to say -nothing of the land engagements at Quiberon in 1795, to remember. - -[Illustration: Map of Bretagne] - - - - -CHAPTER IV. - -TRAVEL ROUTES IN BRITTANY - - -Tourists are commonly supposed to belong to the pleasure-seeking -or invalid class, and so they mostly do, still one may travel for -instruction (which is pleasure, also) and be mindful of the conditions -of life around him, and profit accordingly, unless he absolutely demands -the life of the boulevards of Paris or the homoeopathic excitements of -the little horses in some popular watering-place. - -It is undoubtedly true that most tourists are of limited interests, -which may be pleasure, or art, or architecture, or worshipping at -historical shrines. All this is well enough in its way, but if one could -combine a modicum of each he would profit much more largely, to say -nothing of being amused and instructed, too. - -The time has long since passed when travellers reviled Brittany as -a province where "husbandry was no further advanced than among the -Hurons," as a writer of the eighteenth century said within twenty-four -hours after he had crossed the boundary between Normandy and Brittany, -at Pontorson, where the causeway road branches off to Mont St. Michel. -Evidences of husbandry are still very much to the fore, but it is more -advanced in the interior, at least; on the coast the harvest of the sea -takes its place. - -Brittany, in husbandry, may not be so advanced as some other parts. -There are no such elaborate operations going on here as in the regions -where high farming is practised--in Beauce, or Normandy, or Anjou. -Neither are such numbers of mechanical farming-tools in operation, -but in spite of all this there is a very considerable and prosperous -industry born of the soil of which most strangers to Brittany, and some -who have travelled there, are entirely ignorant. All along the great -highways crossing and recrossing Brittany one sees the little roadside -farms with their attendant small flocks of live stock, sheep, cattle, -geese, ducks, and fowls, which point, at any rate, to the fact that the -peasant need not be as ill-nourished as he is generally supposed to be; -and really he is not. - -The charm of journeying by road in France is indescribable, perhaps, -to its fullest degree. Natural beauties count for much, but in a land -peopled with historic castles, churches, and abbeys, as Normandy and -Brittany are, it is found doubly enjoyable even though one professes no -expert architectural knowledge, or no profound aptitude for historical -research. These, however, are but side-lights, which make the actual -pilgrimage among such shrines greatly to be cherished among one's -personal experiences. - -It is the whole which pleases, and not fragmentary and piecemeal -beauties and charms; and never was this more true than of a well-beloved -land, be it one's own or an alien shore. - -Brittany and its travel routes, whether by road or rail, offer as full a -measure of all these attractions as it is possible for one to conceive. - -The great highways of Brittany have not the same favour with travellers -by road as those of other parts of France. They are equally important -and equally well cared for by a paternal government, but their inclines -are steeper--sometimes suicidal--and certainly more frequent than -elsewhere in France, and distances stretch out interminably. - -[Illustration: <u>_The Main Roads of Brittany_</u>] - -The great national road which stretches from Paris to Brest covers a -distance nearly equal to that from Paris to Turin, or from Paris to -Amsterdam. - -There are, however, in Brittany no long stretches of unrolled road -surface, and for the most part the roadways are as smooth as can -anywhere be found. Were it not for the eternal switchbacks, and the -aforementioned hobnail, with its pointed end usually upmost, Brittany -would be a far more popular touring-ground for the automobile than it -is. The hooded cart of Normandy and Brittany, such as one meets going -to and from the market-towns, is another real dread to the man in the -motor-car. - -It is not that the occupant is unwilling to hear one's horn, but it is -almost impossible that he should against a head-wind, until you are -close upon him. It is useless to point to your ear as you whisk by and -ask him--in a shout--if he is deaf, or to say: "Well, now, you sleep -well." He will pay little or no attention to you, and anyway, most -likely, he was _not_ asleep, as are so many of his fellows that one -meets on English roads. - -In Brittany the traveller by road often meets an obstruction in the -shape of a flock of sheep slowly making its way toward one, or in the -opposite direction, or even a flock of ducks or geese, which are even -more dreadful. Sheep are stupid, hens and chickens are silly, but geese -are arrogant and obstinate. - -It is very disconcerting, of course, for the motor-car driver at full -speed to have to draw in his ten, or twenty, or thirty horses in order -to avoid decapitating a whole goose and gosling family, but it lends a -charm to the travel, which a badly paved stretch of roadway--in Picardy, -for instance--wholly lacks. - -Here when one does actually run into a flock of geese, such as one sees -on the high-coloured posters advertising a certain make of car, and in -the comic journals, it is one of the real humours of life. The amount of -curiosity an old goose or gander can show in a death-dealing motor-car -as it rushes by, and the chances they take of sudden death, are enough -to give an ordinarily careful driver innumerable heart-leaps. - -This is about all the trouble one is likely to meet on Breton roads, -except, of course, the always present grazing cows, which here, though -they are always attended,--generally by a small boy or girl, who often -is not able to keep them in line as one would wish,--are allowed to -stray freely, and are not tethered as they are throughout Normandy. - -It is not for the aforesaid reasons alone that motor-cars are scarce -in Brittany, for, after all, they form but minor troubles as compared -with the eccentricities of the machinery itself, and the tourist in -a motor-car is usually prepared for most things which are likely to -happen to him _en route_. So really if one likes a hilly country--and -it is not without its charms--Brittany offers much in the way of varied -and natural beauties that certain other provinces lack. Touraine, for -instance, delightful as it is as a touring-ground, is as proverbially -flat as a billiard-table. - -There are, in the first place, not nearly so many motor-cars owned in -Brittany, and accordingly there are astonishingly few shelters and -repairers. Apparently, the Breton does not care for the new-fangled -means of locomotion, not recognizing, perhaps, that it has come to stay. -Still less does the Breton peasant's brother, the Breton sailor or -fisherman, care for the motor-boat, which ought to have a great vogue in -such great inland seas as Morbihan, the Bay of Douarnenez, or the Goulet -or the roadstead of Brest. - -The sailor of Brest or Lorient and the little fishing villages of the -west will tell you: "I like my boat better, with my sail and my arms -for motors." - -Often these great stretches of Breton roadway show an aspect of human -nature that is probably the same the world over; a peasant man or woman -is leading a cow,--always on the wrong side of the road, of course,--or -a sleepy farm-hand is drawing his cart to or from market,--still on the -wrong side of the road,--when the whirr and snort of a motor-car does -something more than awaken echoes. - -The cows entangle themselves in their leading ropes, and the usually -placid horses bolt with the cart into the ditch. The native, of course, -reviles the car and its occupants, not because he hates them,--for they -are one of the mainstays of the inns of the countryside,--but merely to -display that untamable spirit of independence, which every mother's son -of a French peasant has developed to a high degree. - -In Brittany, as in most other lands,--in summer,--the traveller by road -gathers in a fine crop of wingy, stingy things, which project themselves -into one's eyes with a formidable force when one goes at them with a -swift-moving car. - -Occasionally one thinks he has come upon a vast convention of them, -so many are they in numbers and variety--flies, wasps, bees, and what -not, with a peculiar Gallic species of fly so infinitesimal that one -only stops to clear them out when he feels that his eyes are so full -of them that they may be uncomfortably crowded. The real or fabled -Jersey mosquito would go out of business with his Breton brother as a -competitor. Truly this is a new terror, and one that certainly was not -apparent, to anything like the present extent, before the advent of the -motor-car. - -One comes upon a dull week in Brittany often, even in summer, when the -sky remains overcast, and great clouds roll up from out of the western -ocean. Often it is not cold, but it is bitterly damp and sticky, even -though it does not rain, but the native does not seem to mind it, at -least, he never complains. - -The only objector ever met with by the writer was a Gascon who kept -a pharmacy at Quimper. He discussed it as follows: "Hideous country! -The wind blows here every day in the year, and the rest of the time it -rains," he continued, enigmatically. "Yes, that abominable wind always -plays the same trick on me! What a country!" He was probably thinking of -his own bright and sunny home in the South, where seldom, if ever, are -conditions other than brilliantly tranquil. - -There are three great highroads which cross Brittany from east to west, -the main road of Brittany from Alenon in Normandy, through Mayenne, -Fougres, Dol, Dinan, Guingamp, and Morlaix to Brest; the southern road -from Paris via Le Mans, or even following the Loire valley down from -Orleans to Nantes, and thence westward via Vannes, Lorient, and Quimper -to Brest, thus making the complete circuit of the Breton coast. A midway -course lies in almost a direct line east and west through Laval, Vitr, -Rennes, Plormel, Pontivy, and Carhaix. - -These three highroads cover completely the itinerary of Brittany, in so -far as they follow the north and south coast and the country-side lying -between. - -Cross country, from the Bay of Mont St. Michel to the mouth of the -Loire, one "route nationale" lies directly through Rennes, and another -ends at Vannes, in Morbihan. - -These cover practically all the regular lines of traffic, and include -all the chief points of historical and topographical instances. - -[Illustration: <u>_Travel Routes in Brittany_</u>] - -Distances of themselves are not great in Brittany. From St. Malo to -Nantes is but 180 kilometres; from Laval to Brest but 337 kilometres; -and from Nantes to Brest is but 324 kilometres. - -In these days of motor-cars and even bicycles, these distances are not -great, and so long as they are not taken at a rush,--which forbids -enjoyment,--they form no drawback to the pleasures of travel by road in -Brittany. One has only to add two or three hundred kilometres more, in -order to reach the starting-points of Nantes, Laval, or St. Malo from -Paris. Then the tour may seem a lengthy one; but even this is nothing -to find fault with; the intermediate country is in itself delightful, -whether one journeys down through the Orleanais, Touraine, and Anjou, or -westward through the heart of Normandy. - -The railways in Brittany, except on some of the cross-country routes, -are developed to a high stage of efficiency. The great express lines of -the Western Railroad to St. Malo and to Brest run due west from Paris, -straight almost as the crow flies. Again, one may make his entry via -Nantes and the Loire valley through Touraine and Anjou by the Orleans -line, and have the satisfaction of setting out from Paris by the world's -finest and most modern railway station, that wonderfully convenient and -artistic structure on the Quay of Orsay. - -Rennes is the great railway centre of Brittany, and accordingly all -roads lead to Rennes. Here one may make up his itinerary at a price -which will include nearly every place west of that point for a matter -of _frcs._ 65 for first-class, and _frcs._ 50, second-class, and if -he tell the clerk of the booking-office at his point of departure for -Rennes that he intends doing this (and agrees with the formalities) he -will get a discount of forty per cent, on the price of first or second -class tickets up to that point. A plan of this itinerary and further -particulars are given in the appendix. - -Third-class railway travel in Brittany ought to form one of the -long-remembered experiences of one's visit to that province. - -There is much amusement to be got out of a journey across Brittany from -St. Malo to Nantes, with mob-capped peasant-folk and blue-bloused and -picturesque farmers, all laden with huge baskets and bundles, and an -occasional live fowl, or perhaps a rabbit, or even a guinea-pig, though -one must not believe that Frenchmen eat guinea-pigs. The writer, at -least, never saw one being eaten, though what use they are really put to -is an open question. - -Occasionally there will be a want of elbow-room in a third-class -carriage, but this is no great inconvenience, as the Breton mostly -travels short distances only, and at the next station one may be left -alone with only a drowsy Breton sailor--off on a furlough from a -man-of-war--to keep him company, with his red-knobbed tam-o'-shanter -rakishly over one ear. - -Often a _foreigner_ will throw himself into one's compartment,--an -American or an English artist, with his sketching paraphernalia, white -umbrella and all,--for artist-folk are mostly of the genus who travel -third-class. Good-naturedly enough, if his journey be a long one, he -will tell you much of the country round about, for your artist is one -who knows the byways as well as the highways--and perhaps a little -better. By this procedure, one stands a chance of gathering information -as well as being edified and amused. - - - - -CHAPTER V. - -THE BRETON TONGUE AND LEGEND - - -The speech of Brittany, like its legend and folk-lore, has ever been a -prolific subject with many writers of many opinions. - -The comparison of the speech of the Welshman with that of the Breton -has often been made, but by no one so successfully as by Henri Martin, -the historian, who, in writing of his travels in Wales, told how he had -chatted with the Celtic population there and made himself thoroughly -understood through his knowledge of Breton speech. - -In its earliest phases, the Breton tongue had a literature of its own, -at least a spoken literature, coming from the mouths of its bards -and popular poets. In our own day, too, Brittany has its own songs -and verses, which, though many of them have not known the medium of -printer's ink, have come down from past generations. - -The three ancient Armorican kingdoms or states, Domnone, Cornouaille, -and the Bro-Waroch, had their own distinct dialects. - -There is and was a considerable variation in the speech throughout -Brittany, though it is and was all Breton. The dialects of Vannes, -Quimper, and Trguier are the least known outside their own immediate -neighbourhood; the Lonais of St. Pol de Lon is the regular and common -tongue of all Bas Bretons. - -The old-time limits of the Breton tongue are wavering to-day, and -from time to time have drawn appreciably toward the west, so that the -boundary-line, which once ran from the mouth of the Loire to Mont St. -Michel, now starts at the mouth of the Vilaine, and finishes at a point -on the northern coast, a little to the westward of St. Brieuc. - -It was during the decadence of the Breton tongue--known to philologists -as the third period--that the monk Abelard cried out: "The Breton tongue -makes me blush with shame." - -The nearer one comes to Finistre, the less liable he is to meet the -French tongue unadulterated. The numbers knowing the Breton tongue alone -more than equal those who know French and Breton, leaving those who know -French alone vastly in the minority. The figures seem astonishing -to one who does not know the country, but they are unassailable, -nevertheless. - -[Illustration: <u>_St. Pol de Lon_</u>] - -Here in this department at least, and to a lesser degree in the Ctes -du Nord and the Morbihan provinces, one is likely enough to hear -lisped out, as if it were the effort of an Englishman: "_Je na sais -pas ce que vous dtes_," or "_Je n'entend rien_." No great hardship or -inconvenience is inflicted upon one by all this, but now and again one -wishes he were a Welshman, for the only foreigners who can understand -the lingo are Taffy's fellow country-men. - -Breton legend is as weird and varied as that of any land. It is -astonishingly convincing, too, from the story of King Grollo and -his wicked daughter, who came from the Britain across the seas, the -Bluebeard legend, the Arthurian legend, which Bretons claim as their -own, as do Britons, to those less incredible tales of the Corsairs of -St. Malo and the exploits of Duguesclin and Surcouf. - -[Illustration: _The Breton Tongue_] - -There is a quaint Breton saying referring to little worries, which -runs thus: "When the wind blows up from the sea, I turn my barrel to -the north; when it blows down from the hills, I turn my barrel to the -south." "And when it blows all four ways at once?" "Why, then I crawl -under the barrel." - -This is exactly the Breton's attitude toward life to-day, but he finds -a deal of consolation in his legends and songs of the past, and in his -ruffled moments they serve to put him in a good humour again. This is -something more than mere superstition, it is a philosophical turn of -mind, and that is good for a man. The heroes of legend are frequently -those of history. One may cite Joan of Arc with relation to old France, -and Duguesclin in Brittany. There is a difference, of course, and it is -wide, but the comparison will serve, as there is no other character in -all the history of Brittany--unless it be that of Duguay-Trouin, the -Corsair of St. Malo--who stands out so distinctly in the popular mind as -does Duguesclin, "the real Breton." - -There is none in his own country, however illiterate he may be, and the -Breton peasant, in some parts, is notoriously illiterate, who knows -not this hero's name and glory. Still more deeply rooted are the old -folk-lore superstitions which have come down through the ages by word of -mouth, no doubt with the accruing additions of time. - -Morlaix is the very centre of a land of mystery, tradition, and -superstition. Among these superstitious legends, "Jan Gant y tan," as it -is known by its Breton title, stands out grimly. - -Jan, it seems, is a species of demon who carries by night five candles -on the five fingers of each hand, and waves them wildly about, calling -down wrath upon those who may have offended him. - -Another is to the effect that hobgoblins eat the cream which rises on -milk at night. - -Yet another superstition is that the call of the cuckoo announces the -year of one's marriage or death. - -Another, and perhaps the most curious of all, is that, if an infant by -any chance gets his clothes wet at certain pools or fountains, he will -die within a year, but he will live long years if he fall in, yet is -able to preserve his garments from all dampness. - -When one drinks of the Fountain of De Krignac three times within the -hour, says the peasant of Plougasnou, and is not cured of the fever, let -him abandon all thoughts of a remedy and prepare for death. - -There are two legends associated with Brittany which are little known. -Both relate to Bluebeard. This legend is of Eastern origin, as far as -concerns the story of the man who slew his wives by dragging them about -by the hair, ultimately decapitating them; but the French Academy of -Inscriptions and Polite Learning evolves a sort of modern parallel as -another setting for the same apocryphal story. It concerns a certain -Trophime, the daughter of a Duke of Vannes, in the sixth century. She -was married to the Lord of Gonord, whose castle was situated on Mont -Castanes, and was the eighth wife of her husband. He killed her because -she discovered the bodies of her seven predecessors; but her sister Anne -prayed to St. Gildas, who came with her two brothers to the rescue. St. -Gildas restored Trophime to life, and the Bluebeard of Gonord and his -castle were swallowed up by the earth. - -The origin of the story has always been in doubt, but the generally -accepted theory is that Perrault founded the tale on the history of -Gilles de Laval, Seigneur de Rais. - -The Academy, however, destroys all this early conjecture in favour of -the Gilles de Laval affair. Since Gilles de Laval was a kinsman of the -Dukes of Brittany, the following is given as his claim to having played -the part, though, as the report of the Academy goes on to say, De Laval -proved himself to be but a fanatical sorcerer. - -[Illustration: _Gilles de Laval, after an engraving of the fifteenth -century in the Bibliothque Nationale._] - -Gilles de Laval was born in 1404, and was a member of the family of -Laval-Montmorency. He was handsome, well born, rich, and a most valiant -soldier, and one of the warmest supporters of Joan of Arc, whom he -defended against all who spoke ill of her, constituting himself her -personal champion. He fought valiantly with the "Maid," and was made a -marshal of France when twenty-six years of age. He was very wealthy, -and he doubled his possessions when he married at the early age of -sixteen. His extravagances, however, were greater than his riches. He -had a refined taste, and loved illuminated manuscripts, stamped Spanish -leather, Flemish tapestries, Oriental carpets, gold and silver plate, -music, and mystery plays. After peace was made, he and his wife retired -to their castles and lands in the Vende, where Gilles soon found -himself hopelessly in debt. He had to find money somehow, for he was of -a fine, open-handed disposition, and had never denied himself anything. -It was only natural in that century that he should turn his thoughts -toward alchemy and the philosopher's stone. - -Francesco Prelati, an Italian with a reputation as a magician and a -maker of gold, was installed, with all his alchemist's apparatus, in -Gilles's castle; but when he was asked to make gold, he confided to -his patron that it would be necessary to summon the aid of the devil, -and that for this purpose the blood of young children was absolutely -required. The two then scoured the country round for children, whom -they murdered with horrible rites, until at last their crimes became -so notorious that they were arrested and tried at Nantes. Gilles de -Laval and his accomplice were accused of murdering no fewer than twelve -hundred children, and were tried for sorcery and found guilty. The Lord -of Laval was strangled, and his body was burned; but Francesco Prelati, -as a mere vulgar sorcerer, was burned alive. - -At Saint Cast in the Ctes du Nord, one hears vague and fabulous reports -from the natives, even to-day, of a pirate ship--a veritable sister -ship to those of Duguay-Trouin of St. Malo--named the _Perillon_ and -commanded by one Besnard, known as the terror of the seas. Like other -songs of seafarers of the days gone by, that concerning the terror of -the seas is good enough to incorporate into the text of some rattling -story of pirates and corsairs, such as boys--and some grown-ups--the -world over like. Another popular Breton air was known as "Biron ha -D'Estin" ("Byron and D'Estaing"), and had to do with the war in America. -Another was the "Chant du Pilote," and had for its subject the combat of -the _Surveillante_ and the forts at Quebec in 1780. - -Of the same period was the "Corsairs' Song," which is very well known -throughout Upper Brittany even to-day, beginning thus: - - "Le trente-un du mois d'aot." - -Throughout Upper Brittany also one hears the old housewives still -mumbling the old words and air of the song current in the times of -Francis the First. - -It was when the prince was treating for his release from captivity that -the words first took shape and form: - - "Quand le roi dpartit de France, - Vive le roi! - la male heure il dpartit, - Vive Louis! - la male heure il dpartit (bis). - - * * * - - Il dpartit jour de dimanche. - - * * * - - Je ne suis pas le roi de France. - - * * * - - Je suis un pauvre gentilhomme - Qui va de pays en pays. - - * * * - - Retourne-t-en vite Paris." - - - - -CHAPTER VI. - -MANNERS AND CUSTOMS - - -To-day the Bretons are the most loyal of all the citizens of the great -republic of France. In reality they are a most democratic people, though -they often affect a devotion for old institutions now defunct. They may -be a superstitious race, but they are not suspicious, although they have -marked prejudices. When thoroughly understood, they are both likable and -lovable, though their aspect be one of a certain sternness and aloofness -toward the stranger. Their weapons are all in plain view, however, like -the hedgehog's; there is nothing concealed to thwart one's desires for -relations with them. - -Their country, their climate, and their environment have much to do -with their character, manners, and customs; and environment--as some -one may have said before--is the greatest influence at work in shaping -the attitude of a people toward an outsider, and every one is still an -outsider to a Breton, be he French, English, or American. - -The Breton is really a gayer person than his expression leads one to -suppose. Madame de Svign wrote, with some assurance, as was her wont: -"You make me prefer the gamesomeness of our Bretons to the perfumed -idleness of the Provenals." - -Certainly, to one who knows both races, the comparison was well made. It -is a case of doing mischief against doing nothing. - -Brittany has not Normandy's general air of prosperity, and indeed at -times there is a very near approach to poverty and distress, and then it -is bruited abroad in the public prints that the fisheries have proved a -failure. - -The Breton farming peasant, however, is not the poverty-stricken wretch -that he has sometimes been painted. He lives humbly, and eats vast -quantities of potatoes and bread, little meat, some fish, always a -salad, and, usually, a morsel of cheese, but he eats it off a cleanly -scrubbed bare board and from clean and unchipped plates. - -In his stable, such few belongings in the form of live stock as he has -are well fed and contented, and his chickens and ducks and pigs and cows -are as much a pride and profit to him as to the peasant of other parts; -but, after all, Brittany is not a land of milk and honey. The peasant -lives in the atmosphere of dogged, obstinate labour, but he draws a -competence from it, and it is mostly those who live in the seacoast -villages, and those who will huddle themselves in and about the large -towns and ports, such as Quimper and Brest, that are ever in want, and -then only because of some untoward, unexpected circumstance. - -Agriculture and the business of the sea are closely allied in Brittany. -Hundreds upon hundreds of young men work in the winter upon farms far -inland, and come down to the sea with the coming of February and March, -to ship in some longshore fishing-smack, or even to go as far away as -Newfoundland, the Orkneys, or to Iceland. - -This gives not only a peculiar blend of character, but also a peculiar -cast of countenance to the Breton; he is a sort of half-land and -half-sea specimen of humanity, and handy at the business of either. - -In many ports, the Breton struggles continually against shifting -sand,--sand which is constantly shifting when piled in banks on the -seashore, and becomes of the nature of quicksand when lying beneath the -water where the Breton moors his lobster-pots. Between the two, he is -constantly harassed, and until the off season comes has little of that -gaiety into which he periodically relaxes. Every one will remark that -the aspect of both men and women is sombre and dark, even though their -spontaneous gaiety and dress on the feast of a patron saint or at a -great pardon gives one the impression of gladness. - -One sees this when on the great holidays the Breton peasant is moved -to song, and chants such lines as the following, which more nearly -correspond in sentiment to "We won't go home till morning" than anything -else that can be thought of. - - "J'ai deux grands boeufs dans mon table, - J'ai deux grands boeufs marqus de rouge; - Ils gagnent plus dans une semaine - Qu'ils n'en ont cout, qu'ils n'en ont cout. - J'aime Jeanne ma femme! - J'aime Jeanne ma femme! - Eh bien! j'aimerais mieux la voir mourir, - Que de voir mourir mes boeufs." - -Doubtless there is not so much hard-heartedness about the sentiment as -is expressed by the words, which, to say the least and the most, are not -wholly up to the standard of "love, cherish, and protect." - -Once in awhile one sees the type of man who is known among his fellows -as _Breton des plus Bretons_. Like his Norman brother, the Breton in -the off season works hard playing dominoes or cards in the taverns, -where one reads on a sign over the door that _Jean X donne boire et -manger_, that is, if the sign be not in Breton, which more often than -not it is. - -The landlord does not exactly "give" his fare; he exchanges it for -copper sous, but he caters for the inner man at absurdly small prices, -and accordingly is well patronized, in spite of his refusal of credit. - -Bowls is the national game of Brittany, having a greater hold upon the -simple-minded Breton, particularly in the neighbourhood of the Lannion, -than any other amusement. No respectably ambitious inn in all Brittany -is without its bowling-alley. As a distraction, it is mild and harmless, -and withal good exercise, as we all know. - -The religious fervour of the Breton folk has been remarked of all who -know them howsoever slightly. It is universal, and, if it be more -apparent in one place than any other, it is in the Department of -Finistre, and it is not in the cities and towns that it reaches its -greatest height, but mostly in the country-side, or on the seacoast -among the labourers and the fisher-folk. - -The religion of Brittany to-day is of the people and for the people. It -is one of the great questions of the world to-day, but from a dogmatic -point of view it shall have no discussion here. Suffice it to say that -throughout France, with the numerous great, and nearly always empty, -churches ever before one, one can but realize that the power of the -Church is not what it once was. - -The churchgoers are chiefly women; seldom, if ever, except on a -great feast-day, are the churches filled with a congregation at all -representative of the population of the parish, and even in the great -cathedrals the same impression nearly always holds good. - -In Brittany, the case is somewhat different, in the country districts -at least, and even at Roscoff, Quimper, Vannes, and Rennes, where -there are great cathedrals. In Brittany, in every parish church and at -every wayside shrine, is almost always to be found not only a little -knot of devoutly kneeling peasants, but, on all occasions of mark, a -congregation overflowing beyond the doors. What this all signifies, as -before said, is no concern of the writer of this book. It is simply a -recorded state of affairs, and, judging from the attitude of the people -themselves--when seen on the spot--toward the subject of religion, -the most liberal thinker would hardly consider that here in Brittany -religion was anything else than spontaneous devotion on the part of the -people. - -Of religion and priests, Brittany is full, but the people are not by -any means priest-ridden, as many uncharitable and slack observers have -asserted before now. No priest bids a Breton worship at any shrine. They -do it of their own free will, and, though a churchman always officiates -at the great pardons and festivals, the worshippers themselves are as -much the performers of the ceremony as the priest. - -In Brittany to-day the piece of money which passes current in most -transactions, though in numbers it is infrequently handled by the -traveller, is _la pice_, the half-franc or ten-sous coin. - -It is confusing when you are bargaining for a carriage to drive to some -wayside shrine, to be told the price will be "_deux pices_," when--in -Normandy--you have just formed the habit of realizing offhand that _deux -cent sous_ is the same thing as ten francs. It's all very simple, when -one knows what they are talking about, and the Breton likes still to -think his institutions are different from those of the rest of France, -and so he goes on bargaining in _pices_, when in other parts they are -counting in _sous_, which is even more confusing, or in _francs_. - -Most of the farmhouses of Brittany are constructed of stone and wood, -with their roofs covered with a straw thatch. Of course this is a -dangerous style of building to-day, as the authorities admit. Indeed -a decree has gone forth in some parts forbidding the erection of any -new straw-thatched building, and again in other parts against using -any structure so built as a dwelling-house. The law is not absolutely -observed, but it is by no means a dead letter, and the homely and -picturesque thatched roof has now all but disappeared, except from the -open country. - -To enter the Breton peasant's farmhouse, one almost invariably descends -a step. The interior is badly lighted, and worse ventilated, but, as -it is mostly the open-air life that the peasant and his family lead, -perhaps this does not so much matter. Usually the house is composed -of but one room, with a floor of hard-trodden earth. This is the -dining-room, kitchen, and bedroom of all the family. The ceiling is -composed of great rough-hewn rafters, sometimes even of trunks left -with the bark on, and from it are hung the knives and forks and dishes, -as in a ship's cabin. - -[Illustration: YOUNG BRETONS - -_B. McManus--1905_] - -Furniture has been reduced to the most simple formula. Two or three -great closed and panelled beds or bunks line one side of the wall, with -perhaps a wardrobe, where the "Sunday-best" of the whole household is -kept. Beneath the great beds is a series of oaken chests, and there -the household linen is stored. These, with a long table, with a bench -and a wide passage on either side, the great, yawning fireplace, -with its crane and the inevitable highly polished pots and pans, form -the furnishings of this remarkable apartment. All this is homely and -strange, but it is comfortable enough for the occupants, if one does not -mind being crowded, and it is the typical dwelling throughout Brittany. - -Everywhere in the Breton country one sees oxen, cattle, and, above -all, the horses of the indefatigable Breton race, "ready and willing -to work and full of spirit in warfare." So said Eugene Sue, and the -same observation holds true to-day. None of the animals are so large -or so fat as in the neighbouring provinces, but this is not because of -malnutrition or because they are ill-tended. The cows of Brittany are by -no means such plump, dainty animals as the cows of the Cotentin, and the -Breton horses are certainly undersized when compared to the Norman sires -and the great-footed Percherons, but one and all possess good qualities -purely their own, and one thing above all should be noted,--Brittany is -exceedingly rich grazing country, if not agricultural. - -[Illustration: _From the_ ARTIST'S SKETCH BOOK.] - -Much of the local character is shown in the dress of the people, and -throughout the country-side and the seacoast villages alike both -men and women show that remarkable attention to dress which marks the -strong individuality of the race,--individuality which has come down -through the ages, and endures to this day in very nearly, if not quite -all, its original aspect. One knows this dress through photographic -reproductions, and from having occasionally seen it on the comic opera -stage, but actually to live among such picturesquely dressed folk is -like a step back into the past. - -[Illustration: LA COIFFE POLKA--_The Smallest Coiffe in Brittany_ - -B. McM. 1905] - -The costumes of Brittany are greatly varied, but all look theatrical, -and many of them are remarkably embroidered in multicoloured braid. On -all great occasions, feast-days and fairs, on Sundays and on the days -of the pardons, many ancient costumes, not modern reproductions, are -seen. Particularly is this to be noted at Pont l'Abb, Pont Aven, and -elsewhere in the far west. The coifs of the women and the embroidered -waistcoats and velvet-ribboned hats of the men mark them as a species of -Frenchmen different from their Norman brethren; lovers of fanciful dress -and customs quite Southern in gorgeousness, and not the least like the -colder fashions of other dwellers in the same latitude. - -At Quimper is an interesting Ethnological Museum, where one may study -the subject at length, and in the town one may buy fabrics and stuffs -and articles of wearing apparel fashioned in the genuine Breton manner. - -The greatest activity of life in Brittany is in the coast towns, for -there the populace has for the longest time been in touch with the ideas -of an advanced civilization. - -[Illustration: <u>_Ironing Coifs_</u>] - -By the very geographic position of Brittany this was inevitable, as the -country was not in the direct path of any great current of commerce, -and had no great navigable river, except the Loire, which bordered it -upon the south. There had been malicious critics of things Breton before -him, but there could have been no real justification for the lament of -Paul St. Victor, who must have had an exceedingly bad dinner at his inn -when he delivered himself of the following: - -"Breton dialect is full of barbarisms, and Brittany is not even a -healthy country for painters. It is a land of monasteries and dull -routine; the same types and the same costumes; no men, no women, all -Bretons, all of Brittany." - -As a race, the Breton may well be summed up as follows: They are the -descendants of the men of a primitive epoch, from whom they inherit -traits which even time has not entirely eradicated. Their intuitions are -correct, and their convictions profound; their will tenacious, and their -energies equal to all that may be demanded of them. They are proud, -truthful, courageous, intrepid, hospitable, and religious. - -The manufacturing industry throughout Brittany is practically null, if -one except the work of the great arsenals and ship-building ports, and -the production of such articles of local consumption as sail-cloth. - -Flax and hemp are grown in considerable quantities, but the ordinary -crops of cereals rise to nothing like the proportions of those reared -in Normandy or Perche. The Breton is strong on bee-keeping, however, -and keenly watches the busy workers of his hives as they gather their -harvest from the abundant crop of wild flowers covering the hillsides. - -[Illustration: <u>_Breton Types_</u>] - -The Breton communes are of vast extent compared with those of other -parts of France, but the population is scattered. Gathered around the -parish church are the dwellings of the market-towns of three, four, -or five hundred inhabitants or more. Upon the whole, Brittany is not -thinly peopled, the mean of its population exceeding that of most of -the other provinces of France. Whatever the aborigines were, whether -of Indo-Germanique type or of a species hitherto unplaced, the present -Breton population has been developed along lines close to those of -Britain. And the Bretons are not far behind, and herein undoubtedly lies -the charm of Brittany for the English-speaking traveller. - -Writing of his stay at Guingamp,--which is about the dividing line -where one passes from the zone of the French tongue to that of the -Breton, where one is frequently to hear the short exclamation, "I do -not understand you,"--Arthur Young tells us of putting up at a roadside -inn "where the hangings over his bed were full of cobwebs and spiders." -The inn-keeper remarked to him that he had "a superb English mare," and -wished to buy it from him. "I gave him half a dozen flowers of French -eloquence for his impertinence," said the witty traveller, "when he -thought proper to leave me and my spiders in peace." "Apropos of the -breed of horses in Lower Brittany," he continues, "they are capital -hunters, and yet my ordinary little English mare was much admired, while -every stable round about is filled with a pack of these little pony -stallions sufficient to perpetuate the local breed for long to come." - -To the humble inn--one of the regular posting-houses on the great -highroad from Paris to Brest--he is not so complimentary. "This -villainous hole," said he, "which calls itself a great house, is the -best inn of the town, at which marshals of France, dukes, peers, -countesses, and so forth, must now and then, by the accidents to -which long journeys are subject, have found themselves. What are we -to think of a country that has made, in the eighteenth century, no -better provision for its travellers?" In this our author was clearly a -faultfinder, or at least he was unfortunate in not living at a later -day, for the above is certainly not true of the inns of France to-day, -though it may truthfully be said that, even to-day, the inns of Brittany -are a _little_ backward, but it is not true of the Htel de France at -Guingamp, which has even a dark room for the kodaker, and a _foss_ for -the motor-car traveller. - - - - -CHAPTER VII. - -THE FISHERIES - - -What the cider-apple crop is to Normandy, that the fisheries are to -Brittany, and more, for the fisheries turn over more money by far than -the cider of Normandy, which is grown purely for home consumption. The -Breton young person of the male sex takes to the sea in the little -pilchard-boats, the three-masters of the deep-sea fishery, or the -whalers, for the purpose of earning his livelihood, and also to secure a -prescribed term of exemption from military or naval service. With such -an object, it is no wonder that the industry employs so many hands, -and has become so important and considerable in its returns. Of course -the geographical position of the country has more than a little to do -with this, and also the stony soil of the country-side, suggesting the -harvest of the sea as a more ample crop. - -In Brittany, the sea nourishes the land, though perhaps but meagrely. - -[Illustration: <u>_Douarnenez_</u>] - -From the mouth of the Loire, around Finistre to Lannion, thousands upon -thousands of the inhabitants live by the harvest of the sea, whereas, -if it were not for this, they might be forced to emigrate, or to hie -themselves to the large towns, there to herd in unsanitary quarters, -which is worse. - -The pilchard fishery is practically at its best directly off the -Quiberon peninsula, opposite Lorient and Concarneau. It is important -also just offshore from Audierne, Douarnenez, and Camaret. - -It is well to recall just what the sardine really is, inasmuch as we -mostly buy any "little fishes boiled in oil," which a pushful grocer -may thrust upon us. The "corporal's stripe," or the "cavalry corporal," -as the sardine is known in France, is quite a different species from -the "armed policeman," or common sea-garden herring. The Atlantic, the -North Sea, the Baltic, and some parts of the Mediterranean are its -home. It winters between 50 degrees and 60 degrees north latitude, in -a zone where the temperature is constant, but from March to October it -emigrates toward the north. Sometimes the future sardines are known as -pilchards; on the coasts of Normandy and Picardy as _hareng de Bergues_; -as sardines in Brittany; as _royan_ in Charente; and as _sarda_ and -_sardinyola_ in the Pyrnes Orientales. - -The best and most common method of preserving the sardine is by slightly -heating the oil before placing it with the fish in those little tin -boxes known the world over; then the boxes are soldered and put into -a double boiler and boiled for the better part of an hour, when the -exceedingly simple process is finished. So simple is it, and so readily -accomplished without a great capital investment, that the wonder is -that imitations of the "real Brittany sardines" are not more successful -elsewhere. Up to this time, however, nothing rivals the Breton product. - -Each year, at the feast of St. Jean, the barques set out from the -various ports, all richly decorated, and often sped on their way by a -religious ceremony, at which a priest officiates and gives his blessing. - -The profits vary considerably one year from another, as may be supposed. -The catch is by no means constant. Its ordinary receipts approximate -twelve million francs, and, when it drops below this figure, distress -is likely to ensue, particularly if a hard winter falls upon Brittany, -which in truth it seldom does. - -The little fish return each year, their feeding-ground scarcely varying -thirty miles in any direction. Thus, in season, the boats with their -red sails and blue and brown nets put off for the same spots where -they took their catches last year, only to find that the habits of the -sardines have not in the least changed. Five or six men to a boat is -the average crew, and, if the wind be contrary, their speed is much the -same by means of oars. Once arrived on the ground, the skipper of the -boat throws overboard at intervals some handfuls of _rogue_ as a bait; -this is a paste composed of the roe of the cod, and the only drawback is -that its cost is great. It comes mostly from Norway, and, after passing -through many intermediate hands, finally reaches the Breton fisherman, -who pays from sixty to seventy francs per hundred kilos. When the price -rises above this figure, the ingenious skipper fabricates a substitute, -a mixture of the real article and a local vegetable product known as -_farine d'arachides_. Its results are not so good as those from the real -article, and the local fishermen have a saying which is doubtless so -true as to have become a proverb: "One must bait with fish to catch a -fish." Moreover, the fish caught by this means do not rank as a first -quality product in the markets of the Breton fishing ports, owing to -the after-effects on the fish, which shall be undefined here. It may be -well to recall the fact, however, and, if you get a sardine which is not -what you think it ought to be, and is too much like a bad oyster, you -may depend upon it that it was caught with _farine d'arachides_. - -The Breton custom is to fish with buoyed nets, disdaining the drag-net, -though occasionally the latter is used. - -The buoyed nets merely scoop the surface of the water, but the drag-nets -are sunk to a depth of from forty to fifty metres. When the skipper -estimates that the net is full, or, at least, that he shall have a haul -worthy of his trouble, all hands, singing as all sailor-folk do, pull -the net inboard, and, with a clever turn, empty it of its freight of -silver-scaled fish, which are forthwith scooped up and placed in great -baskets. On the return to port, the fishermen still in harbour, the -factory hands, and all the inhabitants who are not otherwise employed, -even though they ought to be, to say nothing of curious peasant-folk -from the inland towns, and always a generous sprinkling of tourists, and -the inevitable American artist, are in waiting, curious as to the luck. - -Here the dealers come and bargain for the catch. Thirty to thirty-five -francs a thousand is usually the market price, and the choicest fish -naturally sell first. Speculation comes in now and then, and a scare -as to the prospect of the catch being too abundant is as common and as -disastrous as the fear that it may not be large enough. Sometimes the -price will fall as low as a franc and a half, and then come "trials -without number for the sailors," as an old fisherman told the writer. -Certainly, if thirty francs a thousand be only a paying wage, a franc -and a half must mean about the same as utter failure to the crew, who -generally work the boat on shares. - -The pilchard fishers have not forgotten the crisis of 1903, to combat -the recurrence of which it was proposed to establish special schools -for fishermen apprentices, and to forbid the use of the drag-net, and -they are seeking a rearrangement of conditions whereby the returns -may be more equally distributed among the workers than now. At the -present time the owner--who fits out the boat--claims a third, and the -skipper a third, the hands dividing the other third. According to this -arrangement, the novice or apprentice receives an infinitesimal share. - -As a Frenchman, a Breton of Quimper who was not in the sardine business, -said to us: "_Ces pauvres diables! Ils mriteraient mieux._" All of -which is true, so let all well-wishers, who are fond of the "little -fishes boiled in oil" at their picnic dinners, give a thought now and -again to the Breton fisherman. - -Besides the sardine fisheries, there is a considerable traffic from -such ports as Trguier, St. Malo, and Morlaix in the deep-sea fishery, -and elsewhere in the mackerel and herring fishery in Icelandic waters -and the North Sea, and these give a prosperity that would otherwise be -wanting. - -Statistics are dry reading, and so they are not given here, but there -are some curious things with regard to the laws regulating the offshore -and deep-sea fisheries of France, just as there are with respect to -the line fishing, by which method one can legally take fish only if he -actually hold his rod or line in his hand: he may not lay it on the -ground beside him and doze until an unusually frisky gudgeon wakes him -up. - -On all of the French fishing-craft, which sail to the Banks or -to Iceland for cod, French salt must be used, and all masters of -fishing-craft must keep a supplementary log or diary relating to the -takings of fish alone. - -In deep-sea fishing the law prescribes that a vessel which is fitted -out for the fishing-banks must remain on the ground a certain length of -time. This is to preclude the possibility of a decreasing catch, it is -to be presumed, as many a fisherman has been known, before now, to give -up the labour with holds half-filled simply because he had come upon a -meagre feeding-ground. It seems a wise precaution, and is another of -those parental acts which the French government is always undertaking -on behalf of its children. There is still the whalebone catch to reckon -with, for the French government specializes this industry, and offers -a bonus of seventy francs a ton displacement on leaving port for all -French equipments, and fifty francs per ton displacement upon returning -after the term prescribed. - - - - -PART II. - - - - -CHAPTER I. - -THE LOIRE IN BRITTANY - - -At Ancenis, the Loire, that mighty river which rises near the frontier -of Garde, a Mediterranean department, enters Brittany on its way to the -Atlantic. For more than nine hundred kilometres above this point, the -Loire has been navigable for such fresh-water craft as usually are found -upon great waterways, and, having passed Orleans, Blois, and Tours, and -broadened out into a great, wide, shallow stream, it is to be reckoned -as one of the world's great rivers. Mostly its appearance is that of a -broad, tranquil, docile stream, with scarce enough depth of water to -make a respectable current, leaving its bed with its bars of sand and -pebbles bare to the sky. This lack of depth, except at occasional flood, -is the principal and obvious reason for the comparative absence of -water-borne traffic. - -At the times of the great freshets there are twenty-three feet or more -registered on the huge black and white scale of the bridge at Ancenis, -and again it falls to less than a fourth of that height, and then there -is a mere rivulet of water trickling through the broad channel at -Chaumont, at Blois, or at Orleans. - -In the olden time, as one passed from Anjou into Brittany, by way of -the valley of the Loire, he came to a great barrier across the road,--a -veritable frontier post, with a custom-house and examiners, as if -one were passing into a foreign country. The Revolution changed all -this, and now nothing but another of that vast family of great, white -departmental boundary-posts marks the dividing line between the Maine et -Loire and the Loire-Infrieure, the border departments between the old -province of the Counts of Anjou and that of the Breton dukes. - -Just above Ancenis, one passes vineyard after vineyard, and chteau -after chteau follows rapidly in turn,--all very delightful, as Pepys -would have said. Not so the bridge at Ancenis, quite the ugliest -wire-rope affair to be seen on the Loire, and one is only too glad to -leave it behind, though it is with a real regret that he parts from -Ancenis itself. - -Ancenis is one of those blessed spots possessing a chteau; it is -endowed with a wonderfully picturesque situation, and, moreover, is -capable of catering for the inner man in so satisfactory a manner that -one can but put it down in his books as one of the spots to be favoured. -The Barons of Ancenis were a long and picturesque line, and their local -fame has by no means perished. The old-time chteau, constructed in the -fifteenth century, was the masterwork of a famous Angevin architect, -Jean Lespine by name. To-day this fine building, or what is left of it, -has become an Ursuline boarding-house. Much is still left to tell the -story of its former greatness, but it is not so accessible as one would -like. - -The most that can be remarked is a great doorway flanked by two towers, -with overpowering machicolations, another smaller tower,--a _tourelle_, -the French themselves would call it,--and a ruined pavilion, where, in -1468, Francis, Duke of Brittany, signed a treaty with Louis XI. On the -market-house of Ancenis is superimposed a sort of a belfry which, seen -in conjunction with the low-lying river-bank, imparts a low-country -aspect to the town. The old streets of Ancenis give shelter to many fine -medival houses, of which the most notable is perhaps the old "house of -the Croix de Lorraine." - -Below Ancenis, navigation is not so difficult, but the river current -is more strong. For a long distance, on the right bank, extends a -dike, carrying the roadway beside the river for a matter of a hundred -kilometres. This is one of the charms of travel by the Loire. When you -see any animation on its bosom, save an occasional fishing-punt, neither -it nor its occupant usually very animated, it is one of those great -flat-bottomed ferry-boats, with a square sail hung on a yard amidships, -such as Turner always made an accompaniment to his Loire landscapes. - -Conditions of traffic thereon have not changed much since those days. -Whenever one sees a barge or a boat worthy of classification with those -on the rivers of the east or north, or of the canals, it is only about -a quarter of the usual size, so, altogether, in spite of its great -navigable length, the waterway of the Loire is more valuable as a -picturesque and healthful element of the landscape than as a commercial -artery. Below Nantes is the "section maritime," which from Nantes to the -sea is a matter of some sixty kilometres. Here the boats increase in -number and size. They are known as lighters, barges, and tenders, and go -down with the river current and return on the incoming ebb, for here the -river is tidal. - -From this one gathers that the Loire, so noble and magnificent, is the -most aristocratic river of France, and so, too, it is with respect to -its associations of the past. - -It has not the grandeur of the Rhne when the spring freshets from the -Jura and the Swiss lakes have filled it to its banks; and it has not the -burning activity of the Seine, as it bears its thousands of boat-loads -of produce and merchandise to and from market; it has not the prettiness -of the Thames, or the legendary aspect of the Rhine; but, in a way, it -combines something of the features of all, and has, in addition, a tone -that is all its own, as it sweeps the horizon through its countless -miles of ample curves, and holds within its embrace all that is best -of medival and Renascence France, the period which built up the later -monarchy and--who shall say not?--the present prosperous nation. - -The Loire is essentially a river of other days. Truly, as Mr. James has -said, "it is the very model of a generous, beneficent stream.... A wide -river which you may follow by a wide road is excellent company." The -Frenchman himself is more flowery. "It is the noblest river of France. -Its basin is immense, magnificent." All of which is true, too. For a -good bit of local colour of this region, one should read Chapter V. of -"The Regent's Daughter," by Dumas, wherein the willing Gaston, in the -midday sunshine of a winter's day, made his way from Nantes to Paris, -"travelling slowly as far as Oudon opposite Champtoceaux." "At Oudon he -halted and put up at the Char-Couronne, an inn with windows overlooking -the highroad." Some stirring events took place here, but the reader is -referred to the pages of Dumas for the details. - -Oudon, however, will not detain the cursory traveller of to-day, even if -he deigns to visit it at all. - -Champtoceaux, on the other hand, though only a small town of thirteen -hundred inhabitants, does awaken interest. Formerly it belonged to the -Counts of Anjou, and then to the Dukes of Brittany. - -Its site is most picturesque; it stands on a mound some two hundred -feet above the Loire. There are two fine medival churches, and an old -chteau, which, with the ruins of the ancient fortified castle, now -forms a part of the domain of a M. de la Touche, who will kindly permit -the visitor to inspect the details of this ancient feudal stronghold. - -The dismantled old walls are covered with moss and lichens, and -their picturesqueness is of that quality that painters love to put -on canvas. The wonder is that Champtoceaux has not become a new -artists' sketching-ground, such as are so often discovered--or -rediscovered--throughout France. Perhaps it is because of its distance -from Paris, for your artist-painter, be he French, English, or American, -dearly loves the streets of the Latin Quarter, and, as a rule, prefers -Fontainebleau and its circle of artist colonies to going farther afield. - -At last one beholds what a Frenchman has called the "tumultuous vision -of Nantes." To-day the very ancient and historic city which grew up -from the Portus Nannetum and the Condivientum of the Romans is indeed a -veritable tumult of chimneys, masts and smokestacks, and locomotives. -But all this will not detract one jot from its reputation of being -one of the most delightful of provincial capitals, and the smoke and -activity of its port only tend to accentuate the note of colour, which -in the whole itinerary of the Loire has been but pale. - -The former reputation of Nantes as a little capital where gaiety and -wealth came in abundance is correct for to-day, but a comparison is -interesting. Here is a reminiscence of old stage-coaching days, when -the post took four days to make the journey from Paris: - -"The neighbourhood of the theatre is magnificent, all the streets being -at right angles and of white stone. One is in doubt as to whether -the Htel Henri IV. is not the finest inn in Europe." (It must have -disappeared since those days, but really its reputation still lives in -any one of the three leading hotels.) "Dessein's" (also disappeared) "at -Calais is larger, but is not built, fitted up, or furnished like this, -which is new. It cost nearly five hundred thousand francs, and contains -sixty bedrooms. It is without comparison the first inn of France, and -very cheap withal. - -"The theatre must have cost a like sum, and, when its seats are full, -holds 120 louis d'or. The ground that the inn is built upon cost nine -francs a foot, and elsewhere in the city one may pay as much as fifteen -francs. This ground value induces them to build so high as to be -destructive of beauty." Unquestionably this last observation was quite -true then, as it is now, but Nantes nevertheless fills very nearly every -qualification of a well-laid-out and attractive city. - -To some Nantes will be reminiscent of Venice, or at least some Dutch -city, for its five river branches are continually crossing and -recrossing one's path in most bewildering fashion, and bridges confront -one at every turn. - -The city's attractions are many, from its great cathedral and its -chteau-fortress, enclosing a beautiful edifice wherein once lived the -Duchess Anne, to its great hotels, cafs, and shops of modern times. - -Five great events of history stand forth prominent in the memory of the -very name of Nantes: the struggle of John of Montfort against Charles -of Blois for the ducal power; the affairs of the League; the famous -Edict; the Cellamare conspiracy; and the rising of the Vendeans and the -rascally Carrier's retaliation in Revolutionary days. - -Each and every one of these were vivid and bloody enough to furnish -inexhaustible material for a novelist of the Dumas school, should he -rise in the future, for the half has not yet been used. It was in -the Place of Bouffay that that execution of the Breton conspirators -took place, of which we read in the graphic pages of Dumas. Gaston, -who sought to deliver his former companions, was posting along the -road to Nantes with their reprieve safely guarded. Before the age of -steam and electricity, news travelled slowly, and Svres, Versailles, -Rambouillet, Chartres, Mans, and Angers were then far apart. But the -faithful Gaston travelled fast, one of the bystanders at Rambouillet -calling to him: "If you go at that pace, you will kill more than one -team between here and Nantes." - -Gradually he learned that a "courier of the minister's" had passed -that way. This was the beginning of what Dumas called the "tragedy -of Nantes." The event was historical, and Dumas's account was most -dramatic, yet did not differ greatly from the facts. Gaston arrived too -late. Talhouet was dead, and the Place of Bouffay reeked with the blood -of the conspirators, who, guilty though they were, had received the -pardon of the Regent. The cry of De Conedic, as he bent his head to the -block, still echoes down through history: "See how they recompense the -services of faithful soldiers! Ye cowards of Bretagne," he cried, as -the sword of the executioner fell upon him. Ten minutes afterward the -square was empty. One of the corpses still held a crumpled paper in his -hand,--it was the pardon of the other four, for the bearer had arrived -too late. Thus finished "the tragedy of Nantes." - -Though this part of Brittany has the reputation of being the least -illiterate of any, as late as the beginning of the last quarter of -the nineteenth century might be seen at Nantes the sign of the public -scrivener, which read: - - CRIVAIN PUBLIQUE - _10 centimes par lettre_ - -Below Nantes the Loire basin has turned the surrounding country into a -little Holland, where fisherfolk and their boats, with sails of red and -blue, form charming symphonies of dull colour. In the drinking-places -along its shores there is a strange medley of peasants, seafarers, -and fisher men and women. Not so cosmopolitan a crew as one sees in -the harbour-side drinking-places at Marseilles, or even at Havre, but -sufficiently strange to be a fascination to one who has just come down -from the headwaters. - -Gray and green is the aspect at the Loire's source, and green and gray -it still is, though of a decidedly different colour value, at St. -Nazaire, below Nantes, the real deep-water port of the Loire. By this -time the river has amplified itself into a broad estuary, and is lost in -the incoming and outgoing tides of the Bay of Biscay. From its source -the Loire has wound its way gently, broadly, and with placid grandeur -through rocky escarpments, fertile plains, populous and luxurious -towns, all historic ground, by stately chteaux and through vineyards -and fruit-orchards. Now it becomes more or less prosaic and matter of -fact, though, in a way, no less interesting, as it takes on some of the -attributes of the outside world. - -Here one gives the last glance to the Loire, as an inland waterway, -for, by the time Nantes is passed, it is of the sea salty. Here the -Svre Nantaise comes from the Department Deux-Svres and numerous other -streams broaden the lower river until it meets the bay at St. Nazaire, -where coasters and deep-sea fishermen take the place of boat-haulers and -vineyard-workers as picturesque accessories to the landscape. - -Jacobites and their sympathizers will take pleasure in noting that it -was in the early days of St. Nazaire's importance as a port that the -Young Pretender set sail thence in 1745, in a frigate provided by a Mr. -Walsh of Nantes. - -It is only now that one realizes to the full the gamut through which -run the varying moods of the Loire, from the hard, sterile lands around -Le Puy through the pleasant Nivernais, the Orleanais, the vineyards of -Saumur, to the Sardinires and the salt works of the marshes of Bourg -de Batz and Croisic. - -It was from Croisic that Talhouet, one of the Breton conspirators of -"The Regent's Daughter," threatened to set sail if discovered in their -dastardly plot against the Regent. - -"I shall be off to St. Nazaire," said he, "and from thence to Croisic; -take my advice and come with me. I know a brig about to start for -Newfoundland, and the captain is a servant of mine. If the air on shore -become too bad, we will embark, set sail, and adieu to the galleys." -"Well, I for one," said his companion, "am a Breton, and Bretons trust -only in God." - -South of the Loire, in that small fragment of territory which formerly -belonged to the old province, is a wonderful collection of old-time and -gone-to-seed towns hardly ever visited by the general run of tourists. - -Paimboeuf and Pornic and Clisson are the three places which appeal -most strongly, and this chiefly by their accessibility to Nantes. To -the southwest is the Lake of Grand Lieu, which, according to an ancient -Armorican legend, was the former site of a city "flourishing, but -dissolute," which was submerged for its sins by the command of God. -This sounds apocryphal, but the moral is plain. - -Anciently the Retz country, lying just southward of the Loire, formed a -part of the ancient Breton province, and, although before the Revolution -and the rearrangement of provinces and departments anew this member had -been shorn away, yet Paimboeuf, on the south bank of the Loire, just -beyond Nantes, is of Breton nomenclature, known in French as Tte de -Boeuf. To-day it is but a relic of a former great port, now deserted; -St. Nazaire, its younger relative, with much more ample commercial -resources, has drawn its trade away, and its quays and docks are now -unoccupied, except by coasters and fishing-boats. - -Paimboeuf has already become depopulated, and the former little -fishing port of Pornic daily takes on more and more importance. - -Pornic itself has a charm which Paimboeuf entirely lacks. It is a -lively little fishing village of perhaps two thousand inhabitants. The -port, the bay, and the canal which empties into the salt waters of the -Atlantic form a delightful setting for artists' foregrounds, let the -backgrounds be what they may. At present, it has taken on somewhat of -the aspect of a watering-place, but it is safe to say that it will -never become popular as such, in spite of the fact that a casino has -already made its appearance. - -[Illustration: <u>_Pornic_</u>] - -In addition to the charm of its situation, the chief attraction of -Pornic is its thirteenth and fourteenth century chteau, with its fine -towers and machicolations. Its history, like that of most others of its -kind, has been romantic, and by no means has it always had the placid -aspect which it has to-day. It was taken from Gilles de Retz by the -Dukes of Brittany during the civil wars, and to-day belongs to a M. de -Bourquency, who has restored it admirably. - -At the foot of the chteau is a great cross of stone, called the Croix -of the Huguenots, erected, it is said, by converted Calvinists. At the -foot of this cross are buried the bones of over two hundred Vendeans -killed at Pornic. - -Clisson is a small town of something less than three thousand -inhabitants, whose very name will conjure up memories of the great -Constable Olivier de Clisson. There is much here of interest, but the -history of the town, the chteau, and of De Clisson himself are so -interwoven with the affairs of state and warfare of the nation that the -outline even may not be given here. The ruins of the old-time chteau -are a wonderfully impressive reminder of other days, other ways. As a -whole, it is a grand ruin only, although an architect or archaeologist -may build up somewhat of an approach to the former glorious fabric. The -great central tower has not even preserved its walls entire, but what -is left stands to-day as one of the most imposing examples of a great -feudal keep yet extant. Clisson has some right to be considered up to -date, in that some enterprising inhabitant has introduced an electric -light plant. In spite of this, however, the donjon is one of those -architectural splendours of the world which, like the Coliseum at Rome -and Melrose Abbey, should be seen by moonlight in order to be rightly -appreciated. - -[Illustration: <u>_Donjon of Clisson_</u>] - -The chapel, in which was celebrated the marriage of Duke Francis II. -and Margaret of Foix, the keep, the dungeons, the ramparts, and the -chief apartments occupied by the constable himself have been preserved, -and make Clisson well worth the half-day it will take to go there from -Nantes. - - - - -CHAPTER II. - -NANTES TO VANNES - - -Next to Marseilles, Nantes is the finest provincial capital of France. -This may be disputed, but it is the opinion of the writer. - -Perhaps it is because of the glorious part that the city played in the -past to preserve its independence, and the independence of Brittany, -succumbing only with the second marriage of Queen Anne; but, for some -reason, the links that bind it with the past have never grown rusty, nor -have modern cosmopolitan characteristics destroyed the individuality of -the Breton. - -The situation doubtless has much to do with the air of geniality which -pervades the city. When the Loire glistens under the caressing rays of -the setting sun, and the roof-tops of the town are all of a reddened -gold, Nantes might indeed be even now the medival capital that it was -before the age of steam and electricity, which sound the only modern -notes to be heard here. At night the spectacle is far more dramatic, -with the streets and quays lit by countless lamps; the subdued murmur -of the workaday world, now all but gone to rest; for an occasional -shriek from a locomotive or a wail from the siren of some great steamer -dropping down-river with the tide is all that one hears. - -There is a forest of masts of shipping, scores upon scores of great -chimney-stacks, of ship-houses, of sugar and oil refineries, and along -the quay-side streets there are yet sailors and longshoremen hanging -about and smoking a finishing pipe, or drinking a last drop of spirit -or glass of beer. But all is "drawing in," and soon all will be hushed -in silence, and only the walls and towers of the great castle and the -cathedral will keep watch, as they have for five centuries past. This -is Nantes, the great trading port. Up in the town blaze forth the great -hotels that would do credit to Paris, and yet are so different, and -coffee-rooms as splendid and brilliant as any in the capital itself, -with the prices of the portions twenty per cent. less. - -They keep late hours in this part of Nantes, and night does not -actually fall until midnight, when, one by one, up go the coffee-room -shutters,--to come down again in the same order between six and seven -in the morning. This is not bad for a climate which on the Loire -approaches almost Mediterranean mildness. It is a pity that cold and -austere England does not rise a little earlier in the morning. London, -it is true, sits up late enough, but she makes up for it by dawdling -away all the morning up to half-past ten or eleven. - -In spite of all its loveliness and gaiety, Nantes is a city more ancient -than modern,--this antique Namntes, the capital, by preference, of the -Dukes of Brittany, and the political rival of Rennes. - -The old lanes and crossways of the middle ages have disappeared in -making the spacious great streets of our own time, but there is much -left to remind one of other days in the old houses and in the ever -dominant cathedral and castle. - -The Cathedral of St. Pierre is not a masterpiece of itself, but it -encloses a treasure that may well be included in that category,--the -tomb of Duke Francis II. and Margaret of Foix. The great harmony of -this composition, under the half-light of the stained-glass windows, -reveals a charm that most mausoleums altogether lack. On a tablet of -white marble lie the effigies of the duke and duchess, with two angels -kneeling at their heads, and, crouched at their feet, a greyhound, -supporting the escutcheon of Brittany. Four statues, at the corners of -the pedestal, symbolize Justice, Strength, Temperance, and Prudence. -This magnificent tomb is justly counted as Michel Colombe's finest work. - -The castle of Nantes, like that of Angers, is now an arsenal, and -accordingly is less interesting than if it were even a shattered -ruin. It was the castle of the dukes, and the great lodge, a dainty -Renaissance building, with delicately sculptured window-frames and -balconies capriciously disposed, gives an idea of the comfort and luxury -with which pervasive Duchess Anne surrounded herself in the vivid days -when she lived at Nantes. Within the walls of the castle, one might yet -see--were one allowed to ramble over it at will--the chambers where the -odious Gilles of Laval, the Marchal de Raiz, Fouquet, the Cardinal de -Retz, and the Duchess de Berri were imprisoned during the long years -that it served as a cage for the political prisoners of France. Madame -de Svign sojourned here in 1675, so the sombre and yet gay castle, -besides having entertained many of the Kings of France, from Louis XI. -onward, has also somewhat of the aspect of a literary shrine. - -In the courtyard is a great well with an admirably worked decorative -railing in wrought iron, quite worthy to rank with Quintin Matsys's -famous well at Antwerp. The museums of painting and of archaeology, -abounding in rare Breton antiquities, give the town prominence among the -artistic centres of provincial France. The former contains some fine -examples of the work of Philippe de Champaigne, Lancret, Watteau, and -Thodore Rousseau among others. - -The environs of Nantes are wonderfully picturesque for the artist, but -offer little for the amusement of the 125,000 inhabitants of this city -of affairs. - -To the north, the Erdre winds its way through flat banks, and widens out -here and there into a veritable lake. - -From Nantes to the ocean the wind blows more strongly and the horizon -widens; the great waterway of the Loire has already become practically -an arm of the sea, and one breathes its salt air. The aspect of nature -now grows more and more melancholy for the seeker after gaiety and life; -only the artist will revel in these dull brown and gray riverside and -seaside towns, which follow the coast-line from St. Nazaire to Batz, -Croisic, and Gurande. It is what the French themselves call a land of -grayish twilight, with vast stretches of marsh-land and pebble-strewn -sands. - -At the extremity of the north bank of the Loire, at the apex of a bend -of the coast-line, is the Bay of Croisic and the Batz country. - -Like a needle pricking the horizon, the tip of the tower of Croisic -marks the location of this sleepy little port in the flat and saline -marsh-land round about. South lie the lighthouse and the tower of the -ruined church of Bourg de Batz, that little Breton village all but -isolated from the mainland itself. - -It is the true borderland or frontier between the sea and the land, the -one almost imperceptibly mingling with the other. Of it Jean Richepin -sang: - - "Mirage! Sahara! les Bdouins! Un mir - Est venu planter l ses innombrables tentes - Dont les cnes dresss en blancheurs clatantes - Resplendissent parmi les tons bariols - De tapis d'Orient sur le sol tals; - Ses cnes dont les tas de sel sur les ladures, - Et ses riches tapis aux brillantes bordures - Ne sont que les Gabiers, les Fares, les OEillets. - On l'vaporement laisse de gros feuillets - Mtalliques, moirs flottant d'or et de soir. - Par l'tier et le tour qu'un paludier fossoil - La mer entre, s'pand, s'parpille en circuits, - Puis arrive aux bassins...." - -"The sea sells cheap" say the natives, who are mostly engaged in the -salt industry, as one would infer from the foregoing. Competition -has cut considerably into the industry of recovering salt from the -sea-water, but it is still kept up, and these little Breton coast -villages depend upon it, and on fishing, for their sustenance. - -St. Nazaire, where the sea first meets the waters of the Loire, is -quite new, created but yesterday by the march of progress. Tradition -connects the site of this busy port--the seventh in rank among the ports -of France--with the ancient Gallo-Roman port of Corbilon. No trace of -its former appellation exists since the sixth century, when Gregory of -Tours, in the first history of France, mentions the settlement as having -been pillaged by a Breton chief, and refers to it as Vic-Saint-Nazaire, -which nearly approaches its present name. - -In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the market-town was called -Port Nazaire, and was defended by a castle erected by the Dukes of -Brittany. - -[Illustration: <u>_St. Nazaire_</u>] - -Modern navigation has replaced the old sailing-vessels, and to-day, with -its coastwise and foreign trade and its great shipyards, St. Nazaire -is a busy, bustling town. The blemish it has, in the eyes of most, will -be its general aspect of modernity and its uncompromising, right-angled, -straight streets, laid out on a plan which suggests that of Chicago, -if one make an allowance for the difference in magnitude. St. Nazaire -surpasses Chicago, however, in having a sea front, instead of a lake -front, and its hotels are better and cost less. What more should a -passing traveller want of a modern city? - -Between Nantes and St. Nazaire, on the granite flank of Sillon de -Bretagne, sits Savenay, as if its houses were ranged around the steps -of an amphitheatre. It has fallen considerably from its proud position -of having been the flourishing capital of the district. It still is the -largest town, but none of the honours go with its size; decay has fallen -upon it, and the hotels are dull, sad places, and even the omnibus from -the railway has stopped its journeys. - -The town was the site of a terrific conflict in the Vendean wars, -and was well-nigh destroyed, and its inhabitants were massacred. Now -vineyards grow upon the very soil that a hundred or more years ago -covered thousands of corpses. Altogether it is a gruesome memory which -Savenay conjures up, if one dare even to think of it. - -Between Savenay and Gurande, at an equal distance between the two, -are the peat-bogs of Grand Brire. They are the great resources of the -country. Would you see them worked? Then come in August, when you are -making your way to some seacoast resort of Lower Brittany. For nine -days only in the year do the authorities permit the sods to be cut, but -everybody takes part therein, you will be told; and enough peat will be -gathered, and dried, and pressed into "loaves," as the Brirons call -them, to warm Nantes for a year. - -Gurande is a capital not quite so dead and alive as Savenay; it is -the possessor of a past of a most momentous and vivid character in -its relation to the history of Brittany and of France. To-day, as in -other days, the town is avowedly Breton, as characteristically so as -any of its size in the province. Much has been sacrificed to the god -of progress, but enough of the ancient aspect of the place remains to -recall its features of the time of Duguesclin and Clisson, and the -Counts of Montfort and of Blois, who proclaimed peace here in 1365. The -enormous Saint Michael Gate is a great fortress-gateway, flanked with -two cylindrical and conical roofed towers of the time when feudalism -ruled Brittany. - -[Illustration: <u>_Ancient Fortifications of Gurande_</u>] - -"Gurande," says a Frenchman, "has not unlaced its corselet of stone -since the fifteenth century." To-day, even, it is surrounded by its -medival ramparts in a manner like no other northern city in France, -reminding one of those great walled cities of Aigues Mortes and -Carcassonne in Southern Gaul. - -This proud belt of machicolated ramparts, ten towers, and four great -gates, and its deep, though now herbage-grown, moat is indeed one of -the few monuments of the middle ages that remain to us in all their -undisturbed splendour. - -Gurande is not exactly a deserted village, but its streets are, at -midday, as lone and silent as though its population had not been in -residence for many months. This is a notable feature in many small -French towns during the hour and a half of the midday meal, but nowhere -else is it more to be remarked. - -The old parish Church of St. Aubin of Gurande has a collection of -strangely carved capitals depicting horrible chimerical beasts, and -the Chapel of Notre Dame de la Blanche--a fine work of the thirteenth -century--is occasionally the scene of a marriage wherein the -participants dress themselves in the old-time resplendent costumes. Such -an occasion is rare, but should one be fortunate enough to meet with it, -he will carry away still another memory of the medival flavour still -lingering about this somnolent little Breton city. - -Seaward beyond Gurande are only Bourg de Batz and Croisic, a gay -little maritime city with a fine Gothic church of the highly ornamented -species, and many old, high-gabled houses of the variety which one sees -frequently in stage settings. There are the local watering-places, -too, of the Nantais, Ste. Marguerite and Baule, which have nothing of -interest, however, for the traveller who seeks to improve his mind and -amuse himself simultaneously. They are undoubtedly of great healthful -and economic value to Nantes and St. Nazaire, however, and they do not -differ greatly from others of their class elsewhere. - -Again returning to the highroad, if one be travelling by road, "_Vous -prenez le chemin de Vennes" (Vannes) "par la Roche Bernard qui est aussy -celuy de Rhennes et de Rhedon_," wrote a sixteenth-century chronicler, -and the direct road to-day lies the same way. It is known as "National -Road" No. 165. - -Straight as the crow flies, but now up and now down, like all Breton -roadways, this highway runs from Nantes to Quimper, 232 kilometres. - -The aspect of the country changes perceptibly as one leaves Savenay on -the way to the real Brittany. One crosses the Vilaine by the suspension -bridge of La Roche-Bernard, hung so perilously high that the great -three-masted coasters may pass beneath. It is unlovely, but convenient, -and saves a round of fifty kilometres on the journey, as one goes from -Nantes to Vannes, so it may be pardoned. - -[Illustration: <u>_Chteaubriant_</u>] - -Northward lies the very ancient town of Chteaubriant, once the centre -and life of Breton warfare and political strife. It was an ancient -barony of the county of Nantes, and owes its name to the compounding -of the word chteau with that of its original lord, who was named Brient. - -The ancient feudal fortress is now a ruin, but the castle built by -John of Laval, governor of Brittany under Francis I., still serves -the gendarmerie and the sous-prfecture offices. Above the portal of -the colonnade one reads this inscription, which gives the date of the -completion of the new castle: - - DE MAL EN BIEN, DE BIEN MYCVLX - POUR LACHEVER IE DEVINS VIEVLX - 1538 - -Each is most interesting, and so abundantly supplied with the lore of -romance and reality, that one can only get his fill of studying it on -the spot. - -The Church of St. Jean de Br is a historical monument of almost the -first rank, and the remains of the ancient Benedictine convent of St. -Saveur date originally from a foundation of Brient I. - -On the thirteenth and fourteenth of September of each year, on the plain -behind the town, is held the celebrated fair of Br, one of those -great combinations of marketing and merrymaking for which old France -was noted, and which have so largely disappeared that to be a part and -parcel of one is to have a most agreeable experience. Guibray, near -Falaise, in Normandy, the "horse-fair" at Bernay, and the Fair de Br -are the most celebrated in these parts. - -It was in the neighbouring forest, as Pontcalec recites in the pages of -"The Regent's Daughter" of Dumas, that he met his adventure with the -"sorceress of Savenay." - -"I saw an enormous faggot walking along," said Pontcalec to his three -Breton friends. "This did not surprise me, for our peasants carry such -enormous faggots that they quite disappear under their load, but this -faggot appeared from behind to move alone." - -A very good description this of what one may see even to-day, not only -in this particular forest, but in any other in France. French frugality -burns small sticks and twigs that in other lands would be made into -a brushwood fire, and who shall not say that this trait, along with -many others, does not contribute to the contentment of the French -peasant? for he is content, if not amply endowed with this world's -goods; marvellously so as compared with his English, Irish, or Italian -brethren. There may be other reasons, but his thrift is the principal -one. - -Any one seeking change and rest will certainly find what he is looking -for at Chteaubriant. It is somnolently dull all through the week and -doubly so on Sundays, but, in spite of all this, it is delightful, and -a romantic novelist--or even a writer of romantic novels--could hardly -find a more inspiring background than the country round about. - -There is a legend, too, in connection with the old chteau that might be -worked up into a first-class romance, either for the stage or as a sword -and cloak novel. After all, it is not exactly legend either, though it -is almost too horrible to appear true. The reader may judge for himself, -for here it is: - -In the old chteau lived for a time that unfortunate Frances de Foix -whom Francis I. had created Countess de Chteaubriant. To-day much of -the luxury with which this mistress of the royal lover had surrounded -herself has disappeared, though enough remains, through restoration -and preservation, to suggest the very splendid appointments of a -former time. The young Frances de Foix, herself of the house that once -possessed the crown of Navarre, married the old Count of Laval, who -soon brooded himself into a passion of jealousy over the affair of -his wife and her princely lover, particularly as it was said that she -had gone to visit Francis while he was in prison after his capture at -Pavia. "The countess found the king's prison very dismal," said the -chroniclers of the time. This last act proved too much for the elderly -spouse, who speedily "shut up his young wife in a darkened and padded -cell, and finally had her cut into pieces by two surgeons," as the story -goes. After this horrible event the murderer fled the country, as might -have been expected, in order, say the chroniclers again, "to escape the -vengeance of the king." - -Redon, just to the north, is an unattractive place. Most folk know it -only as the railway official calls out: "Forty-five minutes' stop for -luncheon, refreshments, and all the rest." - -Very amusing are these railway lunch-rooms seen throughout France. But -withal they are most excellently appointed, although the passengers, -like their kind the world over, eat as though they had not a minute -to lose, and have a good fifteen left on their hands when they have -finished their repast. - -The meals are usually divided into three categories: the public table at -a set price, the table for the aristocracy at three francs, the table -with set portions, the frugal repast at half as much, and the service -"to order," which is the most costly of all. - -[Illustration] - -Nothing is of an inferior quality, however, and, as all is served -from the same kitchen, it is merely a question as to whether one will -have more or less, or whether he will eat it off linen napery, with -a napkin to tuck under his right ear,--as is the French commercial -traveller's custom,--or whether he will be satisfied with an oilcloth -table-covering. The difference is more apparent than real, for the -"frugal repast" at a franc and a half is the three franc meal shorn of -its trimmings; you get the same dishes and the same service. - -As if to ease the process, a stentorian railway hand puts his head in -the door and shouts: "Ten minutes before the Vannes express starts!" -and returns again at the end of the allotted time to give a final call: -"Into the carriages, gentlemen!" It is much the same the world over, of -course, but they are more polite in France, and the food is better of -its kind, and much better served, two very appreciable differences. - -Redon itself and its great open square, on which are the railway -station, the hotels, and the gaunt, lone, dismembered tower of the -Church of St. Sauveur, is by no means attractive. The square is bare of -trees, and in the summer the sun beats down upon the frequenters of the -terrace coffee-rooms of the hotels in a manner which makes one wonder -why they do not move off and seek a shady spot elsewhere. - -The indifference shown by the natives of certain localities for the -pelting sunlight, which makes some of us think of cabbage leaves for -our hats and "gin rickeys" for our stomachs, is curious. The Neapolitan -prefers to loll about in the blazing Italian sun, and says that no one -but an Englishman or a dog ever seeks the shade. The citizen of Redon is -like him, and does not care who knows it, and his sunlight, though it -comes to earth some hundreds of miles farther north, appears to be of -the same caloric value. - -Redon was an old monastic foundation of St. Convoon's, of the Vannes -church. He built the Abbey of St. Sauveur, of which the present church -and its lone tower are later additions. The main body of the present -edifice dates in part from the time of the foundation, though its fabric -was frequently added to and restored up to the twelfth century, from -which period it may really be said to date. The central tower of this -church is said to be the only Romanesque feature of its class in all -Brittany, and is certainly one of the most sturdy anywhere to be seen. - -Another remarkable feature is a chapel, the walls loopholed and -machicolated, and built by the Abb Yves in the fifteenth century; -to-day it serves as the sacristy. - -The high altar, a rich and imposing affair, was the gift of the great -Richelieu when he was in possession of the revenues of the abbey. The -city was surrounded by a fortification or wall by the Abbot John of -Treal in 1364, and in 1422 John V., Count of Brittany, established a -mint here. - -Questembert, westward toward Vannes, is a town of four thousand or so -inhabitants, and has many interesting old houses, but otherwise is -devoid of attractions either for the lover of architectural monuments or -for worshippers at religious or other shrines. It is, however, the place -for holding many local fairs or markets of considerable magnitude, where -one may make practically his first acquaintance with the Breton peasant, -becoiffed and beribboned as he, or she, only is on native heath. - -Rochefort-en-Terre is also a chief place; as its population numbers -less than seven hundred souls, it cannot be considered as even a -local metropolis. Its situation and its fine, though not stupendously -remarkable, architectural glories make up for what it lacks in the way -of population. It sits high on a hillside dominating the little river -Arz, a confluent of the Vilaine. Its name is due to the founder of -a chteau built here in the thirteenth century and destroyed by the -Catholic Leaguers in 1594, though it was afterwards rebuilt and again -destroyed, this time by Revolutionary firebrands, in 1793. The ruins of -this chteau are to-day very satisfactory indeed as ruins, though they -include few or none of the architectural details with which the work -must once have been endowed. The lower courses of the walls are there, -remains of five towers, and an ancient well, with a curb of sculptured -granite. - -The ancient collegiate Church of Notre Dame de la Tronchaye -is an ecclesiastical monument of high rank, for a town like -Rochefort-en-Terre, and is an altogether lovable old shrine, with -admirable sculptures in stone and some curious wooden statues, in the -interior, said originally to have been those of Claude of Rieux and -Suzanne of Bourbon, Lord and Lady de Rochefort. These statues are now -converted into a St. Joseph and a Virgin. This may or may not have been -a sacrilege; it certainly was a desecration. The ancient city gates -remain, and there are numerous fifteenth and sixteenth century houses. - -The country round about Rochefort-en-Terre was brought into vogue by -the landscape-painter, Pelouze, some years ago, and other artists have -followed in his wake, making an over growing artist colony in the -summer-time. Studies and sketches decorate the dining-room of the Htel -Lecadre in a surprising number; at least surprising to one who comes -upon this unassuming little town and its excellent, before named, little -hotel while journeying to Finistre. - -Still going toward Vannes one passes Elven, near which is the Manoir of -Kerlean, the family estate of _the_ Descartes. The birth certificate of -the Descartes is in the records in the mayor's office. - -Three kilometres to the north are the remains of the ancient fortress -of Largoet, whose tower, known as the Tour d'Elven, dates from the -fifteenth century. This tower has been called the most beautiful castle -keep in all Brittany, and so it is if one take into consideration -its moss-and-ivy-grown walls and its general eerie aspect heightened -perceptibly if seen by moonlight. This high, majestic tower of a feudal -castle, whose other members have practically disappeared, is also a -literary shrine of high rank, inasmuch as Octave Feuillet has placed -here some of the most moving scenes in his "Story of a Poor Young Man." -Perhaps this true romance is not so well known to the present generation -as to a former, but it should be, and accordingly the clue is here -given, and it should have a double significance so far as travellers in -Brittany are concerned. - -[Illustration: <u>_Tour d'Elven_</u>] - -One enters Vannes, if it be a holiday or a Sunday, amid a gaiety and -uproar that is apparently inexplicable. To be sure Vannes is the -metropolis of the Morbihan, but one does not look for such continuous -gaiety on the part of a people supposed to be wholly devout and not very -rich, as possessors of this world's goods count their gains. Devoutness -need not necessarily mean glumness, and so as it all seems, around -Vannes at least, to be for the general good, one is not sorry to have -his first introduction to a great Breton town in a way so pleasant. - -Really it is a sort of small gaiety, and strictly local, which goes on -here. There is nothing of the riotous order, but it is all very gay, -nevertheless. - -The simple folk of the Morbihan, who have crowded into Vannes for the -day, are as interested and amused with a hurdy-gurdy Punch and Judy -show, a travelling circus, or a merry-go-round as if they were the -latest distractions of Paris. Meanwhile one seeks his hotel, and there -comes another surprise. - - - - -CHAPTER III. - -THE MORBIHAN--VANNES AND THE "GOLFE" - - -The "Golfe" or Bay of Morbihan is one of those great landlocked havens -in which the whole Breton coast abounds; its islands are as many as the -days of the year, as the natives have it. - -Morbihan itself is as much sea as land. The tides rise to a great height -along this whole southern coast of Brittany, and in the Bay of Morbihan -they have full play. - -The metropolis of Lower Morbihan is Vannes, which the railway porters -shout out at you, as you descend from the train, as Va-a-a-nnes. - -Leaving the station, one threads his way through whole batteries of -laundresses, their gull-winged head-dress nodding in rhythm with the -beating of their paddles, a most picturesque sight, but a process which -works disaster to one's clothes, destroying pearl buttons, and causing -mysterious small holes to appear in the most inconvenient places. An -accompaniment of song always goes with these shattering and battering -exercises. At Vannes, according to Theodore Botrel, it runs like this: - - "Pan! pan! pan! - Ma Dou! - Comme la langue maudite - Marche bien au vieux lavoit. - Pan! pan! pan! - Vite! vite! - Plus vite que le battoir!" - -It is the day of the local fair, the chief article of commerce being, -it would seem, pigs, as at Limerick. At any rate, there are hundreds, -if not thousands, of little porkers, who have just put foot to earth, -as their venders tell one; their own voices, too, strident and high -pitched, announce the same thing. - -Vannes, truth to tell, is not much of a capital, but it is a highly -interesting and picturesque old town, with manners and customs quite -different from those of any of its neighbours. - -The chief characteristics of the place seem to be pointed roofs of red -and moss-grown tiles and walls of blue granite. One can almost imagine -that Botrel chose it as the scene of the stanza: - - "Qui donc chante sous nos fentres - Ces mystrieuses chansons? - Ce sont les mes des anctres - Qui reconnaissent leurs maisons!" - -[Illustration: <u>_Market-woman, Vannes_</u>] - -There is a blending of the seashore and the open country here which is -scarcely found in any other part of France. In some respects it is like -Holland, and again it is not, for it lacks the web of canals with which -that country is interwoven. - -The whole bay--"Le Golfe"--forms a dooryard for Vannes, and a yacht or a -boat is as much an appendage of the Vannes household of the better class -as a dog or cat. - -[Illustration: <u>_The Country near Vannes_</u>] - -Vannes, the capital of the Morbihan, is a city of 23,000 souls, and has -two great modern, up-to-date hotels. Choose one, and you will "like the -other best," as Rubinstein said to the young pianist, who was to play -two of his compositions to the master. He said this, be it recalled, -after he had heard only the first one. Not that Vannes hotels are really -bad. Oh, no. Truth to tell, they are excellent in their way, but they -are unconvincing. - -When one is here, in the midst of a new, strange set of conditions -of life, he looks for something characteristic about his inn. If he -find it, he is content; if he do not, all the smugness and propriety -of imported manners and customs in the dinner service will not make -him so. The true traveller prefers taking his chances with the native -dishes to trifling with Paris culinary fashions at the hands of a Breton -peasant-chef,--if that is the exact classification one ought to give the -cooks of Vannes. - -To enter Vannes by road, one has come down a precipitous descent to -the sea-level, and accordingly rises again to an equal height when he -leaves, for Vannes is the great tidewater port for the whole of the -south coast of Brittany between Lorient and St. Nazaire. The traffic of -the bays of Morbihan and Quiberon is considerable, and the ceaseless -coming and going of many small steamers and sailing-craft is unlike -traffic elsewhere. - -The great bay is an inland sea almost surrounded by the jutting -peninsulas which terminate on either side of the narrow channel in -Pointe de Kerpenhir and Port Navalo. The name is compounded of two -Breton words, _mor_ (sea) and _bihan_ (little). The flat tree-grown -islands of this little sea make vistas and groups of a unique character, -and to learn the bay well by a voyage among them in a flat-bottomed -skimming-dish of a craft, or by the more facile motor-launch, is a -thoroughly agreeable experience. - -The chief of the islands are the Monks Isle and the Ile d'Arz, but the -enfolding shores of the mainland, with its little seaside-farmyard -villages, have the same characteristics. - -On the little passenger steamers, which ply between the islands and the -mainland, one meets a queer company of peasant-folk in coifs and round -velvet or straw caps, fowls, sheep, goats, and an occasional overgrown -calf. - -Such of the islands of the bay as are populated, and many of them -are, were colonized from the neighbouring country, and the women in -particular are physically admirable. They still wear the distinctive -costume of the country in a spirit uncontaminated by the electric lights -and railways of Vannes. Custom in these isles allows the young women -to demand the hand of a likely swain in marriage, and the plan seems -to work well. The population seems generally happy, prosperous, and -contented. What better is expected as the outcome of marriage? - -The climate of all the Morbihan shore is mild and tranquil at all -seasons of the year, and one may sit beside the open window of his hotel -dining-room throughout the year. The mimosa flowers in winter, and -palms, rose-trees, camellias, and fig-trees prosper exceedingly in the -open air. - -Vannes was the ancient capital of the Veneti, a strong coast tribe of -other days which resisted the invasion of Csar and triumphed against -his fleet a half-century or more before the Christian era. - -When finally the Romans came, they made Vannes the centre of six -great highways which radiated to Corseul, to Angers, to Hennebont, to -Locmariaquer, to Rennes, and to Nantes. From this its importance may be -inferred. - -Christianity came to Vannes in 465, when St. Perpetus, Metropolitan of -Tours, consecrated St. Patern as first bishop. By the sixth century it -had become an independent county, but was joined again to the duchy -of Brittany in 990. John IV. established his habitual residence at -Vannes, and constructed the celebrated Chteau de l'Hermine, with its -constable's tower so famous in the history of Brittany as the place in -which he imprisoned Clisson, releasing him only after the payment of a -heavy ransom. - -The history of Vannes and the Morbihan is too long and stormy to be even -outlined here, but there are still many remains and memories which will -serve as a foundation upon which to build the fabric anew. - -[Illustration: <u>_Ancient City Walls, Vannes_</u>] - -The port is most interesting, with its varied traffic and its great -ships of nearly a thousand tons which thread their way up through the -islands of the gulf, bringing lumber, coals, and all the small cargoes -of a great coasting port. - -At Vannes one may see a huge parti-coloured handkerchief of the -_bandanna_ variety waving before a narrow doorway. It is the "shawl," -the sign of the hair-cutter, who will exchange its fellow for your -hair, if you be a Breton girl with dark brown tresses, or even an -elderly person whose hair is iron-gray. In Lower Brittany, on summer -fair-days, the dealer in hair makes a round exceedingly profitable to -his establishment, though at each stopping-place it leaves a hundred -or more young girls shorn of their crowning glory,--a loss which they -successfully cover with their daintily ironed head-dress. - -The chief of the sights and shrines of the neighbourhood of Vannes are -St. Gildas de Rhuis and the Chteau of Suscino. The former is revered -for its sixth-century monastic foundation of St. Gildas, called the -wise, and for some time in the twelfth century governed by the famous -Abelard. The ancient abbatial church is now the parish church. It dates -from the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries, and is an unusual work in -many respects, and rising to a height of grandeur seldom seen outside -the larger Breton cities and towns. - -[Illustration: <u>_Chteau of Suscino_</u>] - -The castle of Suscino--or more properly the ruin--is a wonderful -thirteenth-century structure on the water's edge, built by John the -Red-haired. It follows the best Gothic traditions of its time, and -its crenelated walls and towers, the latter now unroofed, are perfect -of their kind. It was captured by Charles of Blois, and retaken by his -Montfort rival in 1364. An English garrison occupied it in 1373. Finally -it was given by Anne of Brittany to John of Chalons, Prince of Orange, -from whom it was taken by Francis I., and he presented it to Frances of -Foix, Lady of Chteaubriant, as she then was. The rest of its history is -equally varied, and as important as becomes so magnificent a medival -fortress. - -[Illustration] - -In form the chteau is an irregular pentagon, perhaps modified from -its original plan in 1420. Its orchid machicolations are remarkable -both for their beauty and their utility. Seven towers, of which six -remain, originally flanked its gates and walls. The new tower is a fine -cylindrical keep of the fifteenth century. Over the entrance one still -reads a tablet inscription as follows: - - ICI EST N - LE DUC ARTHUR III. - LE 24 AOT, 1393 - -North of Vannes are Plormel and Josselin, two places which no one -should leave out of the itinerary of Brittany. Neither is easily -accessible by rail, but both are conveniently reached by road. - -Plormel has a railway connection with the line to Brest by way of -Rennes, and another with the line to Brest by way of Vannes, but -Josselin is off the beaten track, and one makes his way from Plormel by -omnibus or in a carriage. - -Plormel and its "pardon" have inspired an opera, one of Meyerbeer's -most celebrated scores, known to English music lovers as "Dinorah," but -in French called "The Pardon of Plormel." The town owes its name to an -anchorite who, in the sixth century, retired here to a hermitage. - -The history of Plormel during the middle ages was stormy. It was here -that the edict expelling the Jews from Brittany was issued in 1240. In -1273 the Comte de Richemont--upon his return from the Crusades--founded -at Plormel the first Carmelite convent known to France. This ancient -convent, situated without the walls, escaped from the disasters which -caused the city to be burned in 1347. The Calvinists came in time to -have a temple here, in which they held two synods of their church. - -To-day Plormel is a sleepy, old-world town, with two good inns, and -not much except the fragmentary reminders of old walls and buildings to -remind one of the parts played in other days. - -The Church of St. Armel, a reconstruction of 1511-1602, is in parts -highly decorated with stone sculptures and strange images, recalling, -says an ingenious, but profane, Frenchman, the "pleasantries of -Rabelais." Of course he refers to the players on the bagpipes, the man -sewing up the mouth of his wife, and the wife tearing off her husband's -cap. Certainly these quaint figures are not born of religious symbolism, -unless, by chance, that the symbolism of the religious builders of -Plormel differs greatly from that of others elsewhere. - -There are still remains of Plormel's old city walls dating from the -fifteenth century, and also a fragment of a tower. - -Near by, on the road to Josselin, is a simple granite shaft perpetuating -the famous "Battle of the Thirty," celebrated in history. - -According to Froissart, Robert of Beaumanoir, chatelain of Josselin, -one day provoked an English captain--Bromborough--who was encamped at -Plormel, and challenged him to battle; thirty of his men against thirty -Frenchmen. At the first attack four Frenchmen and two English fell. -Then the combat began again with swords, battle-axes, and lances. Eight -English only finally remained, including Bromborough himself; all the -others were killed or taken prisoners and led away to the dungeons of -the Chteau de Josselin. - -Froissart writes elsewhere of this same engagement: "Twenty-two years -after the battle of the thirty, I saw at the table of King Charles of -France one of the combatants, a knight called Yvain Charnel. His face -showed that the battle had been hot, for it was scarred all over." - -This wayside column or pyramid just off the route bears the following -inscription: - -[Illustration: <u>_Plormel_</u>] - - LA MEMOIRE PERPETUELLE - DE LA BATAILLE DES TRANTE - QUE MGR LE MARCHAL DE BEAU MANOIR - A GAIGNE DANS CE LIEU L'AN 1530 - -Josselin is now chief town of a commune of 2,500 inhabitants; it has a -fine medival chteau yet inhabitable, two ecclesiastical monuments of -more than unusual excellence, and a rather shaky and ill-situated inn -(Htel de France), which makes up in the abundance and excellence of its -fare for what it lacks in the way of electric lights and modern sanitary -arrangements. - -The first houses of Josselin were grouped around a miraculous effigy -of the Virgin, known as Notre Dame du Roncier, because it was found -beneath a blackberry-bush. To-day Notre Dame du Roncier, the church and -the chapel and its statue of the Virgin, are venerated highly by the -faithful who make the pilgrimage to the shrine on the Monday and Tuesday -of Pentecost and on the eighth of September, the birthday of the Virgin, -when the remains of her ancient statue are shown. This effigy was broken -and burned in the Revolutionary fury of 1793, but a modern replica was -crowned, in the Chapel Notre Dame du Roncier, in 1868. The settlement -which grew up around the shrine was surrounded by a protecting wall by -the Count of Guthnoc in 1008, and in 1030 it was given the name of -Josselin, after his son. - -[Illustration: <u>_Shrine of St. Etienne, Josselin_</u>] - -In the thirteenth century, the county of Porhoet, in which Josselin was -situated, passed to the house of Fougres, and its affairs were varied -and involved until Peter of Valois, Count of Alenon, sold it to the -Constable Oliver of Clisson, whose daughter brought it in marriage to -the Rohans, to whose descendants it still belongs. - -In the Church of Our Lady of the Blackberry-bush is a remarkable tomb -placed in the Chapel of St. Marguerite--the former oratory of the -constable--to Oliver of Clisson and Marguerite of Rohan. - -The castle rests on a rocky foundation beside the river Oust, and its -front is most imposing. Three towers with conical roofs flank the -riverside, and are an expression of the best fortress-chteau building -of its era (twelfth century), severe and gaunt in every line, and yet -beautifully planned. The interior court takes on quite a different -aspect, that of the "_architecture civile_" of the third ogival period, -when Renaissance forms and details had crept in, almost destroying -Gothic lines. - -The window openings of the two stories have an admirable decorative -effect, as beautiful as those of Blois and very nearly equalling those -of Chambord. - -An open gallery above the windows is a charming additional -interpolation, and between each window is carved "A Plus," the device -of the distinguished family of the Rohans, who built this part of the -structure. A keep and some later walls and parapets were added by -Clisson somewhere about the year 1400, but most of them disappeared in -1629, when the chteau ceased to be a stronghold of the League. - -In the main it is a twelfth and thirteenth century structure which is -so admirably preserved to-day. One may visit the interior, through the -courtesy of the family in residence, and, though it may be somewhat -disconcerting to walk through these historic apartments of another -day and see such modern innovations as electric bells and other -appurtenances of a late civilization, the experience is, after all, -a peep behind the curtain, and this the up-to-date motor-car tourist -always appreciates highly. - -The great hall, the library, with its magnificent chimneypiece and -its cipher, "A Plus," carved in stone, and the dining-room ornamented -with a modern equestrian statue of Clisson, by Fremiet, are the chief -apartments shown. - -[Illustration: <u>_Chteau de Josselin_</u>] - -In the court within the walls is an ancient well surrounded by an -elaborate forged iron railing. - -One takes the road again, by the way of Locmin and Baud, for Auray, the -most dainty and charming of all Breton market-towns, passing through a -delightfully picturesque country of rolling hills and deep valleys and -fir forests, studded here and there with lakelets. - -Locmin, which derives its name from _Locmenec'h_ (monk's cell), was the -site of a monastery founded in the sixth century by St. Colomban. It was -burned by the Normans in the ninth century, after the pleasant custom of -these invaders, and restablished in 1006 by Geoffrey, Duke of Brittany, -as a priory attached to the Abbey of St. Gildas of Rhuis. - -In the present church of Locmin is a chapel dedicated to St. Colomban, -containing a painting representing scenes from the life of the saint; -others are carried out in the coloured glass of the windows. - -One reads the following,--a supplication on behalf of the dangerous -madmen who at one time occupied two cells beneath the pavement: - - "St. Colomban, patron of Locmin, pray for us! - St. Colomban, help of idiots, pray for us!" - -Behind the church is an elaborate ossuary dating from Renaissance times, -when these adjuncts to burial-grounds were so plentifully scattered -over Brittany. - -Baud has an enormous parish church of the time of Louis XIV., with a -fine Gothic arcade and a great crucifix standing beside the outer wall. -Aside from this, there is not much else here to attract one, unless he -be a pilgrim affected with disease of the eye. If he be, and if he bathe -in the "Fontaine de la clart," and the fates be propitious, and he be -not too far gone otherwise, and everything else be as it should, he will -be cured forthwith--perhaps. - -It is unkind to scoff at these miraculous fountains scattered here and -there over the world, of course, but one has seen so many individual -cases that were not benefited, and heard of so many that were, that one -may be justified in a little skepticism. - -To Auray is twenty kilometres by a road which gently rolls down a matter -of 150 metres of elevation until it reaches sea-level at the little -market-town seaport known in Breton as Alre. - - - - -CHAPTER IV. - -AURAY AND THE MEGALITHIC MONUMENTS OF MORBIHAN - - -Auray is the real centre from which to make the round of the vast -collection of relics of the long lost civilization of Morbihan. - -Many have attempted to explain the significance of these rude stone -monuments. Some have said that the famous avenues of Carnac were the -streets of one of Csar's camps, its roofs having fallen and mouldered -away, and that the famous "Merchants' Table" at Locmariaquer was an -ancient druidical altar, to which the helpless were led to be sacrificed. - -All this and much more is for the antiquary alone, and a nodding -acquaintance with the history of these curious stone formations or -erections is about all for which most travellers will care. - -He who arrives at Auray on a market-day will seem to himself to come -into a region where every one speaks the Breton tongue. Not all, of -course, for French is now compulsory with the school-children, but the -frequency of it here in the booths and stalls in and around Auray's -lovely old timbered market-house is greatly to be remarked. - -It is a question if this same market-house be not quite the most -theatrical-looking thing of its kind in all France. It is for all -the world like a successful piece of stage carpentry, with a great -spectacular stairway running up into its garret above, quite in the -manner that one has seen upon the stage over and over again, when the -heroine or the villain--it does not much matter which--escapes from his, -or her, pursuers. Low built, heavily raftered, and with a leaky roof -allowing rays of sunlight to dribble through into the gloom within in a -most entrancing manner, this old market-house is the centre of the life -and activity of the place for fifty-two Mondays in each year. - -Within and without the walls of the market-house is gathered the most -varied conglomeration of wares imaginable. Beside the draper's counter -are baskets of vegetables, eggs, or fish. A poor little calf, tied by -the legs and lying at full length on the ground, keeps company with his -former farmyard neighbours, the ducks and geese, but on either side is a -second-hand collection of ironmongery and old shoes, and it should be -the envy of the provident, for two sous buy anything in the collection. - -[Illustration: <u>_Interior of Market-house, Auray_</u>] - -The country-side Breton peasant who comes to Auray on a market-day is -the glass of fashion of his race, his jacket embroidered in braid of gay -colours, and velvet bands on his sleeves and collar. His shirt is high -and stiffly starched, and his felt hat or cap heavily hung with velvet -ribbons. The womenfolk are clad in equally spectacular fashion, with -high white caps and full-sleeved bodices, each with a black velvet band -around the sleeve, and full gathered skirts, spoiling all symmetry of -form as nature made it. - -The history of Auray, from the days when it belonged to John of Auray, -grand huntsman of Brittany, has left its mark in the annals of the -country in no indefinite manner. John of Montfort, the Counts of Blois, -Duguesclin, and many others stalk through its pages of history until -finally, in the wars of religions, it was held by the Catholic army -and the Spaniards in turn. Its old chteau, whose foundations now form -the fine Promenade du Loc, dates from the eleventh century; and it was -reconstructed and enlarged two centuries later, finally to disappear, -as the result of an order for its demolition given by the castle -destroyer, Henry II., in 1558. - -[Illustration: <u>_Shrine of St. Roch, Auray_</u>] - -The port of Auray is more daintily and charmingly environed than most -seaports. As it lies between the wooded, deep-cut banks of the little -river, its intermingling of ships and salt water, and country-side, and -sailor lads and rustic maidens, and all the motley population of the -little town, is a marvellous thing to see. - -The smack of antiquity is about it all, and the historic legend of its -shrine of St. Anne--which lives as vividly to-day as ever it lived--most -touchingly connects the present with the past. - -One of the most celebrated, and certainly the most largely attended, -of all the "pardons" of Brittany is that held at St. Anne of Auray, -though Auray itself is something more than a mere place of religious -pilgrimage, and a good deal more than a wayside station on the railway -line where one leaves the train and hires a carriage for Carnac and -Quiberon, though apparently not many tourists know it. In the first -place, it is one of the largest and most characteristic of all the -little Breton market-towns, is a deep-water port of a considerable size, -and has a hotel which supplies one with the most ample and delightful -meals that the traveller will find westward of Nantes. - -This may be a mundane standard by which to judge of an old-world town's -appeal to interest, but it is all-sufficient, and the most marvellous -attractions the world may have to offer will hardly be appreciated by -a travel-worn and hungry traveller, and such should plan to arrive in -town for the Monday dinner at the Golden Lion; also he should not hurry -through the town merely for the sake of visiting the shrine of St. Anne, -which is tawdry enough in its general aspect, except when it is thronged -on the great days of the "pardon," March seventh and July twenty-fifth. - -The great festival of the Pardon of St. Anne of Auray is held in July, -on the birthday of St. Anne, the mother of the Virgin Mary. Its origin -dates back to 1623, when a peasant of the country-side, one Yves -Nicolazic, was commanded by St. Anne, who appeared to him in a vision, -to found a chapel in her honour in the fields of Bocenno, where, she -said, an ancient shrine had existed nearly a thousand years earlier. -Guided by explicit directions and a mysterious star, Yves found a -precious image, which ultimately was transported and set up anew in -the church built at Auray. This miraculous statue was lost during -the Revolution, but a fragment was preserved and is included in the -present shrine, which is surrounded by a modern edifice dating from the -mid-nineteenth century. - -Near by is the miraculous fountain, which, like others of its kind -elsewhere, is exceedingly erratic as to the miracles it performs. It -was beside this fountain, then but a humble little rock-gushing spring, -but now neatly set about with a concrete basin, that St. Anne first -appeared to Yves. - -Each year, by train, by boat, by country cart, and on foot, pilgrims -come from miles around, many of them camping out the night by the -roadside, all, in spite of the solemn purport of their pilgrimage, in -the gayest spirits. There is always a certain amount of discord to be -encountered at all these great festivals,--beggars, deformed or ill -with incurable disease, crippled or what not, all expectant of reaping -a thriving harvest from the simple-minded frequenters of the shrine. -Whether deserving or not, all of them appear to receive liberal alms, -for the custom of giving alms is as much a component part of the -event as any of the other observances, nor is it ever frowned upon or -curtailed by the religious or civic authorities. - -The order of the day includes the massing of the pilgrims at open-air -services, the placing of candles before the shrine, the inspection of -the relics of the saint, the drinking of, or bathing in, the miraculous -fountain, and sermons and admonitions uncounted, all in the Breton -tongue, incomprehensible to outsiders, but to be taken as salutary. The -great feature is the procession of priests and pilgrims, the former -in their brilliant vestments, many of the latter bearing tall, gaudily -coloured candles and gay silken banners. Grouped around each banner -will be found the Breton men and women from a particular section, each -group differently clad from those of other sections, but all gay with -brilliant colouring. - -"Saint Anne, pray for us!" is the cry one would hear were it in English, -or "_Sainte Anne, priez pour nous_" in French; in Breton, its sadness is -indescribable, more like the wail of a _banshee_ than anything else. - -Usually the Bishop of Vannes delivers an exhortation, in the Breton -tongue, of course, from the top of the Holy Steps, after which the -throng--or, at least, such as are truly and sincerely devout--climb to -the top on their knees. According to the printed notice at the foot, -each step mounted on the bended knee, accompanied of course by a prayer, -is good for a nine years' absolution of a soul in purgatory. In the -cloister behind the church is a great crucifix, in which the peasant -pilgrims stick pins, each recording a prayer said or a vow made. - -On the night of July twenty-sixth, St. Anne's Day, a grand torchlight -procession marches. The "Marche aux Flambeaux," a celebrated painting -by Jules Breton, now owned in America, well shows the effect of one of -these great demonstrations, except that it lacks the weirdness of the -sombre background of night itself. - -This ends the great days of the pardon, but throughout the year pilgrims -make their way to the shrine to say a prayer, or to drink or bathe in -the waters of the fountain, or perhaps to carry a jugful home to some -bedridden member of their families. - -Among the offerings in fulfilment of vows made at the shrine of Ste. -Anne d'Auray are a number of very ancient inscriptions, such as the -following best illustrate: - -"William Genin, bitten by a mad dog, vowed himself to St. Anne and -obtained a perfect cure in 1631." - -"Helen Sausse, abandoned by her mother, vomited a two-headed snake and -recovered her health." - -On the way from Auray to Plouharnel, Carnac, Quiberon, and Locmariaquer -are worth one day or three, accordingly as one may feel inclined. The -distance is not great; a dozen kilometres will cover the journey out, -and a little more circuitous return route will take in a half-dozen or -more old centres of a civilization of which all knowledge is lost in -the night of time. - -Whatsoever the great megalithic monuments of Carnac may mean, certain it -is that they tell--or could tell if one could feel sure he understood -it correctly--a story quite out of keeping with the manners and customs -of to-day. Like the tall, gaunt windmills plentifully besprinkled -hereabouts, these great stones rear their heads skyward in fashion most -strange. Long rows of them, like files of soldiers, or like the trees of -the forest, stand to-day for the curious to marvel at, as they stood so -long ago that their origin is not to be definitely traced. - -[Illustration: <u>_The Lines of Carnac_</u>] - -[Illustration: <u>_The Lines of Carnac_</u>] - -Of the Lines of Carnac, as the strange population of -tombstone-looking monoliths is known, much has been written by -antiquaries, archologists, and geologists ever since the tide of travel -set this way. What these stones actually mean--some thousands of them -in all, set out in regular rows--only a vain, presumptuous person could -answer. They offer a prospect of a strange grandeur, for they really -are grand, if not stupendous, and, as they stretch away in long, silent -lines almost to the horizon, they are as phantoms looming to-day out of -the mysterious past to which they belong. - -There are three great companies of these menhirs here. Those of Mnec, -composed of 1,169 members in eleven ranks; of Kermario, 1,120 members -in ten rows; and of Kerlescan, thirteen rows made up of 579 individual -stones. - -Carnac has another ancient monument in the tumulus of Mont St. Michel, -which, like other elevations bearing the same name, is a sky-nearing -little peak of land which supposedly formed a firm earthly foothold for -the archangel. - -The parish church of Carnac is dedicated to St. Cornly, who, according -to legend, lived in the neighbourhood and was many times saved from -an untimely death by the oxen of the region. Just how this was -accomplished no one seems to know, but enough of the tradition still -lives to inspire a grand celebration on the saint's day, the thirteenth -of September, when many animals are offered up to him, as one learns -from the kindly, tall-coifed guardian of the church. - -[Illustration: <u>_Map of Carnac and the Surrounding Country_</u>] - -The painted ceilings of the Church of St. Cornly are remarkable works -of art, if not for their excellence, at least for their ingenuity. The -north porch is an astonishing Renaissance addition, which, from its -curves and curls, would seem to be the precursor of "_l'art nouveau_." - -To the westward of Carnac, at the shore-end of the peninsula of -Quiberon, is Plouharnel, another centre around which are grouped many -curious stone monuments. - -The Chapel of Our Lady of the Flowers is a singularly beautiful small -church built of the granite of the country. It contains a notable -bas-relief in alabaster in the form of what is known in ecclesiastical -art as a "Jesse Tree." - -Just why the promoters of a railway had the temerity to push it to the -very end of the snake-like peninsula of Quiberon is a problem which will -ever remain unsolved so far as the general public is concerned. Stendhal -has written some gloomy views of scenes enacted at Fort Penthivre, -half-way down the peninsula, and Victor Hugo wrote of the same times -(now a hundred years ago): - -"_Mourir plus d'un soldat son prince fidle, un prtre fidle son -Dieu._" - -The aspect of this long, narrow peninsula is everywhere the same, from -its juncture with the mainland to the sandy point fifteen kilometres -away, from which one sees the flash of the twinkling light on Belle Ile. - -Quiberon has what may almost be called an ideal hotel, except that it -is unworldly and not the least new. A travelling salesman, whom we met -at Auray, told us that it was kept by an old cook, one of the Vatels -of the stove. Simple and modest, but clean withal as the proverbial -door-step of Holland, it is one of those inns that the traveller loves -out of sheer inability to find fault with it. - -Quiberon has two ports, Port Haliguen and Port Maria, both in danger -of becoming popular seaside resorts, for the guide-books are already -describing them as places where the sojourn will be agreeable for -persons of simple habits. - -The fish-market of Quiberon is one, if not the chief, of its sights for -the student of manners and customs. "_Cinq lubines pour douze francs -et deux cent quarante maquereaux pour trente-un francs_" was the way -the market ran on the occasion of the visit of the author, all of which -argues that Quiberon is a good place for the fish to come. - -[Illustration: <u>_Quiberon_</u>] - -The lobsters, too, are a great feature of the trade here, and are sold -by their length, measuring from the eye up to the first scale of their -tails. An average price is rather over four sous, and Paris takes the -best of the lot. They travel first-class and by express, the lobsters -of Quiberon, when they take their first and last voyage to the "shining -city," and there are plenty of friends awaiting them at the station. -They invariably arrive at the fish-market for the earliest sales, and at -noon the epicure may eat them at Marguery's, which sounds like a French -version of the "Alice in Wonderland" tale. - -One hour from Quiberon, by a tiny steamboat, and one finds himself -skirting the cliff walls surrounding and sheltering the little port and -town of Palais on Belle Ile, overlooked by the powerful citadel built by -Vauban, who, as the fortress-builder of France, stood in his profession -where Napoleon did in his. - -This "_plus belle le de l'ocean_" has forty-eight kilometres of -coast-line, and every one of them has been so cut and serrated by -the action of the waves that the island would form a veritable ocean -graveyard were it situated on the direct line of travel by sea. - -For the most part, visitors content themselves with making an excursion -to the northerly end of the island, a visit to the apothecary's grotto, -and another to the lantern of the great lighthouse, which at night sends -its electric rays far out to sea. - -What tourists may not do is to roam over the old citadel now occupied -as a national fort, and this is a pity, for there they might conjure up -a reminder of other days that would be like a chapter out of Dumas. - -The citadel was built by Marshal de Retz in 1572, and was the refuge of -the cardinal of the same name when he fled from Nantes in 1653. Not far -away is the Chteau Fouquet. Nicholas Fouquet, Marquis of Belle Ile, -was Superintendent of Finance under the regency of Anne of Austria, -and continued the important office after the accession of Louis XIV. -The consensus of opinion is that Fouquet was insinuating, specious, -hypocritical, and sensual. It was at the great fte given by Fouquet at -Vaux that the king planned his arrest, "fearing he would escape to Belle -Ile," then thought to be an impregnable fortress. Both in the pages of -the historians and in the romances of Dumas one may read the story. - -Belle-Ile-en-Mer, also, was made the home of Aramis after Dumas had -given him episcopal rank. The minute details given in "Le Vicomte de -Bragelonne" would form an admirable supplement to any guide-book. - -The great Sara Bernhardt has of recent years made her home on this -barren and desolate isle. It is not altogether desolate, however, for -there are hotels at Palais and Sauzon, and tourists, solitary and in -droves, are continually making excursions thither in the season from the -neighbouring Breton coast, from Vannes, Quiberon, or Lorient. - -Although Belle Ile is only a pin-head on most maps of France, it has a -considerable population. Palais is a town of five thousand souls, and -Sauzon counts something over sixteen hundred, and so Belle Ile, being -only about 21,000 acres in extent, is a very thickly populated part of -the globe. - -Returning to the mainland, a call at Locmariaquer is inevitable, if one -be a true and genuine traveller, even if it be "out of the world," which -virtually it is, being at the tip end of another peninsula like that of -Quiberon. - -The town itself owns to fifteen hundred or more souls, and all of them -look prosperous and contented. Where all of them get their livelihood, -it is difficult to see, for there is not much intercourse with the -outside world. - -Locmariaquer has not even a railway, as Quiberon has, but lies twenty -kilometres or so south of Auray, almost at the mouth of Morbihan Bay. -The church of Locmariaquer is a fine twelfth-century work, but the -foundation of the little town lies much farther back in antiquity than -this. It was the ancient Doriorigum of the Romans. - -The Chapel of St. Michel is built up from the Roman remains of a -structure known as _er c'hastel_. - -The great celebrities of Locmariaquer are, however, those members -of the great family of menhirs, dolmens, and cromlechs with which -this part of Morbihan is so thickly strewn. The chief of these are -the dolmen known as Man-Lud, Mountain of Ashes, of vast dimensions -and having a grotto beneath it. Not far off is a tumulus and another -dolmen known as Dol-er-Groh, an enormous stone table or altar. Another -is known as Man-er-H'roeck, the stone of the fairies; it is quite -seventy feet long, or was, for it now lies full length on the ground -broken into four pieces. The finest and best preserved of all is the -Dol-ar-Marc'hadouiren, the Merchants' Table. It is hard to see just the -significance of the name given to these three huge stones, but they form -a wonderfully impressive monument of days gone by, nevertheless. - -The most beautiful dolmen known, whatever that description may really -mean (the local renter of boats calls it such: "_le plus beau dolmen -connu_"), can be visited only by boat. It is on an island in the gulf, -and is known as the Gavr'inis. - -La Trinit, "a little village on the very edge of the sea"! This is a -description which exactly fits what the natives and the railway powers -like to think is a watering-place. It is something like one, to be sure, -but the influx of strangers during the summer months has never been so -great as to obliterate or even to deaden the local colour. Its little -harbour is lively with fishing-boats, and occasionally gay, when the -boats are "dressed" for some great festival, but nothing of blatant -bands and riotous crowds mars the quietness and sweetness of La Trinit, -and accordingly it is a place to be remembered. - -Sometimes the sterility of the soil round about causes real distress -among the small farming peasants; "one cannot live on fish alone," they -say. - -There is a local benefactress who, when crops are poor and meagre, gives -the whole of her own harvest gathered from an unusually ample holding -to her more distressed neighbours. This is a true and practical charity -that does not smack of smugness or pretence as do many acts questionably -classed under that head. It is a singularly expressive exemplification -of what the French know as "good socialism," and one hears much of it at -La Trinit and in its neighbourhood. - -Taking to the road again, on the way to Auray, one passes another of -those curious granitic formations. This time it comes down more near -our own day, and is called the "St. Tiviro's hat." It does not look the -least like the saint's hat, any more than the "devil's seats" and the -"old men of the mountains," scattered about the world, look like what -they are called--but let that pass. Legend connects this rock with a -certain St. Tiviro, who one day lost his hat, which ultimately turned to -stone. It does not seem plausible, and it is a pointless story indeed, -but it gives a small child the opportunity to point it out for a penny, -which most folk will not grudge. - - - - -CHAPTER V. - -MORBIHAN--LORIENT AND ITS NEIGHBOURHOOD - - -Three towns of Morbihan little known, still less visited by travellers -in Brittany, lie within a comparatively small area just north of the -coast, and their names are Lorient, Hennebont, and Pont Scorff. - -The very name Lorient will appeal to many. It suggests the great -trade with the East, in full swing in the seventeenth and eighteenth -centuries, when the town grew up as a necessary part of a vast commerce. -Some of the old-time romantic picturesqueness of the shipping has -disappeared, and the Hotels "Royal Sword" and "White Horse" have given -way to the Hotels "Modern" and "of France," with electric lights and -sheds for motor-cars, but there is still a distinguishing excellence to -be remarked which makes Lorient a place well worth visiting. - -It was in the seventeenth century that an association of Breton -merchants, who were carrying on the trade with the East Indies, -first built their warehouses here. The traffic grew to proportions so -considerable that Louis XIV. ultimately gave letters patent for the -foundation of a new and grander East India Company. - -The company erected ship-houses here, and the name Lorient was given to -the settlement, which was fast growing to a prime importance among the -ports of France. An English fleet, under Admiral Lestock, landed some -six or seven thousand men in the bay of Poldu, at twelve kilometres west -of Lorient, and marched upon the town as a revenge for certain attacks -upon British interests in the East. - -The English met with no great triumph here, but Louis XV. was -indifferent enough to allow many of the French settlements in the Indies -to be taken, and this led to the rapid decadence of the great East India -Company and its port. Napoleon resuscitated it, as he did many another -decaying institution in France, and developed the industry of the port -to such an extent that Lorient became one of the principal maritime -towns of France. Its past history sounds romantic enough, but there is -little of romance about the life of its streets and wharves to-day; -instead, there is activity not admitting even the thought of romance. -Jangling gongs of tram-cars, the puffing of locomotives, and the -shrieks of the sirens, to say nothing of the accompaniment of belching -chimney-stacks and the sound of the riveting hammers in the great -shipyards, all testify that Lorient is living in the age of progress. - -Local sights, outside this marvellous exposition of modern spirit, are -few. There is a municipal museum, containing some good modern pictures, -many of them of Breton subjects, but there are no ecclesiastical or -architectural monuments worthy of remark. The commercial harbour and the -dockyard are decidedly the most interesting features. Within the walls -of the latter is the parade-ground, which serves as a fine promenade -for the population of Lorient when the military band plays on summer -evenings. - -The roadstead of Lorient is a great deep-water harbour, which can -shelter the largest ships afloat. It is guarded by six great lights, -one of them in the cupola of the Church of St. Louis. This is one of -the very few instances where a great city church is a mariner's beacon, -besides performing its other functions on behalf of lost souls. - -Opposite Lorient is Port Louis, founded a century before its bigger -sister. Anciently it was known as Blavet, but took its present name in -honour of Louis XIII. Its walls were begun in 1652. - -In the immediate neighbourhood of Lorient and Port Louis are many -delightful little seaside places, hardly popular resorts in any sense -of the word, but all the better for that, where one may get such views -of sea and shore and shipping of all ranks as is hardly to be found -elsewhere on the Breton coast. - -Up the little river Blavet, at the head of deep-sea navigation, is -Hennebont, a most delightfully disposed little place, which has been -called the pearl of the Blavet. Like most of the tidal rivers of France, -the Blavet, on its lower reaches, offers about the most paintable of all -landscapes imaginable. This, with the Auray, the Aven, the Scorff, and -the Elle, would prove a sketching-ground quite inexhaustible, in the -variety of its moods, to the artist of an average length of life. - -[Illustration: <u>_Hennebont_</u>] - -Hennebont, which has eight thousand or more inhabitants and a delightful -inn, electric-lighted though it be, is divided into the new town and the -fortified town. It sits beside the river's bank, and crosses on a bridge -of three arches. Above, the river dwindles to a mere rivulet, but below -the incoming tides will bring craft of a tonnage of three hundred -or more straight to the heart of the town. A tonnage of three hundred -does not mean much to the travellers by twenty-thousand-ton steamships, -but assuredly when one sees one of these little craft, with their three -slender square-rigged masts, by the soft light of the full moon, in the -little Breton port of Hennebont, it looks like the phantom ship, whose -masts and spars "cross the moon like prison bars." - -Hennebont derives its name from the Breton words for old bridge. The -first lord of the place, Huelin of Hennebont, lived in 1037. The -fortified town was, of course, the earlier foundation, the new town only -coming into existence in the sixteenth century, when the great Church of -Our Lady of Paradise was still in the open country. - -Trade follows the flag, but habitations follow the church, and so, when -this great Gothic edifice was built in 1513-30, it began to draw the -houses of the city dwellers around it, and now the fortified town is -practically non-existent except as a quarter. - -This church is a wonder-work of its kind, considering its great size, -its graceful lines, and its ornamental Gothic spire, rising to a height -which must approximate three hundred feet. - -The ancient ramparts of the old fortified town appear here and there -along the river-bank, in the well-preserved gateway which one passes -on the left after leaving the river on the way to the church, and in -yet another fragment--a great circular tower--in the courtyard of the -aforesaid excellent Htel de France. - -The old castle of Hennebont, of which something more than fragments -still remain, saw the death of Comte Charles of Blois, who, escaping -from his dungeon in one of the towers of the old Louvre at Paris, came -here in 1345. One may read in Froissart of the defence of Hennebont by -Jeanne of Montfort in 1342. - -There are many old gabled houses at Hennebont, most fantastic in form, -one of which, bearing the inscription, "LE LEVIC, 1600," is -perhaps the most ancient of any built without the walls of the fortified -town. - -The great fortified gateway, which gives access to the old citadel, is -a fine ogival work flanked by two massive machicolated towers. This old -district is quite the most curious and unworldly feature of this little -city by the Blavet. - -It is a veritable town of the middle ages, yet unspoiled and quite as it -was in the olden days, when its sturdy walls gave protection against -the invader, and its great gates opened only upon the orders of the -governor. - -In suburban Hennebont, scarce a kilometre away, on the left bank of -the Blavet, are to be seen the remains of the old Abbaye de la Joie, -a famous establishment of the monks of the Cistercian order. It was -founded in the thirteenth century by Blanche of Champagne, wife of John -the Red-haired. One still sees her statue in wood and bronze, but the -conventual buildings themselves have come to base uses, and are now a -horse-breeding establishment. - -Pont Scorff, so far as its situation is concerned, resembles Hennebont. -It spans the tiny river Scorff, and the views along the banks are in -every way equally delightful with those on the Blavet. Pont Scorff, -however, has not the magnitude or the antiquity of Hennebont, and its -two parts are known as the upper town and the lower town. - -The most ancient building here is the Chapel of St. John of the old -commandery of St. John du Faout; it dates at least from the thirteenth -century. There is a fine Renaissance house in the little public square, -called the House of the Princes. It is richly decorated and has a fine -series of dormer windows and a row of pilasters bearing the symbols of -the Rohan family. There is another ancient house, formerly belonging, -it is believed, to the Templars. The parish Church of St. Albin dates -only from 1610, and is in no way a remarkable work. - -The Chapel of Notre Dame de Kergornet, a fifteenth-century edifice near -by, is a place of pilgrimage for the Breton nurses, that great race of -foster-mothers who care for the thousands of Parisian children in the -Bois, or the gardens of the Tuileries, or the Luxembourg. - -From this point, as one journeys westward, he leaves pretty much all -France behind him. The modern Department of Finistre, the "Land's -End" of the French, is all that lies between him and the vast heaving -Atlantic. - - - - -CHAPTER VI. - -FINISTRE--SOUTH - - -At Quimperl one makes his first acquaintance with that part of -the Armorican peninsula known to-day on the maps of France as the -Department of Finistre. This charming little town is of itself of great -importance, as marking the dividing-line between the dialect of Vannes -and that of the western peninsula. There is no great difference to be -noted by the casual traveller, since all of the younger population speak -the French tongue,--sometimes exclusively,--but there is an unmistakable -modification of manners and customs toward the more theatrical aspect -which one best sees at Pont Aven, Pont l'Abb, and the little fishing -villages around the Bay of Douarnenez. - -Of the women of Quimperl much has been remarked by all who have ever -lingered within its walls. They are "superb in type, elegant and -gracious," we were told by a French artist who had set up his easel on -the quay. But there is no need to tell anybody; even a woman-hater would -remark it. Certainly this is as good an entrance to a new and strange -land as heart could desire. - -Quimperl lies on both sides of the little river Elle, which, like -the other streams of the South Breton coast, is a special variety of -waterway quite unlike their more pretentious brothers and sisters -elsewhere. The country round about has been called the "Arcadia of -Lower Brittany," and so it will strike even the least observant of -travellers--after he has recovered from the effects of the glances of -those elegant and gracious females. - -The most ancient part of the little city is that known as the walled -town, grouped around the ancient Abbey of Holy Cross, on that tongue of -land which separates the Isole and the Elle. The escarpment is badly -built up, but withal it is ruggedly picturesque, abounding in old -houses, some of which have stood since the thirteenth century. - -[Illustration: <u>_Quimperl_</u>] - -The site of the old Abbey of Holy Cross was known in the sixth century -as Anaurot, and became the refuge of one of the Breton Kings of -Cambria, who, abdicating, came here and built a hermitage, which in -time was converted into an abbey of Benedictines. This old Abbey -of Holy Cross, as it exists to-day, has a ground-plan which more -nearly follows that of a four-armed cross than any other extant in -Christendom. The same motive doubtless inspired its builders as that -which induced the architects of Charlemagne to erect that famous round -church at Aix-la-Chapelle, which in reality it greatly resembles in -general features; both went back to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at -Jerusalem for their initial idea. - -This church at Quimperl is one of the three or four in all Brittany -having a crypt, and it is more amply endowed with interior furnishings -and fitments than many a grander edifice. Altogether it is an -ecclesiastical monument of the first importance. - -It has a companion, moreover, of no mean rank, either, in the Church of -St. Michael, which sits high on the hilltop and dominates nearly every -vista of the town. - -After a tempestuous past extending from the monastic foundation of -the sixth century, Anaurot, or Quimperl as it had become meantime, -surrendered to Duguesclin in 1373. Finally, when a treaty had been -signed with the League as to future neutrality, the city walls were -demolished (in 1680), and Quimperl settled down to a peaceful -existence, which is only broken on the year's great feast-days, or on -the days of the pardons,--that of the Passion in March, the Pardon of -the Birds on Whit-Monday, the second day of May, or the last Sunday of -July. - -One or the other of these dates should be made to correspond with one's -itinerary, when one will see the real Lower Breton as he seldom appears -outside a picture. Near Quimperl is the little coast station of Pouldu, -where figtrees, the hydrangea, and other plants of the Midi bloom -throughout the year. - -Needless to say that it may some day become a really popular and -populous seaside resort, with casinos and alleged Hungarian bands, -but that day may be far distant, and any one looking for an unspoiled -seaside resting-place need not hesitate to go out of his way to give -a glance to this altogether delightful little port of Pouldu. There -is nothing like it, nothing so unaffected and unspoiled, on the whole -Breton coast. On the way to Pouldu one passes the important ruins of the -ancient Abbey of St. Maurice, founded in 1170 by the Duke Conan IV., and -the place where Maurice--a monk of Langonnet since become sainted--was -buried in 1191. In part, this fine ruin dates from the thirteenth -century, to which period belong the chapter-room and the chapel, the -principal features still remaining intact. - -Near Quimperl is St. Fiacre, whom some unknowing person has called the -patron saint of the Paris cabman, an individual who has not much regard -for anything saintly. - -There is a beautiful fifteenth-century chapel at St. Fiacre, though -to-day it is greatly marred by wind, weather, and barbarous customs. -Each year, in June, there is an important fair held at St. Fiacre, at -which the young men from round about offer themselves for employment. -Each of them carries a rod or switch. To engage one who seems a likely -person for your purpose, you, or the young man before your eyes,--after -a parley,--break the rod, and he immediately becomes a member of your -domestic establishment. - -There seems something rather uncertain about all this, but surely the -"matter of form" augurs as well for good and faithful service as the -average written "character" with which one engages a servant in England. - -The hair-cutter appears at St. Fiacre as at all Breton fairs. He is -known as Gerard, and since the age of ten years he has been learned in -the art of hair-cutting. For a long time he was the chief barber of a -regiment of the line, and he will tell you (or he may not) that he has -cut many hundreds of thousands of heads in his time, and has garnered -enough of a crop to carpet the whole of the village of St. Fiacre a -metre deep. - -Faout, not to be confounded with the place of the same name in the -Ctes du Nord, is a small town with a great square, and a still more -important old market-house, which, like that at Auray, strikes the -stranger as being a marvellous construction of wooden beams, and quite -impossible to duplicate to-day, whereas the construction is doubtless -far less complex than the modern market-houses that one sometimes -meets,--mere ugly sheds of brick and iron. - -There is a never ceasing ebb and flow of peasant-folk at the Faout -market, the busiest of which come the Saturday of Holy Week, the Friday -after Pentecost, the twentieth of June, and the sixth and twenty-sixth -of July. - -[Illustration: <u>_Market-house, Faout_</u>] - -The scene is too dazzling to describe, and too active to snap-shot, -and one can only feel its real significance by personal participation. -The transactions are not of the stupendous order, and there is much -good-natured chaffing and bartering, and it offers a scene as lively -as if the fate of a nation were depending on the outcome. - -[Illustration: <u>_Market-day_</u>] - -The Breton peasant is not always the sad and superstitious individual he -has been pictured, though both men and women think nothing of embracing -the opportunity of saying a "Hail Mary" in the Chapel of St. Barbara, or -before the great cross of stone beside the main road, as they go into -town, taking to market a small calf or a brace or two of ducks, led at -the end of a cord by their sides. - -The Chapel of St. Barbara occupies an extraordinary position three -hundred metres or more above the bed of the Elle, which bathes the lower -walls of the town. - -After tradition, the Sieur de Toulbodon was one day hunting in the -valley of the Elle, when a terrific storm broke overhead, and a rock -falling at his feet barred the way. He made a vow to St. Barbara to -erect a chapel here, because of his merciful preservation from death. -The rock exists to-day, and is shown to the credulous,--at least, a -rock is shown which the credulous believe is the identical one, and -accordingly it is venerated; though why it is not reviled, no one seems -to know. - -Near Faout is the Abbey of Our Lady of Langonnet, founded in 1136 by -Conan III. of Brittany. Its fortunes have been various; in Revolutionary -times it served as quarters for a stud, but has since been turned over -to religious uses again, and is now occupied by a congregation of the -Fathers of the Holy Ghost. - -The church, the chapter-room, and some other details still remain, -admirably preserved, to illustrate the excellence of the early Gothic -period of the buildings. - -On the way to Rosporden, one passes the principal town of Bannalec, -whose original name was Balaneck, meaning the place for planting the -broom. It has not much interest for the stranger, unless perchance -he happens to pass through it on the day of some local feast or -celebration, when he will most likely see the young peasant-folk, men -and women, dancing in the middle of the roadway, as they do in the -operas. Brittany indeed is about the only place where one is likely -to see such a phenomenon, and, if by chance it happen to be a wedding -celebration, the diversion will be doubly interesting. - -On the particular occasion when the builders of this book passed that -way, a wedding dance was actually in progress, and so edifying was the -ceremony that the bride and groom were invited into the tonneau of our -motor-car, and whirled away to Rosporden for a little excursion, which -was unpremeditated and unexpected to all concerned, and was probably -also a unique experience. - -Rosporden, on the shore of the great lake of Rosporden, as it was -described to us, proved a disappointment. Not that so very much was -expected of it, but that so little was found in it. The lake is a -misnomer, though the water-weedy pond near the church serves the -innumerable artists who flock to the region as a highly interesting -foreground. The women of Rosporden wear the most immense bonnets and -coifs to be seen in all Brittany, and wimples like those of the Sisters -of Charity. - -[Illustration: <u>_Rosporden_</u>] - -The church dates from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries, and is in -every way an admirably preserved monument. - -To Concarneau and the smell of the sea is a dozen or fourteen kilometres -over a gently rising and falling road, with a tendency always to descend -until finally one coasts down the long main street of the celebrated -fishing port and artists' sketching-ground (it would be hard to tell -in which aspect it is the more famous), until one comes to that famous -Great Travellers' Hotel, where one eats of oysters, lobster, and fresh -sardines and many other kinds of sea food to such an extent that one -feels decidedly fishy, or at least thirsty. - -This should make little difference, as the coffee-room of that most -excellent hostelry is likewise excellent, and has a charming outlook -upon the wharfs and fishing-boats, thus affording as delightful a method -of accustoming oneself to strange sights as could be imagined. - -The fishing-boats of Concarneau are one and all great brown-winged gulls -that flit slowly over the great bay, going in and out with the rise -and fall of the tide all through the round of the clock, depositing -their cargoes on the wharfs, shifting crews, and starting off again in -a continuous performance of coming and going which never ceases until -their timbers, from some untoward cause, fall apart. - -As the boats lie at the landing, sails come down and the delicate brown -and blue nets go up for drying, for not all of the boats have so great -a supply that they can shift to another set. The most curious effect is -given by these blue and brown nets swinging masthead high, as if they -were spider-web sails. - -The picturesqueness of the Concarneau fishing-boats is undeniable. -Nothing like them exists elsewhere, and when the sardine boats set out -for the west, as the sun goes down, there are as wonderful combinations -of golden yellow-browns, reds, and purples as the most imaginative -painter could possibly conjure on his canvas. - -On shore, the nets, spread for drying on the wharfs and on the racks -beside the little fisherman's chapel and the great stone crucifix -which faces seawards, are of the deepest blues and purple-browns in a -bewitching mixture. - -Not a white-sailed boat is to be seen, unless it is an occasional yacht -drifting in because its owner has tired of making the fashionable -harbours where his guests can spend the night on shore dancing to the -questionable music of a red or blue coated band. - -[Illustration: <u>_Stone Crucifix, Concarneau_</u>] - -It is a question as to whether Concarneau, were it not the centre of the -sardine fishery, might not be the first seaside resort of the world. -As it is, there are not a few who evidently think it far preferable to -those pseudo-society watering-places, whose chief attractions are big -casinos and little horses. - -[Illustration: <u>_Concarneau_</u>] - -The hotels of the place are in no sense resort hotels, though they -are fitted with a marvellous convenience and comfort, and feed one -most bountifully and excellently on sea food, wherein fresh sardines -and lobsters predominate,--those two great delicacies of the Paris -restaurant which here are the common food of the people, for Concarneau -is one of the few fishing centres of the world which keeps some of its -products for the supply of its own table. - -To-day the town is composed of two quarters, the new town, otherwise the -faubourg Ste. Croix, modern, prosperous, and animated, and the walled -town, the island fort of the middle ages. - -In 1373, Concarneau was occupied by an English garrison, who fled before -Duguesclin. In 1488, the Viscount of Rohan reduced it by order of -Charles VIII., but the Marshal de Rieux retook it from the French the -following year, and repaired and strengthened the old fortifications. - -The religious wars played their part here most vividly, until finally it -fell to the hands of Henry IV. - -The walled town to-day is a remarkable example of an isolated fort -or citadel, the islet upon which it is situated being of a confined -area and wholly surrounded by a thick granite rampart, which, however -invulnerable it may have been in a former day, would stand no chance -against modern guns. - -In part, these fortifications date from the fourteenth century, and -at high water are entirely surrounded by the sea. The great bastion -attributed to the former Duchess Anne--after she had become a queen of -France--is a stupendous work of its time. For the most part, the other -parts of the walls have been restored and built up anew in modern times. - -Concarneau is the Ploudenec of Blanche Willis Howard's charming Breton -tale of "Guenn," and Nevin, where the great pardon dance was held, may -have been Pont Aven or Rosporden. - -There is a wealth of charming colour in this sad tale, and not a little -truth with regard to some of the characters, to which Americans, before -now, have attempted to attach the names of real persons in the world of -art and literature. - -Opposite Concarneau is Beg-Meil, which in more respects than one is an -anomaly. It has some pretence at being a watering-place, but there is -no town there, save such as is built up around a few country-houses and -hotels, catering only to summer folk; besides this, a few scattered -and isolated farms form the sum total of the habitations of this -little jutting point of land running out into the billowy Atlantic. -For four-fifths of the year, the population of this salt meadow is -composed only of sea-birds, which, like their fellows elsewhere, form an -interesting colony of themselves. - -The sea-birds of Brittany, like those of other rock-bound shores, are -ever interesting to the traveller. Like the gulls of London Bridge, -those near the great bay of Concarneau are wonderfully tame and -singularly ravenous, and apparently eat all day. That is, when they -are not sleeping or billing and cooing, as is the sea-birds' way, for -in this they would seem to rival the turtle-dove. When they are not -courting or sleeping, they go a-fishing, and the seaweed-strewn rocks -about Concarneau are their happy hunting-grounds. They will eat, say the -fisherfolk of the sardine fleet, five pounds or more of fish in a day, -which is considerably more than the weight of an individual bird. - -From Concarneau one must perforce follow back along the coast-line to -Pont Aven, for a trip to Brittany without having known the delights of -this colony of artist-folk, in which Americans predominate, would be -like the tragedy without Hamlet, or the circus without the elephant or -the pink lemonade. - -"_Pont Aven, the Barbison of Bretagne! chosen home of the painters of -all nations and all schools, with Americans predominating._" This is -a faithful translation of the remark of an appreciative travelling -salesman, one "who loved art," if the description be credible. You -will hear tales at Pont Aven of the time when artists found their -accommodation at a roadside inn outside the town--now apparently -vanished--for fifty-five francs per month, and paid a sou for a litre -of milk, and four sous for a litre of cider. - -[Illustration: <u>_Pont Aven_</u>] - -These days have gone, and at Pont Aven, as elsewhere throughout the -world, the prices of all things are apparently rising. Really, Pont Aven -and its environs are delightful; its little river is busy and chattering -with many mill-wheels, and the Lovers' Wood--as many know--is well named. - -Because of its many riverside mill-wheels, Pont Aven has been named -Millers' Town by the natives, and also "The famous town with fourteen -mills and fifteen houses." - -Unquestionably, the fame of Pont Aven has been made, or, at least, -furthered, by Mlle. Julia, the most capable landlady of the Travellers' -Hotel. The modest little country-house which formed the original hotel -has now a more magnificent neighbour, built up with a steel frame,--like -a Chicago skyscraper,--and resplendent with modern furniture, with -chairs and sofas of the saddle-bag variety, electric lights, electric -bells which actually do ring, ice-water, afternoon tea, Scotch whiskey, -and all the super-refinements of a twentieth-century civilization. - -It is all very comfortable,--too comfortable the artists will tell -you,--but the eagle eye and strong will of Mlle. Julia still hover over -all, and nothing of deterioration is to be noted in the fare, which is -excellent, and served in the charmingly quaint and beautifully decorated -dining-hall of the little old inn, the precursor of the more splendid -addition. - -[Illustration: Map, ENVIRONS OF PONT AVEN] - -All this is as it should be, of course, but the price has of late gone -up, though it is still thought exceedingly modest by guests who have -spent most of their time in big city or seaside hotels. - -Painters are perhaps fewer here to-day than some years ago, and there -are more of the questionable pleasures of society, such as bridge and -ping-pong, which is a pity. - -Another appendage to the Hotel Julia is found at the St. Nicolas Beach -on the coast. St. Nicolas is hardly more than a bathing-place, but it -is delightfully empty, and altogether Pont Aven, with its environs, is -a charming centre from which to make a week's, a month's, or a summer's -excursion. - -Of the young girls of Pont Aven, Anatole France has uttered many -truthful phrases. Very gracious they are indeed with their great white -quilled collars, their windmill coifs, and their black skirts plaited -like an accordion. - -Here at Pont Aven--as elsewhere--fashion reigns, and the costume as it -is known to-day is quite different from that of fifty years ago, which -was not so picturesque, one would say, judging from old prints. - -The metropolis of these parts and the ecclesiastical capital, for it is -a cathedral city, is Quimper, twenty odd kilometres west of Concarneau. - -Quimper is a real city, though it owns to a trifle less than twenty -thousand inhabitants, and was the ancient capital of the county of -Cornouaille. From all points the marvellously beautiful spires of its -Cathedral of St. Corentin dominate the place. It is one of the most -characteristically Breton towns in the manners and customs of the -people, the general aspect of its wharfs and streets, its shops and its -markets. - -The first establishment of a settlement here was in Roman times, when, -in the eleventh century, it was known as the Civitas Aquilonia. After -the expulsion of the Romans from the land, it became the capital and -the home of the kings or hereditary Counts of Cornouaille, one of whom, -Grollon, has left a legend of great vitality, telling of his emigration -here from Britain across the seas, and the founding of the first -bishopric. - -The cathedral, dedicated to St. Corentin, was built between 1239 and -1515, and shows the marks of the best workmanship of its time. Its fine -spires rival those of St. Pol de Lon and Trguier in the north. The -ground-plan of this fine church is not truly orientated, a detail which -is supposed to indicate the inclining of the head of Christ on the -cross. It is not unique, but the arrangement is so rarely found as to -warrant remark. - -The town hall encloses a library of some thirty-four thousand volumes, -among them a copy of the first dictionary in the Breton tongue, -published at Trguier in 1499. - -The museum contains some interesting archological treasures and some -good modern paintings, including examples of the work of Yan d'Argent, -Joubert Lansyer, Dagnan, and Abram Duvau, mostly depicting Breton -subjects. It also has an admirable collection of old Breton costumes, -etc. - -[Illustration: <u>_From the Museum at Quimper_</u>] - -The Rue Kron is the chief street of the town, and, like the -Kalverstraat of Amsterdam, is one of those narrow thoroughfares so -overflowing with life that to observe and study the passing throng is to -master the manners and customs of the people. - -There are many quaint old houses scattered here and there, and like -those old lean-to and tumble-down structures of Rouen and Lisieux, they -continually reappear on the canvases shown in Paris each year at the two -great exhibitions. - -The Alles Locmaria form a series of magnificently shaded promenades; -this is frequently a feature of French towns above a population of ten -thousand, and a feature which might be imitated in America and England -with considerable accruing advantage. - -South from Quimper lie Pont l'Abb and Penmarc'h, as characteristically -Breton as anything to be seen in the whole province; the former has -something over six thousand inhabitants, and the latter over four, and -each has its own distinct characteristics. - -Pont l'Abb is a town of embroiderers. Everywhere one finds shops whose -sole business it is to sell those fine braid embroideries--yellow on a -black ground--which have made this part of Brittany famous. - -The costumes of Pont l'Abb are famous throughout all Brittany. The -coif recalls those seen in the pictures of the ancient Gauls. It is -virtually a little black velvet hood, and the coif itself is a "_pignon -de couleur_," as the hostess of the hotel described it, and then, -man-fashion, the author felt he was wallowing in a strange subject. -Locally this confection, taken entire, it is inferred, is known as a -_bigouden_,--a picturesque but not precisely instructive word. - -The men wear a hat with three great buckles, and some of them--though -their numbers are few--may yet be seen in the _culotte bouffante_, that -peculiarly Breton species of breeches known in their own tongue as -"_bragou-braz_." - -With such an introduction, one might expect almost any fantastic costume -to step out from a doorway, but, to realize the quaintness of it all to -the full, one should see the inhabitants at the Ftes de la Trminou, -held on the twenty-fifth of March, Whit-Monday, the third Sunday in -July, and the fourth Sunday in September. - -The dances of Pont l'Abb are famous and are indescribable by any one -but a dancing-master. Inasmuch as they invariably take place in the open -air, they may be accepted as the free and spontaneous expression of an -emotion, which stuffy ballroom cotillons most decidedly are not. - -The church of Pont l'Abb dates from a Carmelite foundation of the -fourteenth century, and is a fine work of its era, though surmounted -by a curious and modern bell-tower in wood. Within the church are the -tombs of many of the ancient barons of Pont l'Abb. The magnificent rose -window is of modern glass, but so admirable that one stands before it -with a certain respectful awe, as before that old thirteenth-century -glass in Chartres cathedral. The ancient cloisters are still preserved -and surround a fine garden. - -Pont l'Abb is only five kilometres from the coast, and Loctudy, also -the possessor of a fine medival church, and Penmarc'h form a trio of -Breton coast towns quite as worthy of one's attention as many better -known resorts. - -Penmarc'h--which for some inexplicable reason is pronounced _Penmar_--is -situated in the midst of a great bare peninsula terminating in the -Pointe de Penmarc'h. Instead of a high cliff sheared off at the water's -edge, as one so frequently sees on the north coast, the point sinks -gently into the blue waters of the Atlantic until it is swallowed up, -with never so much as a line of breakers to indicate its presence from -seaward. Penmarc'h in Breton signifies the "head of a horse," and Benzec -Capcaval, a village not far distant, means the same. An ingenious person -will have no difficulty in following the etymology of the latter word, -but the former is quite incomprehensible except to a Welshman. - -Penmarc'h was for four centuries a city which kept pace with Nantes. Its -early riches came from the traffic in "lenten meat," which is simply -codfish. - -The Church of St. Nonna is a late Gothic edifice, with a great square -tower which will be remarked by all who come near it. Its interior -has two baptismal fonts, strangely decorated with stone carvings of -fantastic shapes, depicting the history of Penmarc'h. - -Three kilometres away is the town of St. Gunol, a tiny fishing port -with fine panoramic view of the Bay of Audierne. The chapel of St. -Gunol occupies the base of a great tower, now ruinous, but looking as -though in a former day it must have belonged to some pretentious church. - -"The Handle of the Torch" is one of the local sights. It is formed of a -series of great rocks at some little distance from the mainland. That -bearing the name of "The Torch" is separated from the mainland by the -Monk's Leap, which, according to legend, was the landing-place of St. -Viaud, when he migrated from Hibernia to Brittany ages ago. - -From Quimper to the Point of Raz is one long up and down hill pull of -fifty kilometres, until one finally reaches Point or Cape Sizun, known -to Ptolemy as the promontory of Gaboeum. It is the extreme westerly -point of the peninsula of Cornouaille, and, reckoning from the meridian -of Paris,--for the French do not use the meridian of Greenwich,--is just -on the line of the seventh degree of west longitude. The Lon country -northward of Brest actually extends a trifle farther westward, at Point -St. Mathieu, but most maps do not show it. - -North of the Point of Raz is the great Bay of Douarnenez, with its -sardine fisheries rivalling those of Concarneau, and southward lies the -shallow bay of the Audierne, whose shores, in their own way, are quite -as characteristically wild as those of any part of Northwestern France. - -At the extreme end of the Point of Raz are two unpretentious hotels, -which will please only those of simple tastes and lovers of the -solitary; both are connected with more ambitious establishments at -Audierne. - -The Bay of the Dead, the Hell of Plogaff, and the rocky point itself, -form the tourist attractions, but it will be enough for most lovers of -solitude to bask in the sunlight amid the gentle breezes from the Gulf -Stream, and to leave rock-climbing to those agile spirits who affect -that sort of exercise. - -Near Audierne is the Church of St. Tuglan, a fine fifteenth and -sixteenth century edifice, with many a legend clinging to the name of -its patron saint. It is all very vague, but there is hidden superstition -in abundance, if one only had the patience to work it out. All that can -be learned is, that the holy man was the Abb of Primelin, near by, and -that his feast is celebrated throughout all the Point of Raz. His statue -represents him with a key in the hand, and there is a great iron key -preserved in the church said to have once belonged to him. On the day -of the pardon great quantities of little loaves are stamped with this -key and, according to a popular belief, they will cure a mad dog of his -madness, if he be given a morsel to eat, and possess many other virtues -of a similar nature. In the sacristy of the church are preserved the -teeth of St. Tuglan. The inhabitants of Primelin are known as _paotret -ar alc'houez_, or servants of the key. - -Audierne is a busy little Breton port of perhaps four thousand -inhabitants, and opposite is the fishing village of Poulgoazec, with -sardine factories and all the equipment of the trade. Up to the -sixteenth century, Audierne was even more flourishing than it is to-day, -for the codfish, which were its riches, had not left for other shores. - -The vast Bay of Audierne has a wild and deeply embayed coast-line, -with nothing but a population of sea-birds to add to the gaiety of the -landscape. - -Northward, toward Douarnenez, is Pont Croix, built in the form of an -amphitheatre on the bank of the river Goayen. - -Our Lady of Roscudon is an ancient collegiate church now turned into a -little seminary. The peasant folk round about call it only the Virgin's -church. It is in many respects a remarkable fifteenth-century work. - -[Illustration: <u>_Cape de la Chvre_</u>] - -From the Point of Raz in the south to Cape de la Chvre in the north -extends the great gulf known as the Bay of Douarnenez. Along its shores -are innumerable little fishing villages, which seem almost of another -world. Certainly they have not much in common with other sections of -Brittany, to say nothing of the rest of Europe. - -Douarnenez disputes with Concarneau the privilege of being considered -the centre of the sardine industry, and, like it, has all the -picturesque attributes of brown-sailed boats and of blue and brown nets -hung masthead high for drying, as the craft lie at the quayside, after -having unloaded their catch. - -The delicate blues and purple-browns of these nets are irresistible -to the artist, but few have caught the real tone; indeed, more than -one painter of repute has given it up as a bad job, saying that it was -impossible to transfer it to canvas. - -The beauty of the Bay of Douarnenez has a fascination for artists and -holds one spellbound under certain aspects of the westering sun, when -lights and shadows intermingle in truly heavenly fashion. - -During the civil wars of the sixteenth centuries, Douarnenez was -taken by Jacques de Guengat, but was retaken by Fontenelle in 1595 -and its houses for the most part demolished, and used to build up the -fortifications of the Ile Tristan. - -Douarnenez signifies, literally, the land of the isle. The Ile Tristan -once contained a priory dedicated to St. Tutarn, but now the chief -sights are the lighthouse and a sardine factory. An ancient tradition -recounts that the Ile Tristan received its name from the valiant Tristan -of Lonais, one of the knights of the Round Table. - -Except for the view from the gallery of the great lighthouse, the -trip to the island is hardly worth the making. The view from this -vantage-point is, however, remarkable; indeed, it is unique, the writer -is inclined to think, in all the world. Suffice to say of it that it is -unworldly, and yet gay with the workaday coming and going of the sardine -fleets, as such a paradoxical description will permit one to imagine. -All is peaceful, and yet there is a steady inflow of industry that is in -no wise detrimental to its unspoiled tranquillity. Perhaps if an artist -lived by the shores of the deep blue and purple waters of this bay for a -matter of two score of years, he might do it justice; until then--never. - -Concarneau as a port is more interesting than Douarnenez, but the bay of -Concarneau, delightful as it is, has not a tithe of the variations that -are played upon the gently flowing waters of the bay of Douarnenez by -the setting sun. - -The peninsula of Crozon shelters the bay of Douarnenez on the north. At -one pronged extremity is Roscanvel, jutting out into the roads of Brest, -and at the other is Cape de la Chvre. Between the two is a wonderful -country of rock-strewn coast-line and poppy-covered inland fields. - -[Illustration: <u>_Woman of Chateaulin_</u>] - -Chateaulin, situated on the river Aulne, a little beyond the head of -the peninsula, is the metropolis of these parts. It owes its name to -an ancient hermitage of St. Idunet. Its present name grew from Nin or -Castel Nin, then Castelin, and finally Chateaulin. The hermitage, in -time, was succeeded by the priory of Locquidunet, and that in its turn -became the parish church of the present town. - -Hol, Count of Cornouaille, who became Duke of Brittany, incorporated -the town with the ducal domain, from which time on its history was one -of partisan strife. - -The Revolution elevated it to the rank of a market-town, and changed -its name to "Cit sur Aulne" in an attempt to suppress the supposedly -aristocratic prefix of Chteau. Ultimately, it reverted to its former -name. - -Near by are the Black Mountains, of which Men Hom is the chief -eminence, its summit rising to a height of 330 metres, with other peaks -at the height of 299, 272, and 248 metres. The heights are not so very -considerable, but their proximity to the sea exaggerates them, and -travellers by road--bicycle riders and travellers in motor-cars--will -think the process of crossing the Black Mountains, on the way from North -to South Finistre, as formidable as the task of Hannibal. - -Crozon is a much larger place than Chateaulin, isolated though it is -from all direct communication with other parts. It is situated some -250 feet above the sea, on what the French call a wild table-land, and -dominates the Bay of Douarnenez from the north. All around Crozon are -innumerable grottoes and rock-cut caves and excavations, which always -have a certain fascination for some folk, but will hardly interest the -devotee to the beauties of landscape. - -Camaret, at the very tip of the peninsula, is another safe port for -artists. Here are fishing-boats and all the accessories, like those -seen at Douarnenez and Concarneau, and with a landscape background and -a foreground of blue water that many whose names are great in the world -of art have painted and many more will paint. Cottets's "Fishing-boats -at Camaret," in the Luxembourg Gallery, is perhaps the best known of -these pictures, but the composition is always the same. The background -never changes,--the tiny chapel with its dwindling spire, the beacon, -and the tall, gaunt stone house on the little mole running seaward and -protecting the port, group themselves willingly enough into the most -charming view in all the town. - -The fishing-boats of the foreground change their positions, but -kaleidoscopically only, and one may return year after year and see -practically the same groupings, with only trifling differences. - -One makes his way from Camaret to the great military port and trading -town of Brest--if one need to go there at all, which is doubtful--either -by boat across the Goulet and the roads of Brest, some sixteen -kilometres by a puffy little excursion-boat, which, on a Sunday or a -feast-day, is anything but comfortable, or by road by way of Faou, which -is a great fruit and vegetable market for Brest, and not much more. - -There is a considerable display of costume here on market-days,--which -appear to be every day,--and the town is picturesque enough of itself, -though, strange to say, it smacks of suburbia,--a place where one gets -his news second-hand from some neighbouring city. - -[Illustration: <u>_Camaret_</u>] - - - - -CHAPTER VII. - -FINISTRE--NORTH - - -The northernmost part of the peninsula of Finistre has not the -abounding or varied interests of the south. Its monuments of other days -are not so many or so remarkable, and the sterner conditions of life -seem to have had a sobering effect upon manners and customs. - -Brest and its wonderfully ample harbour has by no means the attractions -of Vannes or of Nantes for the bird of passage, though its commercial -and strategic value is great, and its history vivid and eventful. In -spite of all this, there is little that is interesting to-day in its -straight streets and rectangular blocks. - -This fortified and exceedingly animated town owns to eighty odd thousand -inhabitants, and is so pervaded by military and naval organization that -there is very little local colour, very little atmosphere of the past -hanging about it to-day. To find this, one has to go back to Faou, to -Plougastel or Landerneau or Landivisiau, all within a radius of twenty -kilometres or so. - -The great bay of Brest is a swarming waterway, upon which the little -excursion steamers, tugboats, great cruisers and battle-ships, -torpedo-boats and torpedo-boat destroyers, and yet other craft built to -catch torpedo-boat destroyers, are all apparently entangled inexplicably -each in the wakes of all the others. - -The entrance to this harbour is known as the Goulet, and is lighted -by five lighthouses, which at night send out their twinkling rays of -red, green, and white in most kaleidoscopic fashion,--all Greek to a -landsman, but as clear as day to the Breton pilots who bring the great -ships in and out of this narrow waterway. In the ninth century, Brest -was already in existence, in spite of its modern aspect to-day, and -belonged to the Counts of Lon. Its future was as varied as the history -of Brittany. - -It opened its ports to the army of Charles VIII. in 1489, in spite of -the efforts of Duchess Anne to prevent such a proceeding. How far she -succumbed will be recalled when one realizes that two years later her -marriage with this prince was the first step which united the province -of Brittany for ever with France. Brest from this time took on a new -importance, until Cardinal Richelieu came to designate it as one of the -principal arsenals of France, and then, in 1631, came the creation of -the great dockyards. - -Of architectural monuments, Brest still has the Church of St. Louis -(1688-1778) and the twelfth and thirteenth century castle. As an -ecclesiastical monument, the church is quite unworthy of attention, -though it has some interesting tombs and monuments. - -The castle is an admirable example of medival fortification, with some -remarkable accessory details in its construction. The isolated donjon -tower was in other days a sort of independent citadel, and formed a -last refuge for the besieged occupants of the castle, should its outer -walls give way to the invaders. The Tower of Azenor and the Tower of -Anne of Brittany, so named for the respective princesses, are admirably -preserved parts. - -The local museum and library have fine collections. There are fifty-six -thousand volumes in the library, and the collection of paintings -contains many Breton subjects by modern masters. - -The dockyard--navy-yard in the language of the United States, _port -militaire_ in French--is closed to the general public, but a marvellous -detailed bird's-eye view of the city, the docks, and the roads is -obtained from the platform of the Pont Tournant. - -Nineteen kilometres from Brest is Landerneau, and the junction of the -railway lines to Kerlouan and Folgot in the north, and to Quimper -and Concarneau in the south. Landerneau from the twelfth to sixteenth -centuries had a distinct feudal administration. - -The folk of Landerneau have opinions of their own, as witness the -remark, made at Versailles under the regency by a Breton noble hailing -from this place: "The Landerneau moon is larger than that at Versailles." - -Again there is a Breton proverb which runs thus: "There will always be -something to talk about in Landerneau." Mostly this is used when a widow -marries again, which may be taken to mean much or little, as one chooses. - -Landerneau has a fine little tidal harbour, and its streets and wharfs -are busy with the hum of coastwise traffic and river life, and, with its -Church of St. Thomas of Canterbury and its "best and cleanest inn in the -bishopric" (Htel de l'Univers), as a traveller of a century or more ago -once wrote, it has no lack of interest for travellers. - -[Illustration: <u>_Landerneau_</u>] - -One is not likely to be met with a statement by his host, as was the -century-old traveller, that a respectable man begs to know if he may eat -at the same table, and accordingly one will not have to reply, "With all -my heart," for most likely there will be twenty at the common table, and -all will sit down to a meal of all the good things of life, "sea food" -and golden cider and apple sweetmeats predominating. - -It is all excellent, however, and the abundance of deliciously cooked -fish will make one think it were no hardship to make a lenten sojourn -here. A great church and a good hotel are indeed all-sufficient -attractions for a market-town of perhaps eight thousand souls. - -The town borders upon a picturesque little river, the Elorn, which -finally flows into the harbour of Brest. From the fifth century until -the sixteenth, it was far and away a more important place than its now -more opulent neighbour at the river's mouth. Then it was the chief town -of Lon, the domain of the De Rohans, one of the ancient Breton baronies. - -At the entrance of one of the principal streets--Rue Plouedern--are -two curious ancient pieces of sculpture,--a lion and a man armed with -a sword, bearing the inscription "Tire Tve." They came from an old -house which existed here in the sixteen hundreds, and are fitting -examples of that curious medival symbolism which so often crops out in -domestic and religious architecture. Although the chief of Landerneau's -ecclesiastical monuments is the sixteenth-century edifice dedicated to -St. Thomas of Canterbury, the Church of St. Houardon is a contemporary -work of some pretension; its base Renaissance portico was added at a -later time. The arms and emblems of the De Rohans are conspicuous in -both edifices. - -July fifteenth is the great fte-day hereabout, when the horse-races, -boat-races, and illuminations attract the peasantry from the inland -country and the workmen from the dockyards at Brest. - -Five kilometres away is the Chapel of St. Eloi of the sixteenth century. -This sainted personage is represented throughout Finistre with the -attributes of a bishop and of a horseshoer. Horses are placed under his -protection, and the Pardon of St. Eloi is celebrated in various parts -with much merrymaking, and always with much firing of guns. A motor-car -is not beloved here, and if one incidentally or accidentally come upon -a festival of St. Eloi, he had best forthwith make tracks in retreat. -The actual religious ceremony consists of a mounted cavalier riding -up to the chapel door and making a sort of salute or obeisance three -times from the saddle without putting foot to the ground, after which -he deposits on the altar a packet of horse-hair, or even the tail of a -horse. - -In the Forest of Landerneau, six kilometres southwest, is the Chteau of -"La Joyeuse Garde," celebrated in the romance of the chivalry of King -Arthur's time, wherein King Arthur, Lancelot of the Lake, and Tristan of -Lyonnesse played so great a part. - -Landivisiau, on the main railway line from Paris to Brest, has a -remarkable church under the protection of St. Turiaff,--which in Breton -is Tivisian,--who was Archbishop of Dol in the eighth century. - -This fine church is a sixteenth-century work, and exhibits all the notes -of the early period of the Renaissance, but, in spite of this, the -richness of its portal, its bell-tower, its fine spire, and its nave -and choir rebuilt in the best of late Gothic, make it a building to be -remarked among the churches of Brittany, which, as a rule, have not the -ornateness and luxuriance of ornament of those of Normandy and other -parts of France. - -The cemetery of Landivisiau has a remarkable ossuary, supported by most -fantastic shapes, among them a skeleton armed with two arrows, a woman -in an unmistakably Spanish costume, and a most diabolical Satan. - -The fair-day at Landivisiau is the great celebration of these parts. It -is not so ambitious as many of those held elsewhere, but it will give -the visitor the opportunity of making an intimate acquaintance with the -Bas Bretons in a manner not possible in the larger towns. - -The dress of the people is peculiar, with the great baggy trousers of -the men, the coifs of the women, and the general display and love of the -finery of bright colours which seem inherent with a people living upon -the seacoast. - -In general, their features are heavy and their expression more or less -sullen, although this does not often indicate bad temper. Unquestionably -their carriage indicates hard labour, and the furrows and ridges of -their countenances come only from continuous contact with the open air. -Still, their bodies are stout and broad, and men and women alike have -none of the softness and languor of the southern provinces, albeit the -Armorican climate is mild throughout the year. - -[Illustration: <u>_Calvary, Plougastel_</u>] - -Opposite Brest, just across the estuary of the Elorn, is Plougastel, -famous for its melons and its green peas, and, above all, for its -picturesque calvary. - -The whole peninsula of Plougastel-Daoulas is a vast market-garden for -Brest, and, for that matter, for the hotels at Paris. The verdure and -vegetable growth is in striking contrast to the barren fringe of rocky -coast-line, and therein lies one of the charms of the whole aspect of -nature as it is seen here. - -Nothing in Brittany is more picturesque than the little villages of -Kerrault, Roc'hqurezen, Roc'huivlen, and Roc'hquillion. This is a -commonplace perhaps to those who know the region well, but it will not -be to strangers, and so it is reiterated here. - -The Chapel St. John of Plougastel is perhaps two kilometres away. It is -here, on the twenty-fourth of June of each year, that its pardon brings -so great a throng of visitors that they really have to bring their -eatables with them or starve, thus making a fast-day of a feast. - -In the cemetery is that great calvary which has so often been pictured, -the most considerable work of its kind in existence. - -It was erected 1602-04, in memory of a plague which fell upon the land -in 1598. - -In recent times it has been restored. On the front is an altar -ornamented with statues of St. Sebastien, St. Pierre, and St. Roch. The -frieze shows a multitude of bas-reliefs, illustrating the life of Jesus, -and the risers of the steps are a series of quaintly carved little -people, over two hundred in number. On the plinth is a risen Christ and -a tablet bearing the date of erection of the work. It is a marvellous -expression of religious devotion, and far surpasses other wayside -shrines in Brittany, and indeed in all the world. - -The inhabitants of Plougastel have preserved their ancient costumes with -little or no modern interpolation. Particularly is this to be noted -among the young girls, on a Sunday, as they come from the mass, and also -on the fifteenth of August, when there is a great religious procession. -The "Pardon of Plougastel" is known also as the "Birds' Pardon," for a -great bird fair is opened St. John's Day. - -On the same side of the Goulet of Brest, that narrow inlet which is the -entrance from the sea to the bay, is Le Conquet. It sits at the very tip -of Finistre, just above the Pte. St. Mathieu, and its great lighthouse, -which, with a thirty-second eclipse, sends its rays some twenty miles -out to sea. - -Le Conquet has but fifteen hundred inhabitants, and its isolated -population apparently has not many friends, else the place would -be filled to overflowing in the summer months, which it is not. Its -two hotels, St. Barbara and Htel de Bretagne, are all that could be -expected, and more, hence the paucity of visitors to this charming bit -of "land's end" is the more remarkable. - -Anciently Le Conquet was a strong fortified place, and it underwent a -great number of sieges, and was burned by the English in 1558. Eight -houses alone of the present habitations of the town survived the flames. - -The port is frequented only by the fishing-smacks, which land vast -quantities of lobsters and shrimps. - -There is also an ancient pottery here, the most ancient in all -Finistre. Its pots and pans are found in all the homesteads hereabouts, -and such tourists from all parts as actually do come here carry -numberless specimens away with them. - -The modern church, after the ogival manner, is far more satisfactory -than most modern ecclesiastical monuments. There is a fifteenth-century -portal, however, and some contemporary statues, which save it from being -wholly a modern work. - -The coast-line round about is the rough, abrupt ending of the Lon -plateau, jagged and deeply serrated like the jaws of a shark, as the -native tells one with respect to about all of the Breton coast-line. -Fine beaches do exist here and there, but in the main it is a stern and -rock-bound shore that buffets the Atlantic's waves in Finistre. - -Three times a week one can make the journey by steamboat to Ouessant, -which English sailor-folk--those who go down to the sea in great -liners--know as Ushant. The le Molne and the le Ouessant are the -principal members of the group, and are even more stern and rock-bound -than the mainland. - -"Very little comfort on the boat," you will be told at the port-office, -where you make inquiry as to the hour of departure. Any but good sailors -and true vagabond travellers had best leave the journey out of their -itinerary, although it has unique interest. - -There are numerous isles and islets to pass on the way, and the Chausse -des Pierres Noires is a roughly strewn ledge which breathes danger in -the very spray continually flying over it. Molne is a kilometre long -and rather more than half as wide. If ever the population of a sea-girt -isle had to take in one another's washing in order to make a living, -this is the place, for nearly six hundred men, women, and children make -their habitation upon the isle. - -Needless to say there are some things of the twentieth-century -civilization of which they know not, such as automobiles, tram-cars, or -locomotives. There is not even a donkey engine on the island, and there -are no bicycles or perambulators, hence there is something for which to -be thankful. Considerable quantities of vegetables are exported, the -population living apparently on fish, and the "farms" are divided into -plots so small as to be almost infinitesimal. - -The island is sadly remembered for the part it played in the wreck of -the great South African liner, the _Drummond Castle_, in recent years. -The inhabitants of the isle, poor in this world's goods though they -were, did much to succour the survivors, an act which is writ large in -the history of life-saving. - -The isle of Ouessant itself has nearly three thousand population, and -boasts a market and a hotel, besides numerous hamlets or suburbs. The -isle is eight kilometres long, and perhaps three and a half wide, and is -known to the government authorities both as a canton and as a commune. - -Pliny knew of this rock-bound isle, the foremost outpost of France, -and called it Uxantos, though it was known to the ancient Bretons as -Enez Heussa. Practically, the island is a table-land with an abundance -of pure water, and the soil very productive so far as new potatoes and -an early crop of barley go. The cultivation is mostly in the hands of -the women, the men being nearly all engaged in the fisheries, or as -sailors. Ouessant is a little land of windmills, though in no way does -it resemble Holland. For the most part, they are sturdy stone buildings, -and work but lazily, many of them being dismantled, as if there were -not enough for them to do. Some years ago a fort was erected here, and -a garrison of colonial troops billeted upon the island. It is a sad job -at best to be a soldier in a colonial outpost such as this, and whether -the observation is just or not, it is made, nevertheless, that the -appearance of the garrison of Ouessant is as though it were made up, -literally, of the scum of the earth. - -As for history, the le d'Ouessant is by no means entirely lacking. It -was evangelized in the sixth century by St. Pol Aurelian, who built a -chapel here at a spot known as Portz Pol. - -In 1388, the English ravaged the island, and the former seigniory was -made a marquisate in 1597, in favour of Rn de Rieux, the governor of -Brest, whose descendants sold their birthright to the king in 1764. - -The glorious battle of Ouessant--at least, the French call it "_la -glorieuse bataille_," and so it really was--took place in 1778 in the -neighbouring waters between a French fleet under the Comte d'Orvilliers -and the English Admiral Keppel. - -As may be supposed, these far-jutting, rocky islands have been the scene -of many shipwrecks. There is a proverb known to mariners which classes -these Breton isles as follows: - - "Who sights Belle le sights his refuge, - Who sights le Groix sights joy, - Who sights Ouessant sights blood." - -When a sailorman of Ouessant is lost at sea, his parents or friends -bring to his former dwelling a little cross of wood, which serves the -purpose of a corpse, and the clergy officiate over it, and his friends -weep over it as if it were his true body. - -Finally a procession forms, and, with much solemnity, this little cross -of wood, after having been placed in a casket, is deposited at the foot -of a statue of St. Pol, a sad and glorious symbol of grief and also of -hope. - -The women of Ouessant, whether in mourning or not--and they mostly are -in mourning--wear a costume of black cloth, cut their hair short and -wear a square sort of cap. For the most part, the inhabitants--all -those, in fact, who are natives, and there are but few mainlanders -here--speak only Breton. - -The Lighthouse de Crac'h, a white and black painted tower, with a -magnificent light flashing its rays twenty-four miles out at sea, is a -monument to the parental French government, which neglects nothing in -the way of guarding its coasts by modern search-lights, quite the best -of their kind in all the known world. There is another light here known -as the Stiff Lighthouse, which carries eighteen miles. - -Near the lighthouse is the tiny chapel of Our Lady of Farewells, a place -of pilgrimage on the day of the local pardon (1st September). - -On the mainland, just north of Brest and Le Conquet, on the way to the -Channel, is St. Rnan, the site of an ancient hermitage founded by an -anchorite who came from Ireland some time in the eighth century. There -are many quaint sixteenth-century houses here, and a large market-house -of the spectacular order. - -[Illustration: <u>_Lighthouse of Crac'h, Ouessant_</u>] - -Ploudalmzeau is an important town of Lower Lon with a Htel -Bretagne--as might be expected--also most excellent--also as might be -expected--except for its sanitary conveniences, which, to say nothing -of not being up to date, are practically non-existent. It is very -disconcerting of a rainy autumn morning to have to go down to the back -yard _puits_--as a pump or well is variously known--in order to perform -one's ablutions. - -The comparatively modern church is far more magnificent than one would -expect to find in so small a town. It contains a curious statue of -the Virgin with a Breton coif, and also a fine modern fresco by Yan -d'Argent. A thirteenth-century sculptured cross is to be seen in the -churchyard. - -Folgot has an important local fair, and is celebrated throughout all -Brittany for the pilgrimage to its magnificent shrine of Our Lady of -Folgot, one of the most beautiful ecclesiastical monuments of the -province. - -Toward the middle of the fourteenth century there lived in the -neighbouring forest a poor idiot named Salaun, better known as the -forest fool; in Breton, Folgot. After his death, there appeared written -on the leaves of a great white lily, in letters of gold, the admonition -to the people to build a great church here to the glory of Our Lady, and -this was begun in 1409, and consecrated in 1419; it became a collegiate -church in 1423. It has neither transepts nor apse, but is in every -other particular a remarkably beautiful work. There are many interior -furnishings of great value. - -Folgot is at its best on the great day of the pardon, on the eighth of -September. - -St. Pol de Lon, Roscoff, and Morlaix call the hurried tourist off to -the northward, though why a tourist ever should be hurried is something -the true vagabond never can understand. - -Roscoff has much to endear it to any one. It has not the loneliness or -even the quaintness of some of the daintily set seacoast towns of the -South, but its unique attractions are so many and varied that one loves -it for itself alone, quite as much as if it were a celebrated artists' -sketching-ground, and far more than one would were it a really "popular" -resort. - -First of all, it is celebrated for its early vegetables, due principally -to the excellence of its soil, and secondly to the mildness of its -climate. - -Because of its temperate climate, Roscoff might be called the Mentone -of the North, though it is not yet overrun by invalids and bath-chairs. -Summer and winter, it is a watering-place, with fir-trees replacing the -palms of the South. The visitor should remark the enormous fig-tree in -the Capuchins' enclosure, the grounds of an ancient convent (1621), -which is now private property, and costs the sum of twenty-five -centimes to see. - -The Church of Our Lady of Croaz-Baz, with its fine domed tower dating -from 1550, is one of the chief ecclesiastical monuments of Brittany. - -[Illustration: <u>_Roscoff_</u>] - -Among the many quaint and curious houses of the town is one known as the -house of Mary Stuart. In its interior court are seven arcades supported -by columns, quite like a convent cloister, a disposition of parts which -must be purely local, as other examples are to be seen elsewhere in the -town. Another memory of the Scottish queen, whose last, long, sad adieu -to France is one of the links that never breaks, is the Chapel of St. -Ninian, built in 1548 as a souvenir of her landing when she first came -to France as the betrothed of the Dauphin. It is a most romantically -disposed structure, though with no architectural details of worth except -a small turret at an angle jutting over the lapping waves. - -Roscoff has a Chapel des Adieux, where the wives and mothers of the -fishermen go to pray as the men embark for the fishing. - -Offshore, a quarter-hour distant by boat, is the Isle of Batz, separated -from Roscoff only by a narrow strait, with a current so swift that the -passage is only possible in the best of weather. It does not look so -very perilous an undertaking at other times, but the Roscoff sailorman -certainly does know how to handle a boat, and when he says "No," it's -best not to attempt to persuade him to the contrary. He will not mind a -wetting himself,--if you pay him a fair price for the undertaking,--but -he will probably want, and be entitled to, a good, fat fee for rescuing -his passenger from drowning. - -The Isle of Batz, like most places in Brittany, has its own legend. -It is to the effect that St. Pol, coming in 530 from Britain to this -low, gray, melancholy islet, met a dragon, which, having ravaged the -neighbouring mainland country, had fled hither in order to escape the -fury of the peasant-folk. - -St. Pol, as became one who had the interests of his fellow men at heart, -forthwith killed the monster, and conveyed the news to the people -awaiting his return by rapping on the ground with his baton (_batz_). - -The rise and fall of the tide at the Isle of Batz shows remarkable -fluctuations, ten metres, something more than thirty feet, being noted -between high and low water. - -Its coast-line has great banks of sand, a delight to the bather in -salt water, but the rock formations are by no means so remarkable as -those on most of the Breton isles. The soil is arid and there is not -much luxuriant vegetation. There is a population of over twelve hundred -souls, but few apparently have any ambition to migrate to the mainland, -scarce a rifle-shot distant. In the island church is preserved the -stole of St. Pol, of Byzantine silk. If genuine, it has attained a -greater age than most confections of its class. An ancient Roman chapel -or temple existed here in former times, and was succeeded by a monastery -founded by St. Pol, now in ruins and mostly buried in the sands. - -St. Pol's renown became such that a Breton king made him Archbishop -of Lon, giving him special care and control of the city bearing his -name. These rights came down to the holy man's successors, and the -place became more religious than politic, as one reads in the old-time -chronicles. The riches which had been acquired attracted the Normans, -who devastated the cathedral church in 875. In the fourteenth century, -Duguesclin occupied the town in the name of Charles V. The religious -wars of the sixteenth century diminished the prosperity of the town, and -a bloody submission was forced upon the Revolutionary rebels here in -1793. - -St. Pol is somewhat doubtfully claimed as the native place of the -celebrated sixteenth-century sculptor, Michel Colomb (1512). - -The Chapel of Creizker or Creis-ker, with its astonishing bell-tower -piercing the sky at a height of nearly 250 feet, owes its origin to -a young girl of Lon, whom St. Kirec, Archdeacon of Lon in the sixth -century, had cured of paralysis. The present structure is, of course, -more modern. Albert le Grand fixes the date in the fourteenth century, -and this is probably correct. There are innumerable evidences of the -best of Gothic workmen, and there is much decorative embellishment -which, though not according to the accepted Gothic forms, is certainly -not Renaissance. - -The ancient cathedral merits rank with the Chapel of Creizker, and is -perhaps even a more consistent piece of work, though it represents three -distinct epochs. The two towers are considerably less in height than -that of the Creizker, but they are beautifully spired. The interior -contains innumerable decorative accessories, making it rank with those -cathedrals of France making up that third series, of which Nantes, -Coutances, Narbonne, and Angers are the best examples. - -In the choir is the tomb of St. Pol, and his skull, an arm bone, and a -finger are encased in a little coffer for the veneration of the devout. - -There is a series of sixty-nine delicately sculptured choir-stalls -dating from 1512, and, although not rivalling such great works of their -kind as one sees at their best at Amiens, Albi, or Rodez, they are -sufficiently elaborate to deserve attention. - -Innumerable tombs are set about the choir, many of them curiously and -characteristically sculptured. - -There is also a tiny bell which passes for having belonged to St. Pol. -On the days of pardon the notes of this ancient bell still ring out over -the heads of the faithful, who believe that they will cure any malady of -the head or hearing. - -[Illustration: MA DOUEZ] - -In one of the chapels of the Cathedral of St. Pol de Lon is an ancient -painting. It depicts a head with three visages, with the legend in -Gothic-Breton characters, "_Ma Douez_" (_Mon Dieu_). It represents, of -course, the Trinity, but, like many religious symbols, is more grotesque -than devout. - -Morlaix, the ancient Mons Relaxus of Roman times, is the metropolis of -the northwestern Breton coast. It achieved no great importance, until -it came under the sway of the Breton dukes, and became one of their -principal residences. The inhabitants of Morlaix declared for the League -in the period of the religious wars, and the castle was besieged and -carried by the troops of the king under Marshal d'Aumont, in 1594. - -Being at the head of the great bay of Morlaix, or, rather, just above -it, at the juncture of the rivers Jarlot and Quefflent, the city enjoys -a novel situation, and contains many curious contrasting effects of the -old and new order of things. - -The Viaduct of Morlaix, by which the railway traverses the town, is -really an imposing sight, and is reckoned as the chief of its class -in all France. The natives show an astonishing vagueness or ignorance -with regard thereto. You will be told that it was the work of the -Romans,--"very ancient, look you,"--and again that it was one of the -works of the indefatigable Vauban, who must really have worked in his -sleep, or through understudies, if all the works attributed to him -throughout France be genuine. Vauban must have been to France what -Michelangelo was to the universe,--according to the genial, though -skeptical, Mark Twain. - -The Church of St. Martin in the Fields is the chief ecclesiastical -monument of Morlaix, in point of antiquity at least, as it dates from -the ancient priory foundation of 1128, by Herv, Count of Lon. - -The Church of St. Melaine originated also in the fifteenth-century -priory of the same name, founded by Guyormarc'h de Lon. - -The local museum, which is an unusually splendid establishment for a -town the size of Morlaix, possesses a collection of modern paintings, -including a great number of Breton scenes, forming a wonderfully -interesting exposition of Breton manners and customs. - -There are innumerable old houses in wood and stone here, and they put -Morlaix in the rank with Lisieux, in Normandy, for its picturesque and -tumble-down effects of the domestic architecture of other days. - -One of the finest examples of a great house of its time is that called -Pouliguen, which has a fine carved wood staircase that no one can afford -to miss seeing. - -[Illustration: <u>_Carved Wood Staircase, Morlaix_</u>] - -The harbour of Morlaix opens out widely into the channel, and is -commanded by the Chteau du Taureau, in reality a granite fortress, -one of the military defences of the north coast. St. Jean du Doigt -and the Point of Primel lie some twenty kilometres north of Morlaix, -directly on the coast. The former is the scene of one of the most -picturesque of pardons and is celebrated throughout Brittany. - -[Illustration: <u>_Procession of Sailors, St. Jean du Doigt_</u>] - -Its name comes from its church (1440-1513), in which the index finger -of the right hand of St. John the Baptist is kept. The churchyard has -a fine Gothic entrance gateway and a funeral chapel of the sixteenth -century. Within the same enclosure is also an elaborate fountain -surrounded by a Renaissance construction of much beauty. It was planned -by Anne of Brittany, who brought an artist from Italy to design the -work. The Pardon of St. Jean du Doigt takes place on the twenty-fourth -of June of each year. Decidedly it is not to be omitted from one's -itinerary, if it be possible to include it. - -It is one of the strangest survivals of the belief in an ancient holy -relique yet existing in France, and annually attracts great hordes of -the devout from all parts of Brittany and France, to say nothing of -strangers from oversea. - -A good motor-car is indispensable to enable one to flee from the throng -after it is all over, for the railway lies at least a dozen miles away, -and local conveyances are scarce, poor, and expensive. - - - - -CHAPTER VIII. - -THE CTES DU NORD - - -The north coast of Brittany, the present-day Department of the Ctes -du Nord, is the great stretch of coast-line between Morlaix on the -west to the Bay of Mont St. Michel at Dol. Its large towns are few in -number, but the whole region is unusually prolific in the memory of -deeds of a historic past, and accordingly it has become the favourite -touring-ground of a great number of French and English summer visitors -who, it is regretfully stated, have become responsible for a good deal -of the claptrap and many of the catchpenny devices. - -It is possible to avoid casinos, tea-rooms, and golf-links, but they are -more abundant here in the neighbourhood of Dinan, St. Malo, and Dinard -than in most other parts of Continental Europe. This is a pity, for the -region is one of the most delightfully picturesque anywhere, although -there is little of the grandeur of desolation about it. - -A great national road runs northwesterly from Guingamp to Lannion and -Trguier, two outposts of the Ctes du Nord so far off the beaten track -that they are not as yet overrun with the conventional tourists. There -is little at either place to amuse one, except the local manners and -customs, but they are quaint and interesting beyond belief, and the -wonderful combinations of sea and sky, which will make the artist's -heart leap for joy. - -Lannion boasts of six thousand inhabitants, most of whom play at bowls -on Sunday or a feast-day, and other days engage in the sundry humble -pursuits of the usual Breton large town. - -The name Lannion first appeared in the twelfth century, when the -seigniory of Lannion formed a part of the domain of the house of -Penthivre, which was united with that of Brittany in 1199. - -There are three quaint and charming hotels at Lannion, at any of which -you will get the best of local fare at prices ranging from 120 to 220 -francs per month--all found. One will not go wrong at any of them, and -one does not differ greatly from another, in spite of the difference in -price. There is an abundance of what is commonly known as good cheer, -by which is really meant good fare, and there are comfortable beds, a -sound roof over one's head, and genial hosts, of course. - -This estimable person is literally everywhere at once, showing the -guests to their rooms, presiding at the table, or, at least, at the -serving of it, and generally overseeing everything that goes on. - -"_Allons, messieurs, table_," is called, in a melodious voice, -instead of the ringing of the usual brain-racking bell, and one by -one travelling salesmen, the permanent guests, and the mere tourists -seat themselves at the long table, which literally groans--like those -in the historical novels--with the best of country cookery. There is -nothing Parisian about it; there are no ices, no forced fruit, and no -savoury messes with mushrooms and truffles, but there is the abundant -and excellent local fare of sea food, hung mutton, new potatoes and -asparagus, and little wood strawberries in heaps, and that delightful -golden cider, which, if it be not an improvement on the Norman variety, -is just as good, and a delightful summer drink. - -The fine location of Lannion, on the right bank of the estuary of the -little river Leguer, accounts for much of the local charm, and the habit -that the population has of grouping itself picturesquely about the -quay-side--without the least provocation--accounts for a good deal more. - -There are many old houses in the town, and other more pretentious -architectural monuments, offering enough variety to the artist or lover -of architecture to occupy him a long time. - -The port is a harbour of refuge, of which there are not many on the -north coast of Brittany, and the traffic in salmon and sardines is -considerable, though not rivalling in bulk that of the greater ports in -the southwest. - -Trguier has much the same attractions as Lannion, though its population -is but half as large. Its origin was some huts which anciently grouped -themselves around the monastery of Trecar, founded by St. Tugdal in the -sixth century. It has an imposing cathedral, a really great religious -edifice, and one which for the beauty of its parts is scarcely excelled -by that of Quimper itself. - -The history of Trguier was very lively, from the time of the Norman -invasion of Brittany down through the troublous days of the Revolution. - -The men of Trguier, one learns from history, accepted the law of -the "rights of man" but coldly, and indeed M. le Mintier, Bishop of -Trguier, was one of those churchmen barred from the National Assembly -by the manifesto. He fled to Jersey. - -[Illustration: OLD HOUSE TRGUIER] - -Trguier is the native place of Ernest Renan (1823-92), and his quaint, -timbered house may well be considered a literary shrine of the very -first rank. - -[Illustration: <u>_House of Ernest Renan, Trguier_</u>] - -Convents, where women may find a quiet refuge away from the world, are -not so numerous as they once were in France. "Boarding-houses kept for -unprotected women by nuns, with a supposed Christian devotion and a -profound appreciation of ready money," was the way in which an English -writer once spoke of them, and it was most unfair. Certainly, the -writer of those lines never knew--and she professed to know France--the -Convent of the Cross at Trguier, where women can live in quiet -seclusion, "all found," for a matter of seventy-five francs a month. To -those interested, the above may be worth investigation. - -Not far off is the Manor of Kermartin, where, in 1255, St. Yves, the -patron saint of advocates, was born. - -On the nineteenth of May a procession sets out from the Trguier -cathedral for this shrine, to render homage to the patron of the men -of law. On the eve of the nineteenth all mendicants and vagabonds -presenting themselves at the manor are fed and lodged, which makes the -perpetuation of the ceremony one of real benefit to humanity, though its -endurance is brief. - -St. Yves is the only canonized Breton saint. He was born on the seventh -of October, 1253, and accompanied Peter of Dreux, reigning duke, to the -seventh crusade. - -In the Breton tongue his praises are sung as follows: - - "N'hen eus ket en Breiz, n'hen eus ket unan, - N'hen eus ket eur Zant evel Sant Erwan." - -This in French comes to the following: - - "Il n'y a pas en Bretagne, il n'y en a pas un, - Il n'y a pas un Saint comme St. Yves." - -The last will and testament of St. Yves is preserved in the sacristy -of the Church de Minihy, and also his breviary. His tomb is in the -cemetery, surmounted by an arcade through which the faithful pass, -crawling upon their knees when they seek his aid. - -[Illustration: <u>_Shrine of St. Yves, Trguier_</u>] - -Not many travellers in France have ever even heard of Seven Isles, -situated five kilometres or more off the coast near Trguier. The -corsairs of Jersey and Guernsey took refuge upon this little -archipelago in the olden time, and long maintained a form of government -quite of their own making, and even erected fortifications, of which -that on the le aux Moines has still some suggestion of strength. - -Usually quite deserted, there are two seasons of the year when the -isles take on a population of residents from the mainland entirely -out of keeping with their size and number: in February for seaweed -gathering, and from June to September for the gathering of sea-mosses, -or _jargot_, as the natives call it. One who would experience something -out of the ordinary could not do better than make this little excursion. -The passage from the mainland does not look so very terrible to the -stranger, but not even the hardy fishermen will attempt it if the sky -is the least threatening. He says simply, "Only go out in very fine -weather," and sits tight and prays and whistles for that same fine -weather, though he evidently does not expect it to come very soon, for -with every bit of fleecy cloud that crosses his vision, he exclaims: -"Big storm soon!" - -Paimpol is situated at the head of a well-sheltered bay on the banks -of an infinitesimal little river known as Quinic. There is nothing to -mark Paimpol as a tourist resort, and accordingly it is almost an ideal -resting-place for one wearied with the onrush of the world. It is not -even a bathing-place, as it well might be. Its long Rue de l'glise is -its principal thoroughfare, and through it all the small traffic of the -town circulates at a most sedate pace. - -The church dates from the thirteenth century, and is a lovely old -structure with admirable Gothic pillars and arches in its nave, and a -fine fourteenth-century rose window. - -The port of Paimpol has a most interesting rise and fall of life, -particularly at the season of the setting out and the return of the -Iceland fishermen. In the trade in codfish caught off the Icelandic -coasts, this place occupies the first rank, being the home port of -those who fish in Icelandic waters, and all along the quays of the -sad little town of Paimpol (sad, because there are so many widows -there,--the lone partners of those who have lost their lives at sea) -are to be seen the Iceland schooners. Everything in the town smacks of -the memory of Iceland: the schooners, the _ex-votos_ in the churches, -the widows, the sturdy but gloomy fisherfolk themselves, and the stones -in the churchyard. "The Iceland fog enshrouds everything," the native -tells you, but still the work goes on, and each year, with the coming -of the spring days, the exodus begins, after a winter's hard work at -refurbishing and refitting of the little two-masters and three-masters -of the fishers. It is here that one may hear that Breton sailor's -prayer, which is so devout and full of faith: "_Mon Dieu protge nous, -car la mer est si grand et nos bateaux si petits._" - -Cod, whale, mackerel, and herring are all marketable products to the -nets of the Paimpolans. - -The Isle of Brhat is near Paimpol, lying just off the coast. If one -seek to arrange a passage, thereto, he goes by public carriage, and -not by boat, until he gets to the tip of the Pointe Arcouest, when he -transfers himself and his luggage to a sailboat, and travels as one did -before the age of steam. - -The Isle of Brhat is another of those rocky islets which dot the coast -of Brittany, and look not only as if they were barren and uncultivated, -but as if they were also uninhabited. All the same, their appearance -from a distance is misleading. There are close upon a thousand -inhabitants on the parent isle and the attendant flock of little islets -sheltered under its wing. In the olden time, the island was a strong -place of war, with batteries and fortifications against which the -English, the Leaguers, and the Royalists tried their strength in turn. - -The isle is what the sailor-folk roundabout call "a good port of -refuge," for there are divers little sheltered harbours to which ships -of all classes can run from the storms of the open sea. - -The principal town is known as Brhat, and possesses a church dating -from 1700, a tiny hotel, and an inn or two, mostly catering to local -customers. If one would leave the mainland, and its questionable -attractions of civilization behind, and live the simple life to the -full, he can do it here to the most exquisite degree,--if he does not -mind the sea-fogs of the winter. - -Guingamp, lying inland in the rich valley of the Trieux, is the -market-town of the arrondissement of the same name. It is of feudal -origin, and was the ancient capital of the countship, later the duchy, -of Penthivre, and of the ancient Gollo land. - -Guingamp Castle is a great square building, flanked by four massive -towers, of which one has been practically destroyed. - -The Church of Our Lady of Good Help, of the fourteenth to sixteenth -centuries, is a magnificent work of its era, with an elaborately -furnished interior. - -[Illustration: A BINOU PLAYER] - -The Pardon of Bon Secours is Guingamp's gayest event of all the year. -In numbers, it is one of the largest in Brittany, and is held on the -Saturday before the first Sunday in July. On this occasion the statue -of Our Lady, within the porch of the church, is clad in a silken robe, -and receives the pilgrims, who refresh themselves with water previously -consecrated at its source. With the fall of the sun commences a -continual round of national dances, inspired by the lonesome, sharp, -shrill wail of the _binious_, played in much the same way as are the -Scotch bagpipes, except that their music is even more shrill and -heartrending--if possible. At nine o'clock the statue of the Virgin -is brought to the public square, solemnly conveyed by an immense -procession, and three great bonfires are lighted. At midnight a high -mass terminates the celebration, and some of the pilgrims depart, and -others remain for the banquet which invariably follows. - -On the eighth of September, 1857, the Madonna of Guingamp received the -crown of gold from the chapter of St. Peter's at Rome, on behalf of the -Pope, a distinction offered to images of the Virgin uniting the three -traits of antiquity, popularity, and miracle-working. - -"La Pompe," or the Fontaine, in hammered lead, is one of the chief -artistic curiosities of Guingamp. It is a remarkable work in every way, -and dates from 1588, since which time it has only been repaired--not -reconstructed. Its preservation is wonderful, and it is an embellishment -of which even a greater town might well be proud. - -Aside from the fragment of the castle, there are no medival gateways or -walls to remind one of the military importance of the place in former -days. A century and a quarter ago, a traveller wrote: "Enter Guingamp by -gateways, towers, and battlements of the oldest military architecture, -every part denoting antiquity, and in the best preservation." All this, -unhappily, has disappeared, and one has to go to Vitr and Fougres to -see military architecture in Brittany. - -Eastward from Guingamp toward St. Brieuc, one passes--the traveller by -road or rail seldom stops--Chatelaudren. It is a conventional Breton -small town, but it is a market-town, nevertheless. It has not much -of interest for any one unless he be a keen observer of manners and -customs, hence it is but a way station between the two larger towns. - -St. Brieuc is a city, although it has no tram-cars to dodge and no -restaurants or Htels trangers, which is a good thing for the native -and the tourist alike. - -In reality its half-dozen hotels rise to the distinction of being known -as "establishments," yet they have lost none of their local flavour. St. -Brieuc is the metropolis where the summer visitors--Parisians all--of -the beaches come to buy the little necessaries and luxuries which a -mere watering-place fails to supply. Then, too, one who is rusticating, -even in a delightful spot like Val Andr, lacks notably the inspiration -coming from a more or less frequent contact with a large centre, and -so he hies himself to a market-town, gets the fare of the country at a -hotel for travelling salesmen, and has a bit of the transmitted gossip -of the capital over a bock at the principal caf; after this--_voil!_ -the seaside again for a time. - -This may not be the Anglo-Saxon way of treating a similar situation, -but it is exactly after the French method. - -St. Brieuc is the seat of a bishopric, suffragan of the metropolitan -see of Brittany at Rennes. Its origin is due to a missionary who came -with eight disciples at the end of the fifth century to evangelize -Armorica. As a place of pilgrimage,--the tomb of St. Brieuc having -become a shrine,--it soon began to draw throngs from all parts, and the -importance of the city which grew up around the memory of the missionary -was soon assured. - -The cathedral of St. Brieuc was begun by St. William Pinchon before the -middle of the thirteenth century, and was soon finished. - -Its exterior presents the severe and austere, though beautiful, -Gothic of its time, but the accessories of its interior arrangements -show plainly the debasement of the later interpolations, although -there are some really excellent details hidden away amid a profusion -of mediocrities, notably the tomb of St. William, a fine Way of the -Cross by a local sculptor, and a low, hanging gallery at the base of -the choir, which is a remarkably beautiful and effective adjunct to a -great church. The exterior is more impressive, though its two principal -doorways have been badly restored or rebuilt at some time since the -completion of the edifice. The great, gaunt, donjon-like towers are the -chief features of beauty and distinction, and tell the story of the -whole fabric in quite an unassailable manner. - -At the town hall is a museum which has some good modern art works, -including a fragment of Rodin's Portes de l'Enfer and some notable -paintings of Breton subjects. - -In the Rue St. Jacques and the Rue Fardel are many old houses, one of -the most notable being the hotel of the Dukes of Brittany, begun in 1572 -by Yvon Collou. James II. of England lodged here when he came to St. -Brieuc in 1689. - -The carved and decorated fronts of these old wooden houses lend a -quaintness and charm to the streets of St. Brieuc, in strong contrast to -the modernity of its hotels and cafs. There is considerable and varied -local industry at St. Brieuc, and this gives the city some importance as -a manufacturing centre, but the chief events of its commercial life are -the great fairs held in July and September, the latter founded in the -fifteenth century by Marguerite of Clisson. - -The environs of St. Brieuc are charmingly diversified, from the wide -open stretches of farming country at the south to the wastes of rock -and sand flanking the great Bay of St. Brieuc. - -Le Lgu is the port of St. Brieuc, and the coastwise traffic is -considerable. The quays and docks, ship-houses and careening wharfs -lend a novel and interesting aspect to a background of thickly wooded -river-banks. The seaward entrance of the channel is protected by a -fifth-class light. The port is the first in rank in the Ctes du Nord -for the fitting out of the Newfoundland and Iceland fishing-boats. - -The Tower of Cesson, three kilometres or more from St. Brieuc, is a -simple circular tower, surrounded by a double protecting fosse cut -perpendicularly into the rock. The walls are quite twelve feet in -thickness on the lower of its four floors. It was built by Duke Jean -IV. in 1395, and, after much strife and bloodshed, extending over two -centuries, was laid in ruins by Henry IV. in 1598. - -On the shores of the Bay of St. Brieuc are innumerable little beaches -which are healthful breathing-spots for large numbers of Parisian folk, -who come thither between June and September of each year. - -These are not exactly riotous resorts of fashion, but still there are -some evidences of the distractions of the world that make most of them -appear as little parochial Parises. There are two spots on the western -shore of the bay to which this does not apply, however, Etables and -Binic. - -[Illustration: <u>_Binic_</u>] - -Binic, a small fishing port of Brittany, has all the attractions of -an unworldly seaside village, for it is not much more even to-day. -After Binic, Etables, and after Etables, Binic. Each is much the same -as the other. Binic has been a great-little port for the fitting out -of ships for the Newfoundland fisheries ever since the beginning of -the seventeenth century, and things go on in much the same way as of -old, except that the master of the craft now has a megaphone and a -patent log in his equipment, whereas formerly he went without these -refinements of navigation. To the Newfoundland fishermen of Binic is due -a special preparation of the codfish known as _bnicasser_, of which the -dictionaries will tell one nothing, but which is simply a species of -cured codfish. - -The high altar of Binic church was bought with funds contributed as -a result of the Sunday fishing on the Newfoundland banks. It can, -therefore, be said to have a real reason for being, and, as it is an -unusually ornate affair, one infers that the Sunday haul must be of -goodly proportions. - -From St. Brieuc eastward, until one actually comes within the confines -of that delectable land known as the Emerald Coast,--the summer rival -of that winter paradise, the Blue Coast,--is a verdant land of crops -and cultures which would quite change the opinions of any who thought -Brittany a sterile, rock-bound land, where nothing could grow but onions -and new potatoes. - -Lamballe is a sort of a faint shadow of St. Brieuc. It was founded in -feudal times, and from 1134 to 1420 was the capital of the county of -Penthivre. As late as the eighteenth century, the oldest son of the Duc -de Penthivre bore the title of Prince of Lamballe. - -The town is divided into the upper and lower towns. In the latter are -found those old settlers of ducal times, the houses of wood and stone -still standing to delight the eye of the artist and to arouse the wonder -of the general tourist. - -There is a fine Gothic Church of Our Lady, its foundations cut in the -very rock itself, and bearing, from more than one point of view, the -aspect of a fortified edifice, which has a battlemented roof that is -nothing if not an indication that the church of Dol was a truly militant -edifice. As the chapel of the old chteau, this church grew up from a -foundation of St. William Pinchon, Bishop of St. Brieuc in 1220. - -St. Martin's is the church of an ancient priory belonging to the parent -house of Marmoutier. It was founded in 1083 by Geoffrey I., Count of -Lamballe. Its primitive nave shows a remarkable series of horseshoe -arches, and in every way, not excepting the great sixteenth-century -towers, St. Martin's is quite the most interesting architectural -monument of Lamballe. - -North of Lamballe lies Val Andr. A charming watering-place much -frequented by families, is the way the all-powerful Western Railway -advertises this little seaside beach and its attractions, with the added -few lines to the effect that there is a large hotel with a casino, -regattas, nautical celebrations, concerts, etc., which are supposed to -amuse the fastidious summer visitors. - -It is all very delightful, particularly as the coast-line near by is -charming of itself, but Val Andr, with all its attractions, has not -half the charm of the little fishing port of Binic on the opposite shore -of the Bay of St. Brieuc. - - - - -CHAPTER IX. - -THE EMERALD COAST - - -The Emerald Coast is the passion chiefly of those who come to live -during the three summer months of rustication, but the sister cities -of St. Servan, Param and St. Malo, Dinard and Dinan, are lovely spots -and attractive of themselves, were one forced to camp out on one of the -barren, jagged rocks with which the coast hereabouts is strewn, instead -of living at the Hotel of France and Chateaubriand, which encloses the -ancient maison of Chateaubriand, at St. Malo. Starting thence, one -explores the wonderful country round about, and nourishes himself and -makes himself comfortable with all the modern refinements. This hotel -is about the only modern thing in St. Malo, however, for, while highly -interesting to the antiquary or to the student of architecture or of -art, it is commonly thought to be a vile, dirty hole, with a few shops -convenient for the inhabitants of the more aristocratic suburbs of -Param and St. Servan. - -St. Malo is a curious little city, with its ever apparent past not in -the least disturbed by the steamboats and electric trams, which bring -visitors to the base of its ancient fortifications and gateways. Among -its chief reminders of the past are its proud chteau, redolent of the -memory of the beautiful Duchess Anne, its fine cathedral, its quaint old -houses and narrow streets, and its wonderful encircling ramparts. - -Not only is St. Malo a city of the past, but it is above all, to-day, -a _resort_, as that elastic term is known which covers any place where -tourists congregate for pleasure. - -Kiosks, coffee-rooms, and bathing-cabins have taken the place of -whatever may have gone before, and to-day, truly, one may be as -comfortably up to date--if there is any real comfort in being up to -date--as if he were in Budapest, Paris, or San Francisco. St. Malo is -considerably more than this; it is the actual, if not the geographical, -centre of the whole Emerald Coast. - -[Illustration: <u>_Ramparts of St. Malo_</u>] - -The praises of the Emerald Coast have been sung by many poets, and -pictured by many painters. Jean Richepin, that rare vagabond, comes -frequently for his inspiration to St. Jacut-de-la-Mer, and in -his "Honest Folk" there are superb descriptions of this entrancing -combination of sea and shore, which in all France is not elsewhere -equalled, unless it be on the Riviera. - -The Emerald Coast must indeed be the paradise for jaded literary -workers, when work makes its inroads on their holiday, for it may enable -them to accomplish as much as Ferdinand Brunetire admitted during a -recent stay at Dinard-St. nogat: - -"What do I read?" said he. "These: - -"1. The 240 pages which make up the _Revue des deux Mondes_ every -fortnight. - -"2. The manuscripts which may become future pages of the _Review_, and -even some which may not. - -"3. Works which have not appeared in the _Review_, whose authors I may -find it worth while to know and cultivate. - -"4. Journals in which the _Review_ is interested. - -"5. The _Official Journal_, from which one may always pick up something. - -"6. The other papers. - -"7. Works submitted for the approval of the French Academy. - -"8. Proof-sheets of my own works. - -"9. The books necessary for the preparation of my discourses, lectures, -and articles." - -The puzzle is what a man like M. Brunetire will find to do in the -next world. Probably he will go about to all the celebrated writers to -see what they thought of his criticisms in his dearly loved _Review_; -and then perhaps he will regret, as Herbert Spencer is said to have -regretted, that he had not gone fishing oftener. - -The charms of St. Malo's suburban social colony of Param, such as -they are, though they differ greatly from the mere attractions of -nature,--for which society folk really care for only as an accessory -to their more futile pleasures,--are best set forth in the following -stanzas of Jehan Valter: - - "PARAM - - "IDYLLE - - "Quel est de Biarritz Calais - Le seul bain de mer, qui jamais, - Faute de baigneurs, n'a chm? - C'est Param! - - "O le soleil l'horizon - Montre-t-il en chaque saison - Son disque toujours enflamm? - A Param! - - "O le froid est-il inconnu, - O peut-on se promener nu - Sans avoir peur d'tre enrhum? - A Param! - - "Le soir, on danse au Casino, - Non aux sons d'un mauvais piano, - Mais d'un orchestre renomm - A Param! - - "Sur la plage on rve d'amour, - La nuit aussi bien que le jour - Que de baigneuses ont aim! - A Param! - - "Est-ce l'air qui porte la peau; - Est-ce le soleil, est-ce l'eau? - Chacun sort du bain ranim - A Param! - - "Et c'est un miracle constant, - Le plus chtif, en un instant, - Est en athlte transform - A Param! - - "Du reste, miracle plus fort, - Jamais personne ici n'est mort, - On ne connat pas d'inhum - A Param! - - "A vous tous, gandins rabougris - Qui dprissez Paris, - Venez humer l'air embaum - De Param! - - "Vous ne le regretterez pas: - On y fait d'excellents repas, - Et le cidre est fort estim - A Param! - - "Donc, sur l'honneur, je vous le dis, - A dfaut du vrai paradis, - Il n'est sur terre, en rsum, - Que Param!" - -That is about the sort of round that one gets at Param, with -motor-cars, golf, and bridge parties thrown in, but a wonderful aspect -of nature to be seen at every turn, and it is perhaps small wonder that -the little summer colony has now grown to huge proportions. - -Americans should have a special interest in, and a fondness for, St. -Malo, "the city of the corsairs." - -St. Malo is the chief town of the province of Jacques Cartier, the -discoverer of Canada. "_It is a city of great men and the chief place of -the Breton middle class_," said the Abb Jalobert in his curious work on -St. Malo and St. Servan. - -There is some truth in calling St. Malo the "corsair stronghold," for it -was the cradle of Mah de la Bourdonnais, Duguay-Trouin, Surcouf, and -their followers, all "sea-rovers" if they were not something more. - -To-day St. Malo's "sea-rovers" are the sailors of the Newfoundland -fishing-fleet, the humble _"terre-neuvas_," as they are known, who go -in large numbers to fish for cod on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland. - - "I's sont partis de Saint-Malo, - I's sont partis de Saint-Malo, - Tous ben portants, vaillants et biaux. - In' troun' drin tra lonlaire! - In' troun' drin' tra lonla!" - -sings Yann Nibor in his "Sea Songs and Stories." - -The city's older reputation as the city of the corsairs gave quite a -different interpretation, however: - - "LA CIT DES CORSAIRES - - "Si dans son aire, aujourd'hui tombe, - Elle ouit de rudes chansons! - Dont le souvenir donne au monde - Des frissons. - - "La gothique flche de pierre - De son clocher audacieux - S'lance comme un rapire - Vers les cieux." - --_Dabouchet._ - -Duguay-Trouin is an almost mythical character, but many of his -legendary exploits sound plausible. He took an English ship mounting -forty guns when he owned to but sixteen years, and in a following -campaign--practically on his own account it would seem--he captured -two vessels of war and twelve merchant-ships from under the guns of -a British squadron. This, at least, is the French version, and since -all of us, in our agile days, love a daring hero,--even if he be a -bloodthirsty one,--it seems a pity to probe the assertion too deeply. - -Such a man as Duguay-Trouin was, of course, popular, and his sailors -sang his praises in the street in lines which came to be taken up by -the "stay-at-homes" and incorporated into a kind of folk-lore. Indeed, -gentle mothers sang their infants to sleep with them, much as did old -Mother Goose of the nursery rhymes: - - "Monsieur Duguay t'envoy - Un tambour de l'Achille - Pour demander ces braves guerriers - S'ils veulent capituler. - - "Les dames du chteau - S'sont mis la fentre, - Monsieur Duguay apaisez vos canons, - Avec vous je composerez." - -Not always does the stranger to St. Malo hear exactly this offhand, but -invariably he is met with a singsong of sailors' chanteys which at once -call up memories of seafarers of other days. - -One enters St. Malo, whether by boat or train, through the city walls. -The boat lands you directly under the frowning ramparts, and a worthy -porter will take your portmanteau and carry it twenty steps to the door -of your hotel, just within the gateway of the city--and charge you -twenty sous for the job. "A franc, really," the man with the brass badge -tied on his right arm will reply to your query as to whether you have -heard aright. - -"Twenty cents for twenty steps is a little high," says the hostess of -your hotel, but it is the tariff from outside. - -St. Malo is still a walled city, much as it was in the days when Francis -I., in 1518, and Charles IX., in 1570, held court here. - -Charles IX., his mother Catharine, and his sister Margaret spent a part -of the month of May here in this city by the sea. The Malouins gave the -court a spectacle of an imitation naval combat, in which a galleon was -sunk; too realistically, one thinks, for its occupants were drowned. - -At one time, it is said by the chronicles, St. Malo was guarded by -fierce mastiffs, the descendants, it is to be presumed, of the Gallic -dogs of war. These municipal watch-dogs were suppressed in 1770, because -of their having bitten the "calves of gentlemen." Presumably there was a -complaint of some sort, but the only record of the incident is one in -verse sung by Dsaugiers as follows: - - "Bon voyage, - Cher du Mollet, - A Saint-Malo dbarquez sans naufrage, - Et revenez si ce pays vous plait." - -The disappearance of the watch-dogs in 1770 made necessary the adoption -of a new coat of arms for the town, when the blazoning of argent, a dog -gules, gave way to a "portcullis surmounted by an ermine passant." - -One has heard before now the phrase, "I like St. Malo in spite of its -smell," and, in spite of the truth of it,--and there is a very apparent -justification of the word,--the old city is one of the most lovable in -all Brittany. - -The House of Duguay-Trouin at St. Malo is one of its chief romantic -shrines before which strangers are wont to linger. It is simply an old -wooden-fronted house, sombre and austere in its upper stories, but -resplendent in white paint below. A shoe-shop and a coffee-room occupy -the lower floor, and if one would conjure up the days of the past, when -pirates bold discussed their venturesome plans in the very same room, -let him enter and drink his after-dinner coffee by the pale light of -a guttering candle in this old abode of romance. There is nothing of -luxury about it; in fact, most worshippers are content to bow before the -shrine from without; but to awaken the liveliest emotions, one must -really enter and see it from the inside. - -[Illustration: <u>_House of Duguay-Trouin, St. Malo_</u>] - -St. Malo, besides its stock sights of romance and history situated -within the city itself, has a literary shrine of the first rank in the -island of Grand B just offshore. Here is the tomb of Chateaubriand, -ambassador, minister, journalist, and author. One need not inscribe the -dates and titles of his works here; it is enough to mention his name. -Suffice to recall that, as a conclusion to his labours, he wrote the -"Mmoires d'Outre-Tomb," which, like the simple, rough-hewn cross which -crowns the summit of Grand B, is a fitting monument to the genius of -the man whose theories, it is to be feared, have now become somewhat out -of date. - -Chateaubriand's verses on his native land give an ample proof of his -love for her, and, moreover, so well express the regard which nearly -every one has for the Emerald Coast, that it is certainly pardonable to -quote them here: - - "MON PAYS - - "Combien j'ai douce souvenance - Du joli lieu de ma naissance! - Ma soeur, qu'ils taient beaux, les jours - De France! - O mon pays, sois mes amours, - Toujours! - - "Te souvient-il que notre mre, - Au foyer de notre chaumire, - Nous pressait sur son coeur joyeux, - Ma chre, - Et nous baisions ses blancs cheveux - Tous deux? - - "Ma soeur, te souvient-il encore - Du chteau que baignait la Dore? - Et de cette tant vieille tour - Du Maure, - Ou l'airain sonnait le retour - Du jour? - - "Te souvient-il du lac tranquille - Qu'effleurait l'hirondelle agile, - Du vent qui courbait le roseau - Mobile, - Et du soleil couchant sur l'eau, - Si beau? - - "Oh! qui me rendra mon Hlne, - Et ma montagne et le grand chne? - Leur souvenir fait tous les jours - Ma peine: - Mon pays sera mes amours - Toujours!" - -St. Servan, like St. Malo, is steeped in antiquity; practically they -form one town, although separated by the narrow strait which forms an -entrance to the outer harbour of St. Malo. St. Servan registers over a -hundred St. Malo craft engaged in fishing and in the coast trade. As the -ancient Gallo-Roman town of Alethum, St. Servan, from very early times -an archbishopric, was ravaged by barbarians and by floods and had a -varied career, but at last the steady growth of the comparatively modern -St. Servan made it a prosperous town of perhaps twelve thousand souls. - -The chief of St. Servan's architectural monuments is the great Tower -of Solidor, built far out upon the rocks at the mouth of the Rance. It -was built in 1384 by Duke John IV., at the epoch when he was combating -the pretensions of Josselin of Rohan, Bishop of St. Malo, for the -sovereignty of the town. - -It is a great triangular hold with a cylindrical tower at each corner. -Within is a stone staircase winding spirally upward and giving access to -various vaulted chambers. It could oppose no great strength to modern -artillery, and even in the olden time could not have been very secure, -could the besiegers but get to the base of its walls. At the same time, -from its isolated position, it served admirably as an outpost which at -least offered a superior vantage against an attacking force, and it is -unlikely that it could have been taken except by siege or by the fall of -the supporting city at its back. - -[Illustration: <u>_Tower of Solidor, St. Servan_</u>] - -The Chapel St. Peter of Aleth has built into its fabric some fragments -of the ancient ninth and tenth century cathedral of the same name. - -[Illustration: <u>_Plans of the Tower of Solidor_</u>] - -There are many remains of the old city walls, and St. Servan ranks with -St. Malo as a vivid reminder of other days. - -There is one popular sight of Brittany near St. Malo, which cannot be -ignored,--the rock-carved tomb of St. Budoc. This holy man lived in the -days when Celtic was a living tongue, and Irish, Scots, Welshmen, and -Bretons, one and all, used the same speech. - -Many a year has passed, and St. Budoc has been all but forgotten. -Besides his religious fervour, the memory of which exists but vaguely, -there is left as a reminder of his existence his tomb and a prophecy -which has come down by word of mouth through the natives. - -To-day there is a modern hermit who lives near the tomb of the saint, -and carves a sort of symbolical prophecy in stone for his own amusement -and the marvel of tourists. - -It is rather a cheap sort of a shrine, and one that is wholly visionary -so far as its real significance goes, but it is a very satisfying one -to most who view it, like the "Blarney Stone" and St. Patrick's grave, -which are frauds of the first water. - -One comes to Rothneuf--a little Breton coast village--by road, tramway, -or carriage from Param, if he comes at all. Here just beyond the -village itself the cliffs are curiously carved into all manner of human -shapes,--the work of the aforesaid hermit, who, although he be not a -young man, certainly is not so old as to have carved all the stones -which here exist; at least they look much older, though the stress of -weather may account for that. - -Evidently there is a devotion for St. Budoc, and belief in his prophecy -of the downfall of France is one day or another to become true. The old -monk or priest--for in reality this hermit of to-day is a churchman--is -evidently the chief disciple of the cult, for he perpetuates his version -of this long-lost legend in his modern carvings. - -The text of this old prophecy was vague and visionary, but enough has -come down to place definitely the fact that a Napoleon was to rise and -fall in the beginning of the nineteenth century, and that the Church was -to be parted from its children,--referring presumably to the Concordat -of 1802. - -No version of the prophecy exists in Celtic literature, but the monk -Olivarius published, in Luxembourg in 1544, a version which was supposed -to have been handed down from the old Celtic monk himself. Since that -time contemporary literature has had various references thereto, the -last apparently in 1904, when one appeared in Gaston Medy's "Echo of the -Marvellous." - -This last version, or promulgation, of the Celt's prophecy carries -us even into the future, 432 moons from the foundation of the present -French republic, _i. e._ thirty-six years, which would be in 1906. "Woe -to thee, great city," is a phrase which is supposed to refer to the fall -of Paris; whether as Rome fell, from an excess of glory, or into the -hands of the invader, is not stated. At any rate, the event is to come -to pass in the year of our Lord 1906, 432 moons from the beginning of -the great Republique Franaise. Let all who will be mindful. - -On the opposite bank of the Rance from St. Malo is Dinard-St. nogat, -occupying a magnificent site known in part as the Bec de la Valle. The -country-houses of Dinard are famous, though they are built in that -vague architectural style accepted the world over as being something -appropriate to a species of residence less sumptuous than a palace or a -chteau. - -It is a pity that the word is not better understood by the people, -and a pity, too, that most villas in France--and in England, for that -matter--are abominable, queer chicken-coops, with names like Villa -Napoli, Villa Saint Germain, Villa la Belle-Issue, Villa Belle-Rive, and -Villa Bric--Brac. All these are found at Dinard, and more, and, as may -be imagined, the summer life of this town of country-houses is in many -respects as gay and bizarre as the architecture and names of the villas -themselves. - -The aspect of the waterside of the charming little place--for Dinard is -charming, in spite of it all--belies these strictures somewhat, with -the warm glow of the sinking sun gilding the roof-tops, as the emerald -waters of the great bay ebb and flow beneath their feet. - -Dinard has another and more interesting side in an admirable -architectural monument,--the ruins of an ancient priory, founded in -1324 by Olivier and Geoffroy de Montfort. The fine Gothic chapel is now -ruined and moss-grown, but there are still to be seen the tombs of the -Chevaliers de Montfort, who were mighty chieftains in their day. Within -the grounds also is a curious statue of the Virgin placed beneath the -enormous fig-tree. - -The beach is of course the great attraction of the summer resident, -when he is not drinking cool drinks at the casino or eating at the caf -restaurant on the terrace. - -St. nogat, which is usually linked with the mention of Dinard by a -hyphen, has much the same aspect as its partner,--villas, Swiss chlets, -and cottages. St. nogat bears the name of one of the first bishops of -Aleth, and its proximity to the great cliffs fringing the coast, and -the high rocks just offshore, make its location even more beautiful than -that of Dinard itself. Westward of St. nogat are St. Jacut, St. Cast, -and Cap Frhel, and nearer St. Lunaire and St. Briac. - -All are very popular resorts during the summer months, and are -attractive spots--or would be but that accommodation in all is limited, -and what there is is sadly overcrowded for the three fine months of the -year. - -St. Lunaire has an ancient eleventh-century church, placing it somewhat -on the plane of an artistic shrine. Practically, the edifice is -abandoned to-day, but it contains the tomb of St. Lunaire, a work of the -thirteenth or fourteenth century, made up of some fragmentary sculptures -thought to have come from the primitive church. - -St. Briac has much the same characteristics, though of itself it counts -an all-the-year-round population of two thousand or more souls. - -It owes its name to a Celtic hermit-saint, who came from Ireland in -the early days of the evangelizing missions of the Irish monks, and -has the ruined Chteau of Pontbriant for an attraction. It has not the -misfortune to have become as fashionable as Dinard-St. nogat, and is -therefore the more enjoyable. Truly is it a delightful little corner -of the world, where those who are town-weary may take their ease and -ruminate on the futility of attempting to put order into the universe. - -This whole region is a wonderful galaxy of natural beauties, to be -discovered and appreciated only by oneself. They shall be nameless here -that that pleasure may not be curtailed. - -The route to Dinan from St. Malo by the tidal river Rance is one of -those enjoyable journeys which impress the mind in an indelible fashion. -It is a matter of twenty-four kilometres as the crow flies, and about -the same by the water route of the fishes. - -Dinan is a real medival town, with a wall or rampart something over a -mile in length. It is a most interesting centre for the charming country -round about, and is in itself a typical feudal relic of the days when -cities were enclosed by walls and only entered through fortified gates. - -Originally the thirteenth-century ramparts were defended by twenty-four -towers, of which a dozen, perhaps, still remain. Three great gateways, -the gates of Jerzual, of St. Malo, and St. Louis, still remain in all -their fortified splendour; the fourth, the Porte de Brest, has been -demolished. - -[Illustration: <u>_The Valley of the Rance_</u>] - -The old streets of the medival city still exist, too, much in the same -state as they were in medival times. - -The porches or covered passages are a feature of many of the old-time -houses, and are most quaint and artistic. - -The church of St. Malo dates from 1490, and that of St. Sauveur from -the twelfth to the fifteenth century. The chief historical figure of -Dinan's past was Bertrand Duguesclin, the young Breton noble who so -distinguished himself in the fourteenth century on the side of France -against the English. - -[Illustration: _Duguesclin, from his statue in the Abbey of St. Denis._] - -He was born at Motte-Broons, near Dinan, toward 1320. "He had a -sunburned face, with a snub nose, and green eyes, an awkward gait, and -a rough and untractable nature," one reads in the words of Simeon Luce; -and from the existing portraits of him, all this is true. - -He was a warrior, from his earliest days, of the most thoroughgoing -type. He was the sort of small boy whom mothers find looking for -trouble. He would lead on the village lads to fight, and, when victory -had all but appeared, on one side or the other, he would throw himself -into the breach to start the fight again, just like a wolf, after which -he would lead both sides to a tavern to drink, and heal old sores. - -On the ninth of July, 1812, the heart of the redoubtable Duguesclin was -brought to Dinan and placed in the north transept of the Church of St. -Sauveur amid an imposing assemblage. - -The sarcophagus bears the following inscription, which shows that the -warrior who really was responsible for the banishment of the English -from France "ranked in company with kings," as his French admirers put -it. - - GY : GIST : LE CUEUR : DE - MESSIRE : BERTRAN : DU GUEAQUI - EN : SON VIVAT CONETITABLE DE - FRACE : QUI : TRESPASSA : LE XIIIe - JOUR : DE : JULLET : L'AN : MIL IIIe - IIIIxx : DONT : SON : CORPS : REPOS - AVECQUES : CEULX : DES : ROIS - A SAINCT : DENIS EN FRANCE. - -The great clock-tower, a fine fifteenth-century building with a massive -spire, is found in the Rue de l'Horloge. It was given to the town by -Anne of Brittany in 1507. - -The Chteau of Dinan was built by the Breton dukes (1382-87). Its -history was varied and vivid, as one reads in the pages of M. Gaultier -de Mottay. - -[Illustration: _Rez-de-Chause of Donjon--DINAN_] - -Oliver Clisson, Gilles of Brittany, Viscount Rohan, Duchess Anne, -Laurent Hamon, and many others whose names are famous in the history of -Brittany have walked through these halls, of which only the hold to-day -remains as a tourist "sight." - -The Tower of Cotquen, one of the ancient towers of the city wall, -forms practically a part of the old castle, but the keep, or the Queen -Anne's Tower, a hundred or more feet in height and of four stories,--the -topmost reached by a spiral stairway of 148 steps,--is the most distinct -feature still standing. - -In the interior are a number of obscure cells which were, and indeed are -still, terrible dungeons. The guard-room is on the second floor, with -also a little room, which served as an oratory for the Duchess Anne. The -third floor is occupied by the Constable's Hall, and the fourth by a -Hall of Arms, a fine vaulted apartment. - -To-day the castle is a prison, and the rank and file of visitors may -not enter this fine medival monument, but, if one have a proper -appreciation of the architectural delights of a medival fortress, and -be diplomatic in his request, very likely his wish to enter will be -gratified. - -One of the principal industries of Dinan is the fabrication of -sail-cloth. It is an admirably placed industry, with its market close -at hand, and most of the Breton and Norman fishing-boats of these parts -sport a full suit of Dinan manufacture. - -In the environs of Dinan are innumerable charming excursions mostly -neglected. One such must surely be included in one's itinerary,--a visit -to the old Priory of Lehon, a dependency of the Abbey of Marmoutier. - -It was founded in 850 by Nomino, in honour of St. Magloire, whose -relics were brought from the Isle of Jersey to Dinan. The ruins, -as seen to-day, are most ample and beautiful, showing the best of -thirteenth-century Gothic. - -Besides this, Lehon has the picturesque ruins of a twelfth and -thirteenth century castle perched high upon the summit of an eminence -overlooking the headwaters of the Rance. The castle came to the hands -of the Dukes of Brittany; Charles of Blois stayed there in 1356 after -his return from England, and Raoul Cotquen was made captain in 1402, -since which time its history has been lost or hidden in the pages of the -untranslated chroniclers. - -In 1624 the priory monks robbed the castle for material with which to -construct their beautiful cloister, but enough remains to-day, hidden -away among a mass of ivy and lichen-grown ruins, to indicate its former -prominence. - -Altogether Lehon and its two romantic memories of other days is a -"sight" not to be missed. - -An old custom formerly prevailed here at Pentecost, when the newly -married were supposed to present themselves before the prior of the -monastery for a sort of last blessing, as it would seem. - -They sang the following refrain, and went back to their home, or to the -festival in the neighbouring village, with never a care beyond to-day: - - "Si je suis marie vous le savez bien; - Si je suis mal l'aise vous n'en savez rien. - Ma chanson est dite, je ne vous dois plus rien." - -This seems a philosophical way of looking at things, and shows an easy -conscience and open mind on the part of all concerned. - -Seated upon the western shore of the great Bay of Mont St. Michel is -Cancale, whence come the oysters. The six thousand inhabitants of this -quaintly rock-environed place have a physiognomy so distinctly their own -as to mark them for a type. Feyen-Perrin and his brother have painted -the Cancale people in a manner never to be forgotten by those who are -familiar with their work. - -Anciently Cancale was known as Cancaven, and is a survival among -neighbouring settlements which have succumbed to the encroachments of -the ocean. - -In 1032, it became a dependency of the Abbey of Mont St. Michel. In -1758, it was pillaged by the English under the Duke of Marlborough, and -the English fleet again bombarded it in 1779. - -La Houle is the real port of Cancale, and the centre for the oyster -industry. At low tide the boats of the fishers are drawn up on the -yellow sands, there to remain until the return of the tide. At low -tide all the village comes from the town above and repairs to the -oyster-beds. The general outgoing, which seems to the stranger the -emigration of the whole population, has been described by a Frenchman -as: "_Un dfile, interminable, bruyant, cadenc, le bruit des pas coup -de paroles et de rires._" - -This great outpouring continues until quite all the available help of -the female persuasion has departed, leaving practically only the old and -infirm to guard the houses and shops until the return of the tide. - -Cancale is one of the most celebrated oyster-rearing districts of -the world, but, if the tourist arrive there during the summer months -which lack the "R," he will eat not of them; the natives look upon it -as downright crime even to think of serving them to you; the mussel -will have to be your substitute. It is always in season, though it -looks about as perishable in hot weather as the oyster, and probably -is so. Tradition and superstition account for the upholding of many -institutions in this world, and the oyster season appears to be one of -them. - -The celebrated Rocks of Cancale lie just below the town,--a black mass -of rocks, about which the waves of the ocean fawn and growl like a -parcel of wolves. - -The Point of Grouin is simply an exaggeration of the same rocky -formation as that of Cancale, and the same which unrolls itself all -around the coast up to Cape Frhel. To the west is the Bay of St. Malo, -and to the east the Bay of Mont St. Michel. - -Michelet wrote of this famous mount off the Breton coast as follows: - -"The gigantic rock is an abbey, a cloister, a fortress, and a prison, -with exquisite sublimity and true dignity. It rises like a titanic -tower, rock upon rock, keep upon keep, and century upon century. Below -the monks; higher the iron cage of Louis XI. (who, it seems, left these -details rather numerously about his domain); higher yet the cell of -Louis XIV.; higher yet the prison of to-day. All is in a whirlwind; -Mont St. Michel is a very sepulchre of peace." - -Michelet's was not wholly a cheerful view. He was rather a gloomy man, -it would seem, but it is perhaps proper enough to record his views -here, as most of us will praise this wonderful work to the limit of our -imagination. - -Really Mont St. Michel is not of Brittany. To-day the changing of the -boundary westward to the little river Couesnon brings it just over the -line into Normandy, though both ramblers in Normandy and ramblers in -Brittany may properly enough include it in their itineraries, and should -do so. - -To such spirits as like that sort of thing, there is a way open to the -landing, high up in the tower of the abbey, whence there is a wonderful -view. Michelet wrote of it, on the occasion of a visit, that it was -a place for fools; that he knew no spot more suitable to bring on an -attack of vertigo. - -Michelet's description of the quicksands which surround the mount is -distinctly good. The native will tell you that you must not venture upon -them, but he himself does so, and nothing happens. In spite of this, -let the visitor so much as leave the causeway a dozen yards--to focus -his camera--and a half-dozen burly fellows will hurl themselves upon -him and drag him back, declaring they have saved his life, which means -that one ultimately pays them something; a franc each is about the price -that they apparently consider a life worth. Sometimes some poor soul is -engulfed, but it is a first-class scare in most instances. Michelet says -of these quicksands ("_cendre blanche_"), "It is not land; it is not -sea; I myself only just escaped being engulfed." - -As a sort of side-show to the wonderful Abbey of Mont St. Michel is the -stern and barren Isle of Tombelaine. - -It lies, also amid its own desert of sand or water, according to the -state of the tide, about a mile, or perhaps a little more, to the -north-east of the mount. - -It is a simple islet of granite, uncultivated, and as wild as it always -has been. It rises perhaps 125 feet above the sea-level, like a giant -stepping-stone, between the mount and the neighbouring coast before -Avranches in Normandy. - -Its history is intimately bound with that of the mount itself, but -to-day it has few, if any, visitors. It played a certain minor part in -the war of the Hundred Years, when it served as a sturdy buttress for -the English fleet. - -From the tenth to the seventeenth century it was occupied by a religious -colony from the abbey of the mount, and held a diminutive priory -bearing the vocable of Our Lady la Gisant; "a gentle Madonna," says an -imaginative Frenchman, "standing beside the archangel with the sword." - -In the midst of the Marsh of Dol--the great Bay of Mont St. Michel--is -a granite eminence some two hundred feet above the surrounding plain, -at the summit of which is built the little village of Mont Dol. It is -supposed to be the site of an ancient shrine consecrated to the druids. - -Two kilometres from Mont Dol is the great menhir of Champ Dolent, a -relic of the stone age which was pagan, but is to-day surmounted by a -Christian cross, which seems paradoxical. It has no pretence to beauty -or architectural grandeur, and is to be regarded only as a mysterious -curiosity. - -When one first comes to Dol in Brittany he is in a quandary. Which is -it, city or village? The writer does not know even yet. It has all the -quaintness and rustic picturesqueness of a mere hamlet, and again, -in its station, its hotels, and its tree-lined boulevard, it takes -on the aspect of a city. At any rate, if it belongs to the latter -classification, it is somnolent, and accordingly delightful. - -"Here, my good fellow, can you direct me to the Htel de la Poste," one -says to the first native he meets after leaving the station. "Certainly, -my good man," he replies in an equally patronizing tone, "I will take -you there." He declines all remuneration, of course, and will not be -patronized in any way. Decidedly he is a most independent individual, -but polite withal. - -Stendhal, in his "Traveller's Memories," said of the great frowning -cathedral of the episcopal city of Dol: "It is the most beautiful -example of a Gothic edifice which I have seen." It is not difficult to -follow his reasoning, for the grim walls of its faade, in the simplest -and severest style, are indeed magnificent examples of the undecorated -Gothic of a very early period. Most folk, however, will not call it -beautiful when Chartres, Rheims, Beauvais, or even Ses are in mind. - -Dol, at any rate, forming the gateway to Brittany, from Normandy through -the Cotentin, was a most important centre of Christianity in the sixth -century. - -The foundation of Dol dates from 548, when a colony of Britons coming -from Ireland settled here under the leadership of St. Samson, from -whom the present cathedral is named. This is but another of those links -which bind the history of Brittany with that of the Celts from overseas. -Legend continues the story thus: "Thou goest by the sea" (St. Samson was -told), "and where thou wilt disembark, thou shalt find a well. Over this -thou wilt build a church, and around it will group the houses forming -the city, of which thou wilt be bishop." - -All this came to pass, and for long ages the town has been known as the -episcopal city of Dol. William the Conqueror besieged Dol in 1075, but -retired after forty days, having failed to sustain his attack. Henry II. -of England invaded the city, and Jean Lackland fortified himself here in -1203, but it was retaken by Guy de Thouars in the year following. - -Up to Revolutionary times the career of Dol was unceasingly riotous -and bloody, but little evidences of a part so played remain visible -to-day. All that reminds one of its antiquity is the charmingly severe -and simply outlined Cathedral of St. Samson, and the numerous timbered -houses with their street-front galleries, always a most interesting -feature of a medival town. - -Sixteen kilometres south of Dol is Combourg, not an important town in -many ways, and yet very important, if one demands a sixteenth-century or -earlier label on all he admires. - -As a French visitor to Combourg has said, "La gare de Combourg is -not Combourg; you have yet fifteen hundred metres to go." This is -not a great distance, but, as the town is so completely hidden from -the railway, the sensation is that of alighting far from a centre of -civilization. - -The Chteau of Combourg is one of those indescribable picturesque -fourteenth and fifteenth century structures which owe much to situation -and environment. It has a picturesquely disposed market clustered about -it, so that the cries of porkers and their venders mingle with the -stately pealing of the bell of the great clock, which rings out not only -the hour, but the "quarters" in a most sonorous note. - -The costumes of both the men and women of the region around Combourg -are exceedingly picturesque and novel; the men with blouse and jacket, -and the women in black and the coifs of Becherel, Hd, Tentniac, and -Miniac; all somewhat resembling one another, and that of Miniac looking -more like a great white-winged bishop's mitre than anything else. - -[Illustration: <u>_Coif of Miniac_</u>] - -More anciently Combourg Chteau was a feudal fortress, in an old -building of which, now swallowed up in the surrounding structures, the -infancy of Ren Chateaubriand was spent. There is also an old tower -dating from 1016, built by Gingoneus, a bishop of Dol. The present -chteau belongs to the Countess of Chateaubriand, and is visible to the -curious public on Wednesday afternoons. - -The hall, the library, which contains the writing-table of the author of -the "Genius of Christianity," and his bedroom, where is the little iron -bed on which he died in Paris,--all go to make of this a literary shrine -of prime importance. - -The Chteau of Combourg has a legend, too, but since it concerns -only the skeleton of a cat, which in life was supposed to be the -reincarnation of a former Count of Combourg, it seems unworthy of -repetition here. - - - - -CHAPTER X. - -ON THE ROAD IN BRITTANY--MAYENNE, FOUGRES, LAVAL, AND VITR - - -In general aspect a Breton country-side differs widely from those of -Normandy. Here one comes upon hedgerows and an occasional bit of stone -wall, quite as one sees them in England. - -The towns and communities of Brittany are less numerous and less -populous, too, than those of Normandy, and paving is uncommon in the -towns, and were it not for the steep ascents and descents, by which one -leaves such places as Mayenne, Fougres, Josselin, Auray, or Quimperl, -this would prove quite a blessing to the automobilist. As it is, while -they give variety to one's journey by road, they do not by any means -permit of "plain sailing" at all times. - -The great national road from Paris to Brest crosses mid-Brittany, after -leaving Normandy, at Pr-en-Pail just beyond Alenon. It passes through -the great towns of Mayenne, Fougres, and Rennes, where it joins the -highway from Paris by way of Chartres, Le Mans, Laval, and Vitr. - -From Rennes this road, No. 24, runs straight, almost as the crow -flies, to the tip of Finistre, by Montfort-sur-Meu, Loudac, Carhaix, -Huelgoat, and Landerneau to Brest. - -This takes one through the very heart of Brittany, though by no means -is it the most interesting or the most prosperous. Mayenne, Fougres, -Vitr, and Laval form a quartette of Breton towns which, taken as a -whole, have characteristics quite similar, and yet different from those -in other parts. Virtually, they are all hill-towns, and therein lies -their resemblance, though their careers have been varied indeed. - -The run down into the valley of the river Mayenne, as one comes into the -town of the same name, is a wonderfully delightful and gentle descent -of perhaps a dozen kilometres. There is nothing very terrific about -it, nor is it of the frankly mountainous order, still the eminence to -the eastward is sufficiently elevated to give a singularly spacious -appearance to the landscape above the river valley itself; indeed, next -to that magnificent run down into Rouen--from the height of Bon -Secours--it is one of the most splendidly scenic roads in all North -France. - -[Illustration: <u>_Mayenne_</u>] - -At the bottom flows the Mayenne, joining the Loire at Angers, and on -its banks is nestled snugly the town of Mayenne itself, with a truly -delightful riverside hotel and church. - -Just below it is the ancient castle built on a rocky escarpment -overhanging the river. There are five great towers on the riverside, and -three others on the north, of which one alone has preserved its conical -roof. To-day it serves as a prison, but there are yet to be seen in its -interior some fragments of the ornamentation of the thirteenth century. -The terrace of the chteau forms a delightful promenade overlooking the -river. - -William the Conqueror besieged Geoffrey III. here in 1064, but the most -celebrated siege which the chteau underwent was that by the Count of -Salisbury in 1424. - -The Htel de Ville is an admirable relic of other days, though by no -means pretentious. It is a small, rectangular structure, its front -ornamented with two enormous solar devices, and the whole surmounted -by a graceful bell-tower. Behind the Htel de Ville stands a bronze -statue of Cardinal Cheverus, first Bishop of Boston. The Church of -Notre Dame is really a grand structure, with its fine showing of splayed -buttresses. Its foundation dates from 1110, and it admirably exhibits -the best traditions of its time. - -Five kilometres away are the remains of the old Cistercian Abbey of -Fontaine-Daniel, founded in 1204 by Juhel III. There are some remarkable -fragments of its old foundation still remaining, but a large part of the -present edifice is of the seventeenth century. From Mayenne to Fougres, -still on the highroad to the west, one passes Erne, whose name is not -known to many travellers and which is not marked on every map, though it -is a bustling town of five thousand inhabitants. - -The origin of this place is due to the foundation of a chteau--on the -site of the present quaint church--by the Lords of Mayenne, who were, in -the sixteenth century, of the house of Lorraine. - -Henri of Lorraine was killed by a musket-shot at the siege of Montaubon, -and was brought here to die in 1654. - -Some years later the Seigneury of Mayenne and Erne passed to the hands -of Cardinal Mazarin, who transmitted it to his niece, and gave the old -chteau for transformation into the present church. - -Javron, also on the way to Fougres, is a small town of two thousand -inhabitants, and the former site of a monastery, founded by Clotaire for -an anchorite named Constantin. The present church is built over the tomb -of this saint. - -The situation of Fougres is truly remarkable. It is, moreover, a -remarkable place in itself, and is to be reckoned as one of these -delightful spots to visit, which, if not exactly popular tourist -resorts, are at least as satisfying to the curiously inclined. - -Fougres in all ways is this, and more. It is almost the best example -of a walled and fortified town of the middle ages existing in all North -France. Its situation, on a great hill, with its tower-flanked walls and -gates, is one of surpassing impressiveness, although to-day the general -aspect of the little city of twenty thousand inhabitants is modern -enough. - -Fougres was one of the original nine baronies of Brittany, and owes -its origin to a chteau which Men, the son of Juhel Branger, Count of -Rennes, constructed at the beginning of the ninth century. - -To-day the city walls, the remains of the chteau, and the gates and -watch-towers are admirably preserved. The castle itself is nothing more -than a vast ruin, whose entrance, formed by three towers, plainly shows -it to date from the twelfth century. - -[Illustration: <u>_Plan of the Ancient Walls and Towers of Fougres_</u>] - -There is a great tower yet remaining--one of a twin pair--known as the -Tower of Coigny, from a former governor, and within this tower is an -ancient chapel. - -There are three other celebrated towers, well-nigh as perfect as they -were in the middle ages as far as their general outlines are concerned. -The keep was razed in 1630, but the inner wall which surrounded it, with -its three angular towers, is still to be seen. The Tower of Melusine -encloses a museum in which are many relics and curiosities of a period -contemporary with the castle itself. The ramparts of the town are -more or less ruinous, but are still to be seen throughout its whole -circumference. No part of this feature, however, dates from before the -fifteenth century. - -There are two admirable churches,--relics of the middle ages,--St. -Sulpice and St. Leonard, also the ancient convent of the Urbanists, -dating from 1689, now barracks. - -There are many fine old houses in wood and stone scattered about the -city, and an octagonal tower, in which is a great clock whose bell was -cast in 1304 by Rolland Chaussire. - -North of the town is the Forest of Fougres, composed principally of -great beeches. Within the forest are the ruins of an ancient convent of -the Franciscans, and near the little hamlet of Landeau are the famous -"Caverns of Landeau," constructed, it is said, in 1173 by Raoul II. of -Fougres, to hide his riches and those of his vassals from the rapacity -of the troops of Henry II. of England. - -Dropping down again to the main route from Paris, which joins with that -by the way of Mayenne and Fougres at Rennes, one enters Laval, the -first Breton town of any magnitude on this route, as one comes westward. - -It is a veritable local metropolis, and, like Mayenne, farther up the -river, it spreads itself amply on both sides of the stream which flows -southward to join the Loire at Angers, just below the country. - -The first Chteau of Laval was built by the Count Guidon or Guy to -protect the Bretons from the invasion of Charlemagne or his successors. -The second Guy received a charter from the Bishop of Mans, dated in the -fifth year of the reign of King Robert (1002), and this designates him -as the real founder of the Chteau of Laval. The town became the seat of -a barony, afterward a county, of which the possessors were ever famous -for their personal valour and their high lineage. Among them were the -Montmorencys, the Montforts, and the Colignys. - -When, in the fifteenth century, the English had become virtual masters -of Maine, Laval alone resisted their efforts, thanks to the energy of a -certain Anne of Laval. - -The historical records of the town and the chteau are ample and -eventful, even down to as late a day as 1871, when, after the battle of -Mans, General Chanzy retreated upon Laval. - -It was in the environs of Laval that the four ancient smugglers, the -brothers Jean, Franois, Pierre, and Ren Cottereau, known as the -Chouans (because of their owl signal, as the French give it), first -rallied and organized the bands of partisans which gradually adopted the -name. - -The keep of the chteau is a great cylindrical tower of the twelfth -century, remarkable for its height, its size, and the wonderful -carpentry of its roof. The great interior court is bordered on two sides -with a magnificent Renaissance structure attributed to Guy XVI., Count -of Laval and Governor of Brittany in 1525. The chapel has now been given -up to the prisoners sheltered within the castle. It is the masterpiece -of the whole work, and dates from the eleventh century. - -The Church of the Trinity, made a cathedral in 1855, was in 1790 the -seat of the Assemble, but in its most ancient parts dates from the -episcopate of Hildebert of Lavardin (1110). - -There are some remains of the town's ancient fortifications yet to -be seen, such as the Renaise Tower and the Spur Tower, which are in -every way as suggestive of former importance as the remains of the -castle itself. The Beucheresse Gate is another fragment of these same -fortifications. - -In Laval are ten thousand workmen engaged in the production of tent -and awning cloth. Laval is a great wheat market for the prolific -wheat-growing region round about, so its commercial importance of to-day -is quite as firmly established as is its historic past. - -Laval was the birthplace of Ambroise Par, the founder of French -surgery. It was he who drew the spear-head from the cheek of Balafr, -and he who declared the malady of Francis I. to be incurable. - -His statue bears the following inscription, "I dressed the wound, and -God healed it." - -One cannot say too much in praise of Vitr, though it does smack of -the popular tourist resort, with hotels whose runners tout for your -patronage, and picture post-card sellers, who seem to think that you -prefer their wares to viewing the sights themselves; but the hotels are -amply endowed with those creature comforts that most of us value highly, -and, if you wish, you will be put to sleep in a hygienic bedroom, -which is something like a prison-cell, but which must truly be hygienic, -judging from its get-up. - -[Illustration: <u>_Beucheresse Gate, Laval_</u>] - -These rooms, installed by the "Touring Club of France," are now to -be found sprinkled here and there throughout the land, and, if white -lacquered walls and ceilings and iron beds, and simple draperies and no -carpets,--but highly waxed floors instead,--can ensure a superlative -cleanliness and airiness, why, so much the more welcome they are; -and surely the weary tourist ought not to mind whether he sleeps -in a cubicle or not. Again, the fare of this particular hotel (the -Travellers') is so excellent that he ought to be willing to sleep on the -proverbial plank. - -Vitr, in spite of all novelty, is a true city of the past, and one -literally walks the by-paths of history when he traverses its streets. -All at once one comes to the ancient and theatrical-looking Chteau of -the Tremoilles, Vitr's most noble family of other days. - -The town has undergone many sieges. Charles VIII. captured it, and in -1488 sojourned in it for some days. During the wars of the League, the -Rieux and the Colignys led the revolt, and it served for some years as a -strong place of resort for the Huguenots. Within the two hundred years -following, the Breton Parliament, alternately presided over by the Dukes -of Vitr and of Rohan, met here many times, always amid a great and -joyous festival given by the town. - -[Illustration: <u>_Plan of Vitr in 1811 Showing City Walls_</u> - - A--Chteau - B--Place du Chteau - C--Fosses - D--Dependencies of Chteau (non-existent to-day) - F--Porte d'Enhayt - G--Porte de Gastesel - H--Eglise Notre Dame -] - -All the activity in the past has worked for the preservation of many -ancient memorials. - -The aspect of the town is not so ruinously picturesque as Fougres, nor -again so trim and neat as Mayenne or Laval, but more than either of -these it preserves to-day its ancient outlook at every turn. - -"_II n'est plus que Vitr en Bretagne, Avignon dans le Midi, qui -conservent au milieu de notre poque leur intacte configuration du -moyen-ge_" (Victor Hugo). - -The chteau itself has been recently restored, and ranks as one of the -most perfectly preserved specimens of military architecture in all -Brittany. One may visit the interior of this old fortress-chteau in the -care of a painstaking porter. - -The principal mass, known as the chtelet, is the best preserved, -and, flanking it on both sides, are series of crenelated towers and -machicolated walls. In the courtyard is the eleventh-century chteau, -now incorporated in the later work. - -On the same side is a charming Renaissance tower, built by Guy XVI., and -known as the "Tribune of Tremoille." The five sides of this admirable -architectural detail are charmingly decorated in sculptured stone, and -on one is the inscription taken from the Book of Job: "POST TENEBRAS -SPERO LUCEM," the Tremoille motto. - -[Illustration: <u>_Chteau de Vitr_</u>] - -Within is a museum with divers collections of many things of an era -contemporary with the structure itself. - -[Illustration: <u>_Tower of St. Martin, Vitr_</u>] - -Opposite the great entrance gateway to the castle is a modest little -house, once the residence (or temporary abode) of Madame de Svign, and -now occupied by the "Cercle Militaire." - -In the environs--five kilometres to the south--is the Chteau of -Rochers, better known as the domicile of Madame de Svign, and one of -the stock "sights." It was from the Chteau of Rochers that she dated so -large a number of her letters in 1670-71. - -In a letter bearing date of the twenty-second of July, 1671, she writes -thus to Madame de Grignan: - -"Madame de Chaulnes arrived on Sunday, but in what manner think you? On -her beautiful feet, between eleven and twelve at night. One might think -that Vitr was in Bohemia. - -"She made no ceremony of her coming.... She had come from Nantes by La -Guerche, and her carriage stuck fast between two rocks half a league -from Vitr." - -[Illustration: CHATEAU de ROCHERS] - -It was from the Chteau of Rochers that Madame de Svign wrote to her -daughter: "On Sunday last, just as I had sealed my former letter, I saw -enter our courtyard four chariots with six horses, with fifty mounted -guards, many led horses, and many mounted pages." - -These were gallant days at Madame de Svign's Breton home, and to read -all of her letters from Rochers--mainly to her daughter--is to get a -wonderful epitome of the seventeenth-century social life in this part of -France. - -On the above occasion the company included M. de Chaulnes, M. de Rohan, -M. de Lavardin, M. de Cotlegon, and M. de Locmaria, the Baron de Guais, -the Bishops of Rennes and St. Malo, "and eight or ten I knew not," she -continued. - -Throughout the chteau and its dependencies, the illusion of Madame de -Svign's time has been well kept up unto to-day. One learns that the -chteau became the property of the Svigns upon the marriage of Anne of -Mathefelon, "Lady of Rochers," with William of Svign, chamberlain to -the Duke of Brittany. - -The kindly and well-meaning concierge, or cicerone, or whatever one -chooses to call him or her who conducts him over the chteau and its -grounds, is somewhat of a bore, though one has not the courage to cut -off the prattle for fear he may lose something which may not have been -offered to others. - -[Illustration: <u>_Arms of Madame de Svign_</u>] - -It is somewhat disconcerting and even annoying to be told, -however,--when about to stroll down a tree-alleyed path,--that "the -marchioness never went there." Of course it's pure conjecture on the -part of this twentieth-century guide, since the noble marchioness -has been dead some two hundred years or more, but, as aforesaid, the -interruption fascinates one with its coolness. - -At the right of the chteau are the gardens traced by the famous -Lentre. In the "Letters" one reads frequent references to these great -gardens with their vast and ancient forests of tall timber. - - - - -CHAPTER XI. - -RENNES AND BEYOND - - -Rennes was once a great provincial capital, as great politically, -perhaps, as Rouen, but it has not a tithe of the fascination or wealth -of attraction of the Norman metropolis, and never had. Its Cathedral of -St. Pierre is a cold, unfeeling thing, and its eighteenth-century town -hall, its great military barracks, and its palace of a university are in -no way great or lovable architectural monuments. As an offset against -the mediocrity, is the somewhat bare exterior of the court-house, built -in 1618 for the Breton Parliament, and furnished now, as then, in most -luxurious fashion. - -The Salle des Pas-Perdus is a vast apartment, most delightfully planned -and decorated, and of the Grand Parliamentary Chamber the same may be -said. Above the floor of this chamber are still to be seen the tribunes -where the dames of other days, of the days of Madame de Svign, -assisted at the sessions. - -The town hall contains a library of eighty thousand volumes, of which -one hundred or more are first editions, and six hundred manuscripts. - -The museums of the university palace are exceedingly rich in treasure, -and are in every way worthy of a great provincial capital. - -For the rest, Rennes is a most ordinary, uninteresting town, though it -does possess two medival monuments of remark: the Porte Mordelaise, -a historic souvenir of the military architecture of the middle -ages, and Church of Our Lady, the ancient chapel and cloister of an -eleventh-century monastery founded by the Bishop St. Mlaine. - -There are many fine old Renaissance houses scattered here and there -about the town, but the general aspect is modern, and mediocre at that. -Rennes would have been called by century-ago travellers "a well-built -town," and such it certainly is, as becomes the ancient capital of the -duchy of Brittany. - -In later days it is mostly known to the general reader as the scene -of the famous Dreyfus trial, and its only liveliness comes from the -officers of the tenth army corps, who, of a summer's night, frequent the -coffee-rooms opposite the court-house or the theatre, or promenade in -the Thabor and the flower-garden, the old gardens of the Benedictine -convent. - -[Illustration: <u>_Monastery of St. Melaine, Rennes_</u>] - -Just previous to the Revolution, there were stirring times in Rennes, -when a marshal of France commanded the troops camped within the city. -The discontent of the people had arisen from two distinct causes, the -price of bread and the abolition of its ancient parliament. The former -seems a good enough excuse, but the latter is inexplicable, except, -perhaps, as the snuffing out of an ancient source of local pride. It was -to Rennes that Pre Caussin, the father confessor of Louis XIII., was -sent by Richelieu, when he proved himself incapable of becoming the tool -of the cardinal. The prison of state at Rennes was a terrible place in -those days, but the true churchman preferred it to exile as a missionary -in the wilds. - -All this and much more of political history made Rennes a famous centre -in times past, but to-day it is so much like a bad imitation of Paris, -that in desperation the stranger within the gates finally takes his -departure for more idyllic parts, with the vow that never again will he -seek to learn of present-day Brittany from the cafs and boulevards of -Rennes. - -One other comment may be made on the unloveliness of Rennes as a place -of temporary sojourn; and that is on its cab-drivers. The driver of a -fiacre in the average Breton large town is like his fellows of Paris. -He drives with a loose rein, and rushes helter-skelter down narrow -streets with never a care for other traffic, or for foot-passengers, -save a shouted, "_He, la-bas!_" which is so sudden and unforeseen that -it is quite useless as a warning. There have been those who have said -that the hoot of an automobile's horn would drive even the "_sense of -traffic_"--a new sense recently discovered by the Parisian medical -journals--from out of the brain of even the most careful of persons! -This is as naught compared to the Breton cab-driver's stentorian "_He, -la-bas!_" - -As one comes to the open country again, he leaves all these distractions -behind, and revels in nature, and if he be travelling by road, in the -stubbornness of cows and sheep and the aggressiveness of geese and -ducks, all road-users like himself. - -Westward of Rennes, twenty kilometres by road, is Montfort-sur-Meu, -a charming small town, situated upon the banks of two tiny rivers. -Its origin dates back to an ancient eleventh-century fortress, which -remains to-day in the form of a great cylindrical machicolated tower. -The Seigneury of Montfort, since the fifteenth century, has passed -successively, by marriage or by heritage, through the houses of Laval, -Rieux, Coligny, and La Trmouille. - -Next is Montauban, with a fine, moss-grown ruin of a chteau, dating -from the fifteenth century; the town itself numbers three thousand -inhabitants, but it does not look it. - -St. Men, a dozen kilometres farther on, was born of a monastery founded -in the tenth century by a holy man of its name. It was destroyed and -rebuilt many times in the years to follow, but its old abbatial church -still exists, one tower coifed by a dome, and another smaller and flat. -But no one comes here to see this fine old monkish relic but the farming -folk from round about, though St. Men is a town of three thousand souls -and an idyllic artists' sketching-ground. No colony of painters has yet -settled here, leaving it a wholly new field to exploit by any painter -looking for new worlds to conquer. - -Loudac and Pontivy, the one in the Ctes du Nord, and the other in -the Morbihan, are two characteristically Breton towns bearing no -relation whatever to the outside world. It seems doubtful indeed if the -inhabitants of these two centres are aware that there is any outside -world, so taken up are they with their own little affairs. - -Loudac has some six thousand inhabitants, but it has no apparent -industries to hold all these people together, and it seems as if they -had simply grouped themselves at the crossing of five great routes and -built a town. Its foundation does not go very far back into antiquity; -its parish church is only 150 years old, but the Chapel of Notre Dame -Vertus dates from the thirteenth century. - -In October, November, and December are held great cider-apple markets, -which, from their magnitude, would seem to be the chief source of income -of the population. - -The ancient slogan of Pontivy, born of Revolutionary times, was "Freedom -or Death," which is not far different from the battle-cry of socialists -the world over to-day. The condition of the inhabitants of Pontivy, -however, does not differ from most folk elsewhere, and the frowning -walls of its old castle ironically point to the fact that the time has -not yet come when a successful social revolution can be steered through -the breakers ahead--not even in France, where indeed there are even -more advanced ideas on the subject than in Germany itself. - -The memory of this event, though the "Treaty of Pontivy" was sent -broadcast through all the communes of France, has quite died out, and -the serenity of a little Breton market-town long ago settled upon -Pontivy, with nothing but a dim memory existing to neutralize the -admiration one is bound to have for the town's wonderfully picturesque -castle. It is a grand ruin with crumbled roof and walls, but its -outlines are as clear as ever they were, and if it has not the magnitude -or magnificence of many others of its class, it looks far more imposing, -and forms an exquisite stage setting for any medival romance one is -able to conjure up. The history of Pontivy and its castle is this: - -The town owes its origin to a monastery built here in the seventh -century by St. Ivy, an English monk. The castle, however, was a -foundation of seven hundred years later, by John of Rohan, in 1485. At -the creation of the duchy of Rohan, in 1663, Pontivy became the first -seat of this jurisdiction. - -At the Revolution the famous Pontivy treaty mentioned came into -being, with the result that in 1802 a consuls' decree prescribed the -construction of a vast barrack at Pontivy, and the canalization of the -river Blavet, upon which it sits, down to the sea. - -Napoleon, however, by a decree given at Milan, sought to create a new -town south of the present city, whose name should be Napoleonville. -All this because Pontivy had declared for the rights of man. When the -Revolutionists sought power Pontivy had every chance, but with Napoleon -his desire was to efface it. - -Pontivy is distinctly Breton in every aspect; its manners, customs, and -above all its costumes. Decidedly one's itinerary in Brittany should be -made to include it. - -Rostrenen is a delightful old town banked high upon a hillside some -six hundred feet above the valley. The old-time collegiate church is a -thirteenth-century foundation, which, though restored in our day, has -all the loveliness of the era of its foundation well preserved. - -Like the church at Josselin it is called Our Lady of the -Blackberry-bush, from a miraculous Virgin found beneath a -blackberry-bush. The great day of pilgrimage to this shrine is the -fifteenth of August. - -Carhaix is a little Breton town now all but shorn of its former -importance, though its breed of cattle is prized above all others in -Brittany,--as if that were enough to keep its memory alive. Anciently -Carhaix was the capital of the Vorganium, whose peoples took an active -part in the wars against Csar. Seven Roman ways centred here, and there -are yet to be seen the remains of an ancient Roman aqueduct. - -Vorganium ultimately lost its rank, and was made a part of the realm -of Cornouaille founded by King Grollo, who gave Carhaix its present -name--then Ker-Ahs. - -Carhaix is the birthplace of La Tour d'Auvergne, "the first Grenadier of -France." His career was almost legendary, and after his famous infernal -column which went up against the Spaniards in the Pyrenees, he retired -to the city of his birth, and took up the study of the Celtic tongue. In -1796, when the Terror broke out, at the age of fifty-two, he took the -haversack and cartridge-box of a simple soldier, to replace the son of -an old friend who had been drawn by conscription. He would never advance -a single grade, but remained in the ranks from this time forward, -and was killed at the battle of Oberhausen in Bavaria. His heart is -enshrined in the Htel des Invalides at Paris, having been brought -there and buried with great pomp in 1904. - -Carhaix has a real novelty in its horse-market, held before the Church -of St. Trmeur. There is nothing actually profane or sacrilegious -about this perhaps; but yet again, perhaps there is. Certainly it is -incongruous to see a long string of horses tethered to the very church -door-knob itself, with the breeders seated back against the church wall -smoking tobacco and eating and drinking. - -Huelgoat is in the very heart of Finistre. It is as typical in the -manners and customs of these parts as is Pont l'Abb in Cornouaille or -Auray in Morbihan. It has one of the finest sites given to a town in all -Brittany, and abounds in quaintness and beauty. - -There are various ecclesiastical monuments and religious shrines in and -near the town, of which the guide-books tell, and all are well worth -visiting. - -The market-place of Huelgoat does not differ greatly from other -market-places in Brittany. The costumes are brilliant in magpie -colours,--if white coifs flashing in the sunlight can be said to make -colour,--and the little life and the little affairs of the peasant -people scintillate and fluctuate from day to day as if they were the -most serious and momentous things in all the world. - -Above, on the right, rises the quaint bell-tower of the -sixteenth-century church, not beautiful of itself, perhaps, but grouping -wonderfully with the moving foreground. - -Huelgoat is a great place for ducks, evidently, for ducks big, little, -and of all colours of the rainbow are apparently the chief and staple -article of trade. What the value may be to-day, as compared with what it -was last market-day, no one can prognosticate. Two francs is certainly -not much for a nice fat duck, just waiting to be plucked and garnished -with green peas, but two francs for a brace is cheaper still, and two -francs for a whole flock or bevy, or whatever formation ducks group -themselves in, is a still better bargain, and on occasions you may -buy a whole duck and drake family--father and mother and two or three -youngsters--for a matter of _une pice_, which is the Breton's way of -counting a hundred sous or five francs. - -From Huelgoat the highroad branches to Morlaix in the northwest, and -Landerneau, directly to the west, when one comes once more on the -national road, running westward from Alenon by way of Fougres and the -north to Brest. - -[Illustration: <u>_Huelgoat_</u>] - - - - -CHAPTER XII. - -RELIGIOUS FESTIVALS AND PARDONS - - -Brittany has been called "the Land of Calvaries and Pardons." This does -not mean much to one who has never come under the spell of these strange -sights and survivals, but it means a great deal to those who realize to -the full the real significance of the devoutness and religious motives -which inspire the Breton folk to worship God in a manner which, in the -present age of disregard for the Christian religion of our forefathers, -seems to be playing less and less a foremost part. - - "Venez donc un tour au Pays de St. Yves. - - * * * - - Au pays du Creizker finement dentel. - Venez donc faire un tour au Pays de Calvaires, - Au Pays des Pardons mystiques et joyeux." - -So sang Theodore Botrl in a charming series of verses written as an -invitation to his fellow Frenchmen to know more of the ancient province -of Brittany. Since Brittany is so very religious, the most devout of -all the provinces of the France of to-day, the following account of -the disposition of certain observances under the care of the state is -apropos. - -France is said to be Catholic, because the majority of the people -profess Catholicism, which apparently answers their wants better than -any other. As a matter of fact, however, there is the costablishment -of four religions, all of which are recognized by the state and their -ministers paid by the state. So, virtually, there are four state -religions, if they can be so called. In truth, there is no religious -head in France; neither the chief of state, the Archbishop of Paris -(there are three other heads of religions, so manifestly one could not -be chosen), nor the minister of public worship can be called upon to -fill the office, hence there is no national religion, though the Roman -Catholic faith predominates to-day as in the past. - -Since we are concerned herein with Brittany alone, and since the Breton -is accounted the most devoutly Catholic of all Frenchmen, it is enough -to define the organization of the Roman Catholic religion alone, leaving -the question of the Calvinists, the Lutherans, and the Israelites quite -apart, as they exist not at all in Brittany as a factor of the local -conditions of life. - -The parish is the unit in the Catholic Church organization in France, -as the _commune_ is the unit in civil administration; the parishes are -divided into _curs_ and _succursales_. - -The first class, which number forty-five hundred throughout France, have -for their pastor a priest who is immovable, nominated by the bishop with -the approval of the government. The second class have a pastor who is -nominated by the bishop, but who can be removed or replaced. The parish -priest may have one or more assistants. Above the parish priest in rank -is the bishop. - -In general the bishoprics correspond with the departments, though there -are eighty-four dioceses and but sixty-seven bishops, the archbishops of -the "ecclesiastical provinces"--which often include several departments -and dioceses--making up the number. - -In Brittany the Departments of Ille-et-Vilaine, Ctes du Nord, -Finistre, Morbihan, and Loire-Infrieure have a bishopric, with an -archbishopric at Rennes. - -The bishops are nominated by the chief of the state, but are invested -canonically by the Pope. They are assisted by vicars-general, who -undertake the administrative functions of the diocese. The canonical -chapter of the cathedral, the diocesan seminary, and all other -seminaries are under the authority of the vicar-general. - -Above the bishops are the archbishops, who administer to the wants of -their diocese in the same way as the bishops, and, in addition, preside -at all provincial councils, ordain the bishops, and in general have a -certain jurisdiction over the bishoprics of their sees. - -The ecclesiastical provinces, as the great administrative districts of -the Church are known, correspond to-day, in a great part, to the ancient -provinces of the Roman epoch in Gaul, as the bishoprics themselves -correspond with the ancient cities and towns. - -Higher up even than the archbishops are the cardinals, nominated by the -Pope with the concurrence of the head of the French nation. To-day there -are five cardinals in France, all being titularies of one of the Roman -churches and members of the Sacred College which elects the Pope. - -Those who know Brittany will recognize as the foremost trait and -characteristic of the people their devotion to religious forms and -ceremonies. - -It has been said that by nature the Bretons are conservative. This is -indeed true enough, but they are something more, they are superstitious, -not only with regard to certain phases of their religion, but also -with respect to many of their local customs, which have naught to do -with religion. It is said that belief in witchcraft still endures, and -certain it is that folk-lore and fairy-lore are, in some parts, quite as -much of the life of the people as is the case in the bogs of Ireland. -The Celtic imagination, which is the same in both instances, doubtless -accounts for this. What the Bretons really are, or have been, though -they have not often been accused of it, is pagan,--at least some of them -are. It was only in the seventeenth century that the pagan cult--as a -body of magnitude--was suppressed. This again was a survival, of course, -from the barbarous rites and practices of the druids, which indeed were -the same elsewhere, so it need not be laid up against the Bretons alone. - -Probably those vast colonies of megalithic monuments at Carnac, and -their orphaned brothers and sisters scattered elsewhere throughout -Brittany, did much to keep the flames aglow on pagan altars, and -even to-day it is easy to perceive with what awe and veneration the -simple-minded Breton peasant regards these weird survivals of other -days. At any rate, Breton religion to-day is a devotion to many forms -and ceremonies. - -Brittany has been called the land of pardons (_pays des pardons_). Every -one knows of these great Breton festivals and of their significance. If -one travel between May and October, scarcely a week will pass without -his falling unawares upon one or another of these great sacred ftes. - -All Bretons do not give to these rites the sacred regard with which -they were originally intended to be endowed. Decidedly they have been -profaned only too often, and at times there is a little too much -license. The Breton pardon is by no means to be thought of in the same -manner as the kermess of Flanders, which is a merrymaking pure and -simple, with not even a side-light of religion thrown upon it. - -The five great pardons of Brittany are held each year as follows: - -"The Pardon of the Poor," at St. Yves; "The Pardon of the Singers," at -Rumengol; "The Pardon of the Fire," at St. Jean du Doigt; "The Pardon -of the Mountain," at Tromnie de St. Ronan; "The Pardon of the Sea," at -Ste. Anne de la Palude. - -It is a moot question as to just how much of romance is in the make-up -of the Breton character. Emotional the people are, but the emotion -that leads them into the enthusiasm which they exhibit at their great -religious festivals and pardons is more superstitious than romantic. - -The druidism, or paganism, or whatever the religion (_sic_) of the -ancient peoples of the Armorican peninsula may have been, bears not the -least traditional resemblance to the fervour of the devotees of the -pardons of to-day, but one can readily believe that the same spirit, if -with a different motive, does exist even now. - -The blessing of the boats, the birds, the cows, and what not, which -takes place periodically at different points along the Breton -coast,--for it is mostly along the coast that these observances take -place,--smacks not a little of something that is of more psychological -purport than mere religious devotion. - -From whatever tradition these great religious observances have -descended, there is no question of the sincerity of the participants, -though there is a wide difference between the "sacred" and "profane" -elements which meet on these occasions. - -Brittany, perhaps as much as any other of the ancient provinces of -France, has preserved its local customs and traditions, unblushingly -indifferent to the changing conditions round about them. Of course there -is no reason why religion and its observances should change with the -march of time, but they do, nevertheless, in France as much as in any -other land. Only in Brittany, apparently, do the congregations of men -and women--for elsewhere the congregations are mostly women--of great -churches approach to anything like the numbers that the churches were -built to contain. - -Throughout this land of calvaries, too, there will be found at all times -of the day, and often at night, a tiny congregation of one, two, or -perhaps a half a dozen, peasant or fisher folk kneeling before one of -these wayside crosses, and invoking their God after the manner they have -been taught, in a truly devout and sincere fashion, which is more than -can be said of some parts, where the peasant, when on a visit to town on -the market-day, rushes in and out of a church with hardly time enough -devoted to the whole process even to have used the holy water. - -Brittany may be a poor and impoverished province, and in many respects -it has not the abundance of the good things of life which one finds -in Touraine, Burgundy, or the Midi, but there is a general air of -prosperity in the gay accoutrements of the men and women who shine forth -on the occasions of the great pardons, showing a snug wardrobe stowed -away somewhere. - -As one leaves Normandy, at Pontorson, he enters Brittany--the land of -calvaries. These fine monuments are not the calvaries which have made -the old province famous,--the great stone crosses of Finistre,--but are -for the most part unpretentious pieces of wood put together in the form -of a cross, or a like symbol, rudely hammered out of a piece of iron by -the local blacksmith. - -One notes many of these simple crosses throughout Brittany; simple as -compared with the more elaborate calvaries, though they may have one, -two, or even more sculptured figures in the arms or branches of the -cross. One of the most ancient of these, dating from the fourteenth or -fifteenth century, is at Scar in Finistre. - -It is a question as to whether any of the great monumental calvaries of -Brittany can be considered really artistic. They are imposing,--some of -them even terrifying in their strange grandeur,--but all of them seem -theatrical, however sincere and devout the motive for their erection -may have been. The chief and most elaborate examples are those at -Plougastel, near Brest, and St. Thgonnec in Finistre (dating from -1610). - -Besides these really great and celebrated functions are many others -of minor purport, such as the "Benediction of the Boats" and the -"Benediction of the Fields." The latter occurs when the caterpillars and -earthworms fall upon and ravage the land. The local _cur_, with the -permission of the bishop, then blesses the fields. In the midst of the -fields the _cur_ takes up his position on some slight eminence, clad -in a white surplice, with a violet stole, and begs God to exterminate -the noxious insects, the prayers meanwhile being accompanied with the -sprinkling of holy water and burning of incense. - -The Pardon of St. Jean du Doigt, on the twenty-second of June, is -perhaps the most solemn of all its species, and for that reason is -described here. - -The Pardon of St. Yves, in the Tregarris, of Rumengol and Ste. Anne de -la Palude, in Finistre, are especially religious and severe, while that -of Notre Dame de la Clart, in the Morbihan, has the double purpose of -homage to Our Lady and the facilitating of marriage. - -Here the young peasants in search of a spouse promenade around the -church, and when they have made their choice they address the young lady -and ask her if she will accept the gift; the boy having meanwhile bought -a large round cake. "Will mademoiselle break the cake with me?" says he. -If she accept, they consider themselves as engaged, after which their -families meet together and discuss the conditions of the marriage. - -At Creac'higuel, near Rosporden, the pardon endures for three days, and -here one sees the wonderful 'broidered waistcoats and collarettes and -beribboned hats of the young men of Pont Aven, Quimperl, and Scar, -unique in all Brittany. - -In July, at Guingamp, is the procession to Our Lady of Good Help, with -the inevitable salute of firearms, and a torchlight procession of ten -or twelve thousand pilgrims--and some others who are merely profane -lookers-on. - -The "Benediction of the Sea" at Concarneau, Douarnenez, Trbone, -and many other seacoast villages and hamlets, is another religious -manifestation which is always attractive to the curious. - -At the pardon of St. Jean du Doigt the precious relic of the saint is -guarded before the high altar of the church by an abb clad in his -surplice and holding in his hand the precious finger enveloped in fine -linen. One by one the faithful pass before the abb and touch, for an -instant, the sainted relic. - -Near the choir, another cleric holds aloft the skull of St. Mriadec, -before which the pilgrims bow their heads as they pass. Before leaving -the church, in response to the call, "_Dour ar bis! Dour ar bis!_" sung -in a strident Celtic voice, the pilgrims repair to a fountain attached -to the side wall, in which the finger has previously been bathed at the -end of a gold chain. Immediately this operation is over, the devout -plunge their palms deep into the sanctified water and vehemently rub -their eyes. Then the pardon is finished, and the profane festivity -begins. - -"Whence come you?" was asked of a happy family of three at St. Jean du -Doigt. "From St. Jean-Brevelay," they replied, mentioning a village -a hundred kilometres away, in Morbihan. "We have walked three suns -and three moons,"--which sounds like the American Indian's method of -reckoning by moons, but which in this case meant merely that they had -been on the road three days and three nights. - -[Illustration: _<u>Pardon of St. Jean du Doigt</u>_] - -The little Church of St. Jean du Doigt offers complete and perfect -example of what a village church should be. The building itself is -surrounded by the churchyard, with its monumental portal, or triumphal -arch, as it is always called hereabouts, its sacred fountain, its -calvary, its ossuary, and its open-air oratory for the celebration of -the mass for the pilgrims. - -The triumphal arch is a great fifteenth-century gateway surmounted by -two niches containing two ancient Gothic statues, one of St. John the -Baptist, and the other of St. Roch. - -With the coming of twilight, when the mists roll in from the sea, the -silhouetted couples (lovers), following the ancient custom, promenade -arm in arm, or rather hand in hand, each holding the other by the little -finger, in deference to the finger of St. John. - -When the darkness has actually fallen, the bonfires flame out on the -far-away sands, the light reflected in the waves in truly eerie fashion, -and so the great day of pardon and festival departs into the past. - -Chant and song play a great part in all these religious festivals, not -only the officiating priests, but the public singing. These religious -chants seem to give rise to others less devout, of which the two -following are typical. - -If one is in South Finistre on the occasion of the celebration of -the "Pardon of the Singers," he will hear the following lines sung -tumultuously by the local swains: - - "Entre Brest et Lorient - Leste, leste, - Entre Brest et Lorient - Lestement. - - "Les gabiers de la misaine - Sont des filles de quinze ans. - Entre Brest et Lorient - Leste, leste." - -At the "Pardon of the Sea," in the Paimpol country, one hears these -sombre words: - - "Tais-toi! tais-toi! matresse exquise! - Je vois ma mort dans l'eau." - -The great extent to which the Breton people carry their respect and -devotion to religious ceremony of all sorts is no better exemplified -than in the observance of the Miz-dus (the black months, or the mourning -months) by those who have banded themselves together and formed a sort -of "cult of the dead." In reality, however, it is merely a mourning for -the departed, by the widows or mothers of the fishermen and sailors. - -In November, when the Miz-dus begin, widows in most picturesque, though -sombre, costumes are continually met with in the Morbihan, and such -seacoast towns as Ploubazlanec, Portz--even (where there is a "widows' -cross," quite the most frequented shrine of all) Saint Cast, on the -coast of the Channel, or at Pontivy. - -Anatole le Braz, in the "Legend of the Dead," has written a complete -history of the funeral superstitions which obtain in Brittany at this -season. - -The "Cult of the Dead," as it is known, is unique among similar -observances in all France. Virtually it is a display of devotion and -respect for one's ancestors. In the rural and seacoast parishes of -Morbihan, Finistre, and the Ctes du Nord the custom is found most -highly developed. - -The little cemeteries of Brittany are better than mere formal gardens -with rectangular walks and well-clipt trees and hedges. Mostly, they -have winding little alleys, and are set out with apple-trees and -wild-flowers. - -In downright bad taste, these cemeteries, in common with most others in -France, have an abundance of wire and bead memorial wreaths and crowns. -Why it is that the French, with their usually highly developed artistic -sense, affect these artificialities, is a question to which no one has -had the temerity to devise an answer. - -At Ploubazlanec, a tiny village settled upon a cliff overlooking the Bay -of Paimpol, are the funeral monuments of many who have lost their lives -by drowning in a frozen sea, as you will be told. - -In 1901, three ships from these parts disappeared, crew and cargo, -following the sinister local expression, in the cold waters off Iceland, -whither the little fleet had gone for the fishing. In the cemetery, in -the side of the mortuary chapel, is a section known as "the wall of -those who disappeared," and here you may read, many times repeated, such -inscriptions as the following: - - "En Mmoire de Gilles Brzellec, 17 ans, dcd Islande. - En Mmoire de Jean-Marie Brzellec, 16 ans, dcd - Islande. - En Mmoire de Yves Brzellec, 37 ans, dcd Islande. - Priez Dieu pour eux!" - -A whole family shattered and broken up, leaving perhaps a wife and an -old mother dependent upon charity, or such a scanty living as can be -picked up intermittently. - -At Krity, also, is an Icelanders' cemetery, and here one may read the -names, beginning with that of the captain, of the crew of twenty, all -hailing from the home port of Krity, who were lost in the white fiords -of Iceland in another catastrophe. - -Nowhere in the known world is there anything like the wholesale risk of -life which goes on yearly from the ports of Finistre and the Ctes du -Nord, unless it be that among the American fishermen on the Grand Banks, -hailing from Gloucester, on Massachusetts Bay. - -If the visitor to Brittany has not yet made the acquaintance of the -heroes of Loti's "Iceland Fishermen," he should do so forthwith, for it -was at Ploubazlanec that the great Yann Gaos was interred, and near him -reposed his father and little Sylvestre. - -The Celtic spirit of the modern Breton has preserved the legend or -superstition of "An-Ankou," the spirit of death. In many villages one -may interrogate a peasant or a fisherman, who will affirm that it is -"Ankou" who leads the way for the funeral-car and who waits at the grave -to carry the soul of the departed away with him after the others have -left. - -Among the superstitious signs which presage the coming of the "Ankou" -are, a ball of fire, which rests upon the tiles of the roof over the -stricken one,--a most unlikely thing, one would think,--the theft of -grain by crows, the tapping of a window-pane by the beak of a sea-bird, -the prolonged bellowing of cattle by the light of the moon, a candle -which will not light, or for a peasant to split or cleave two pairs of -wooden shoes in one week. - - -THE END. - - - - -APPENDICES - - - - -I. - -THE PROVINCES OF FRANCE - - -Up to 1789, there were thirty-three great governments making up modern -France, the twelve governments created by Francis I. being the chief, -and seven _petits gouvernements_ as well. - -[Illustration: <u>_The Provinces of France_</u>] - -In the following table the _grands gouvernements_ of the first -foundation are indicated in heavy-faced type, those which were taken -from the first in italics, and those which were acquired by conquest in -ordinary characters. - - NAMES OF GOVERNMENTS CAPITALS - 1. Ile-de-France Paris. - 2. Picardie Amiens. - 3. Normandie Rouen. - 4. Bretagne Rennes. - 5. Champagne et Brie Troyes. - 6. Orlanais Orlans. - 7. _Maine et Perche_ Le Mans. - 8. _Anjou_ Augers. - 9. _Touraine_ Tours. - 10. _Nivernais_ Nevers. - 11. _Berri_ Bourges. - 12. _Poitou_ Poitiers. - 13. _Aunis_ La Rochelle. - 14. Bourgogne (duch de) Dijon. - 15. Lyonnais, Forez et Beaujolais Lyon. - 16. _Auvergne_ Clermont. - 17. _Bourbonnais_ Moulins. - 18. _Marche_ Guret. - 19. Guyenne et Gascogne Bordeaux. - 20. _Saintonge et Angoumois_[A] Saintes. - 21. _Limousin_ Limoges. - 22. _Barn et Basse Navarre_ Pau. - 23. Languedoc Toulouse. - 24. _Comt de Foix_ Foix. - 25. Provence Aix. - 26. Dauphin Grenoble. - 27. _Flandre et Hainaut_ Lille. - 28. Artois Arras. - 29. Lorraine et Barrois Nancy. - 30. Alsace Strasbourg. - 31. Franche-Comt ou Comt de Bourgogne Besanon. - 32. Roussilon Perpignan. - 33. Corse Bastia. - -[A] Under Francis I. the Angoumois was comprised in the Orlanais. - -The seven _petits gouvernements_ were: - - 1. The ville, prvt and vicomt of Paris. - 2. Havre de Grce. - 3. Boulonnais. - 4. Principality of Sedan. - 5. Metz and Verdun, the pays Messin and Verdunois. - 6. Toul and Toulois. - 7. Saumur and Saumurois. - - - - -II. - -THE ANCIENT PROVINCES OF FRANCE - - -[Illustration: map of France divided into provinces] - - - - -III. - - -THE PRINCIPAL PAYS AND PAGI OF BRITTANY - - Pays d'Alet Ille et Vilaine - Pays de Briere Loire Infr. - Cornouailles Finistre. - Le Desert Ille et Vilaine. - Dinannois Ctes du Nord. - Pays de Dol Ctes du Nord. - Pays de Grve Ctes du Nord. - Lonais Finistre. - Nantais Loire Infr. - Rennois Ille et Vilaine. - Pays de Vannes Morbihan. - - - - -IV. - - -COUNTS AND DUKES OF BRITTANY - - Nomino 824 - Erispo 851 - Salomon 857 - Pasqueten and Gurvaud 874 - Alain I. 877 - Gurmailhon 907 - Juhael Branger 930 - Alain II. (Barbe Torte) 937 - Drogon 952 - Hol I. 953 - Guerech 980 - Conan I. 987 - Geoffroy I. 992 - Alain III. 1008 - Conan II. 1040 - Hol II. 1066 - Alain Fergent 1084 - Conan III. 1112 - Eudes and Hol III. 1148 - Geoffroy II. 1156 - Constance and Arthur 1171 - Pierre Mauclerc and - Alix 1186 - Jean I. 1213 - Jean II. 1237 - Arthur II. 1286 - Jean III. 1305 - Charles de Blois 1312 - Jean IV. de Montfort 1341 - Jean V. 1365 - Franois I. 1399 - Pierre II. 1450 - Arthur III. 1457 - Franois II. 1458 - Duchess Anne, who - married Charles - VIII. and afterward - Louis XI. of France, 1488-1513 - - - - -V. - -THE METRIC SYSTEM - - -METRICAL AND ENGLISH WEIGHTS AND MEASURES - - Mtre = 39.3708 in. = 3.231. 3 ft. 3 1-2 in. = 1.0936 yard. - Square Mtre (mtre carr) = 1 1-5th square yards (1.196). - Are (or 100 sq. mtres) = 119.6 square yards. - Cubic Mtre (or Stere) = 35 1-2 cubic feet. - Centimtre = 2-5ths inch. - Kilomtre = 1,093 yards = 5-8 mile. - 10 Kilomtres = 6 1-4 miles. - 100 Kilomtres = 62 1-10th miles. - Square Kilomtre = 2-5ths square mile. - Hectare = 2 1-2 acres (2.471). - 100 Hectares = 247.1 acres. - Gramme = 15 1-2 grains (15.432). - 10 Grammes = 1-3d oz. Avoirdupois. - 15 Grammes = 1-2 oz. Avoirdupois. - Kilogramme =2 1-5th lbs. (2.204) Avoirdupois. - 10 Kilogrammes = 22 lbs. Avoirdupois. - Metrical Quintal = 220 1-2 lbs. Avoirdupois. - Tonneau = 2,200 lbs. Avoirdupois. - Litre = 0.22 gal. = 1 3-4 pint. - Hectolitre = 22 gallons. - -[Illustration: <u>_Comparative Metric Scale_</u>] - - -ENGLISH AND METRICAL WEIGHTS AND MEASURES - - Inch = 2.539 centimtres = 25.39 millimtres. - 2 inches = 5 centimtres nearly. - Foot = 30.47 centimtres. - Yard = 0.9141 mtre. - 12 yards = 11 mtres nearly. - Mile =1.609 kilomtre. - Square foot = 0.093 mtre carr. - Square yard = 0.836 mtre carr. - Acre = 0.4046 hectare = 4,003 sq. mtres nearly. - 2 1-2 acres = 1 hectare nearly. - Pint = 0.5679 litre. - 1 3-4 pint = 1 litre nearly. - Gallon = 4.5434 litres = 4 nearly. - Bushel = 36.347 litres. - Oz. Troy = 31.103 grammes. - Pound Troy (5,760 grains) = 373.121 grammes. - Oz. Avoirdupois = 8.349 grammes. - Pound Avoirdupois (7,000 grains) = 453.592 grammes. - 2 lbs. 3 oz. = kilogramme nearly. - 100 lbs. = 45.359 kilogrammes. - Cwt. = 50.802 kilogrammes. - Ton = 1,018.048 kilogrammes. - - - - -VI. - - -Sketch Map of Circular Tour in Brittany. Fares from Rennes, 65 francs, -1st class; 50 francs, 2d class. - -[Illustration: Map of Brittany showing routes] - -Itinerary: Rennes, Saint-Malo-Saint-Servan, Dinard, Saint-Brieuc, -Guingamp, Lannion, Morlaix, Roscoff, Brest, Quimper, Douarnenez, -Pont-l'Abb, Concarneau, Lorient, Auray, Quiberon, Vannes, Savenay, Le -Croisic, Gurande, Saint-Nazaire, Pont-Chteau, Redon, Rennes. - - - - -VII. - - -[Illustration: <u>_Architectural Names of the Various Parts of a Feudal -Chteau_</u>] - - - - -VIII. - - -[Illustration: <u>_Tide and Weather Signals in the Ports of -Brittany_</u>] - -By day the signals showing the depth of water--in mtres--at the harbour -entrance are shown by balls or small balloons; at night these are -replaced by lanterns. (See top diagram.) The flag signals of the other -diagrams explain themselves. - - - - -IX. - - -THE PRINCIPAL PARDONS OF BRITTANY - -DEPARTMENT OF FINISTRE - -PLOUGASTEL-DAOULAS.--Easter Monday, the Monday of Pentecte, -29th June, and 15th August. - -PONT L'ABB.--25th March, Monday of Pentecte, 3d Sunday of -July, 4th Sunday of September. - -CONCARNEAU.--(Ste. Gunol) First Sunday in May, (Sainte Croix) -14th September, (Pardon du Rosaire) First Sunday in October. - -BANNALEC.--Ascension Day. - -QUIMPERL.--Trinity Sunday, second Sunday of May, last Sunday -of July, third Sunday in September. - -QUIMPERL.--Easter Monday. - -RUMENGAL.--Trinity Sunday. - -LOCTUDY.--Sunday following 11th May, and 2d Sunday of August. - -PONT AVEN.--Second Sunday of May and third Sunday of September. - -SAINT JEAN DU DOIGT.--23d and 24th June. - -ROSCOFF.--Mid-June and 15th August. - -CAMARET (Fte de la Pche et Bndiction de la Mer).--Third -Sunday in June. - -LOCRONAN (Petite Tromnie every year; Grande Tromnie every six -years).--Second Sunday of July. - -ROSPORDEN.--Second Sunday in July. - -LE FOLGOT.--15th August, and 7th and 8th September. - -QUIMPER.--15th, 16th, and 17th August. - -HUELGOAT.--Three days--first Sunday of August. - -STE. ANNE DE LA PALUDE.--Saturday evening and last Sunday of -August. - -SCAR.--Last Sunday of August. - -AUDIERNE.--Last Sunday of August. - -PENMARC'H (Pardon du Rosaire).--First Sunday of October. - - -DEPARTMENT OF THE MORBIHAN - -ST. GILDAS DE RHUIS.--29th of January. - -AURAY.--(Ouverture du Pardon de St. Anne) 7th March, (Principal -Pardon) 25th and 26th of July. - -LOCMIN.--Three days from the Sunday nearest 27th June. - -STE. BARBE EN FAOUT.--Last Sunday of June. - -ST. FIACRE PRS LE FAOUT.--Fourth Sunday in July. - -LOCMARIAQUER.--Second Sunday in September. - -PONTIVY.--Second Sunday in September. - -CARNAC.--Third Sunday in September, (Pardon of St. Cornely) the -Sunday nearest the 14th September. - -PONT SCORFF.--Third Sunday in September. - -LE FAOUT.--First Sunday in October. - - - - -X. - - -A BRIEF LIST OF SOME OF THE MORE IMPORTANT PREFIXES OF PLACE-NAMES IN -BRITTANY, WITH THEIR DEFINITIONS - -_Bod, Bot._--A place surrounded by a wood. Bodilis, Botsorhel. - -_Bras, Br._--High, elevated. Braspart, Breleven. - -_Conc._--A harbour or bay. Concarneau, le Conquet. - -_Car._--A manor or chteau. Carhaix. - -_Coat._--A wood or forest. Coatascorn, Coatreven. - -_Crug._--Amid the rocks. Cruguel. - -_Faou._--A place planted with oaks. Le Faout. - -_Guic._--Bourg. Guichen (old bourg). - -_Hen._--Old. Henvie, Henpont. - -_Ker or Kaer._--Manor, chteau. Kerlouan, Kervignac. - -_Lan._--Church or consecrated spot. Lannion, Lanildut. - -_Les, Lis._--Court or jurisdiction. Lesneven, Lezardrieux. - -_Loc._--Oratoire or hermitage. Locmaria. - -_Mn._--Mountain. Mn Br. - -_Mor._--The sea. Morbihan (_la petite mer_). - -_Pen._--Promontory summit or extremity. Penmarc'h, Paimboeuf (_par -corruption_). - -_Pl, Pleu, Plo, Plou, Plu._--Parish. Plhdel, Pleudihen, Plouha. - -_Poul._--Hole or basin. Pouldergat. - -_Ros._--Hill or slope. Roscoff, Rosporden. - -_Tref, Tr._--Part of a parish. Trgastel, Trmelior. - - - - -XI. - - -THE BRETON TONGUE IN BRITTANY TO-DAY[B] - - ---------------+---------------+--------------- - | INDIVIDUALS | INDIVIDUALS - DPARTEMENT | UNDERSTANDING | UNDERSTANDING - | ONLY BRETON | BRETON AND - | | FRENCH - ---------------+---------------+--------------- - Ctes du Nord | 145,000 | 150,000 - Finistre | 352,000 | 302,000 - Morbihan | 182,700 | 190,000 - ---------------+---------------+--------------- - - [B] This table takes no cognizance of those speaking French only - and not Breton, whilst the three departments given are those - only in which the knowledge of the Breton tongue is in excess - of that in other parts. - -It is a regrettable fact that the Morbihan has the greatest number -of illiterates of any of the departments of France. Among a hundred -conscripts for the army, often thirty or forty are classed as -illiterate, while in Finistre and the Ctes du Nord, the number falls -to thirty or less, and in Ille et Vilaine to less than twenty. - - - - -INDEX OF PLACES - - -Alre, 158. - -Ancenis (and chteau), 99-101. - -Angers (and castle), 24, 30, 108, 119, 146, 243, 311, 316. - -Audierne, 89, 212, 213-214, 370. - -Auray, 32, 157, 158, 159-167, 172, 175, 178, 192, 309, 370. - - -Bannelec, 194-195, 369. - -Batz, Isle of, 121, 240-242. - -Baud, 157, 158. - -Baule, 127. - -Becherel, 306. - -Beg-Meil, 201. - -Belle Ile en Mer, 27, 34, 36, 171, 173-175. - -Benzec Capcaval, 211. - -Br, Fair of, 129-130. - -Binic, 267-268, 270. - -Black Mountains, 218. - -Bourg de Batz, 111, 121, 127. - -Brhat, 43, 259-260. - -Brest, 26, 32, 39, 41, 43, 44, 47, 51, 54, 56, 72, 87, 150, 212, 220, -221-224, 225, 227, 228, 229, 230, 236, 309, 310, 340, 350. - - -Camaret, 89, 219-220, 369. - -Cancale, 298-300. - -Cape de la Chvre, 214, 217. - -Cap Frhel, 290. - -Carhaix, 54, 310, 337-339. - -Carnac, 159, 163, 167, 168-171, 345, 370. - -Cesson, Tower of, 266. - -Cezon, 44. - -Champ Dolent, 303. - -Champtoceaux (and chteau), 104-105. - -Chteaubriant (and chteau), 128-132. - -Chateaulin, 27, 217-218, 219. - -Chatelaudren, 263. - -Clisson (and chteau), 42, 111, 114-115. - -Combourg (and chteau), 305-308. - -Concarneau, 43, 89, 197-201, 202, 205, 212, 215, 216, 219, 224, 351, 369. - -Corseul, 146. - -Creac'higuel, 351. - -Croisic, 42, 111, 121, 127. - -Crozon, 217, 219. - - -Daoulas, 229, 369. - -Dinan (and chteau), 24, 54, 249, 271, 291-297. - -Dinard, 39, 249, 271, 273, 288-289, 290. - -Dol, 19, 39, 43, 54, 249, 303-305. - -Douarnenez (and bay), 32, 38, 43, 51, 89, 187, 212, 214-216, 217, 219, -351. - - -Elven, 138. - -Erne (and chteau), 312. - -Etables, 267. - - -Falaise, 130. - -Faou, 220, 221. - -Faout (Finistre), 192-194. - -Folgot, 224, 237-238, 369. - -Fontaine-Daniel, Abbey of, 312. - -Fougres (and forest), 54, 262, 309, 310, 312, 313-315, 316, 321, 340. - -Fouquet, Chteau, 27, 174. - - -Grand Brire, 125. - -Gurande, 121, 125-127. - -Guibray, Fair of, 130. - -Guingamp (and castle), 54, 86, 87, 250, 260-262, 351. - - -Hd, 306. - -Hennebont, 146, 179, 182-185. - -Huelgoat, 310, 339-340, 370. - - -Javron, 313. - -Joie, Abbaye de la, 185. - -Josselin (and chteau), 150, 152-157, 309, 337. - - -Kerrault, 229. - -Krity, 357. - -Kerlean, Manoir of, 138. - -Kerlescan, 169. - -Kerlouan, 224. - -Kermario, 169. - -Kermartin, Manor of, 255. - - -Lacroix, 44. - -La Houle, 299. - -"La Joyeuse Garde," Chteau of, 227. - -Lamballe, 268-269. - -Landeau, 315-316. - -Landerneau, 221, 224-227, 310, 340. - -Landivisiau, 221, 227-228. - -Lannion, 24, 74, 89, 250-252. - -Largoet, Fortress of, 138. - -La Roche-Bernard, 128. - -La Trinit, 177-178. - -Laval (and chteau), 54, 56, 310, 316-318, 322. - -Le Conquet, 230-231, 236. - -Lehon, 297-298. - -Le Lgu, 266. - -Le Mans, 54, 310. - -Locmariaquer, 146, 159, 167, 175-176, 370. - -Locmin, 157-158, 370. - -Lorient, 43, 44, 54, 89, 144, 175, 179-181, 182. - -Loudac, 310, 334-335. - - -Mayenne (and chteau), 54, 309, 310, 311-312, 316, 322. - -Mnac, 169. - -Minden, Fort, 44. - -Miniac, 306. - -Molne, Ile, 232-233. - -Montauban, 334. - -Mont Dol, 303. - -Montfort-sur-Meu, 310, 333-334. - -Mont St. Michel (and bay), 34, 39, 43, 46, 54, 60, 249, 298, 300-302, -303. - -Morlaix, 43, 54, 63, 94, 238, 244-247, 249, 340. - -Motte-Broons, 293. - - -Nantes (and castle), 4, 7, 19, 22, 24, 26, 30, 36, 38, 39, 54, 56, 57, -67, 102, 104, 105-110, 111, 112, 115, 116-121, 124, 127, 146, 174, 211, -221, 243. - -Notre Dame de la Clart, 350-351. - - -Oudon, 104. - -Ouessant, Ile, 43, 44, 232, 233-236. - -Our Lady of Langonnet, Abbey of, 194. - - -Paimboeuf, 42, 111, 112. - -Paimpol, 257-259. - -Palais, 44, 173, 175. - -Param, 39, 271, 272, 274-276. - -Penmarc'h, 31, 208, 210-211, 370. - -Penthivre, 7, 44, 171. - -Pilier, 44. - -Plormel, 54, 150-152. - -Ploubazlanec, 355, 356, 357. - -Ploudalmzeau, 236-237. - -Plougasnou, 25, 64. - -Plougastel, 221, 228-230, 350, 369. - -Plouharnel, 167, 171. - -Pointe de Kerpenhir, 145. - -Point of Primel, 247. - -Point of Raz, 212, 213, 214. - -Point Sizun, 212. - -Point St. Mathieu, 212. - -Pont Aven, 82, 187, 201, 202-205, 351, 369. - -Pont Croix, 214. - -Pontivy (and castle), 54, 334-337, 355, 370. - -Pont l'Abb, 27, 82, 187, 208-210, 369. - -Pont Scorff, 179, 185-186, 370. - -Pornic (and chteau), 42, 111, 112-114. - -Port Haliguen, 172. - -Port Louis, 44, 181-182. - -Port Maria, 172. - -Port Navalo, 43, 145. - -Portz, 355. - -Pouldu, 190. - -Poulgoazec, 214. - -Pr-en-Pail, 309. - -Primelin, 214. - - -Questembert, 136. - -Quiberon, 44, 163, 167, 170, 171-173, 175. - -Quimper, 19, 27, 32, 38, 41, 53, 54, 60, 72, 75, 82, 93, 128, 205-208, -212, 224, 370. - -Quimperl, 187-190, 191, 309, 351, 369. - - -Redon, 24, 128, 132-136. - -Rennes, 19, 22, 24, 25, 41, 54, 57, 75, 118, 128, 146, 150, 310, 316, -329-333, 343. - -Rimains, Fort des, 44. - -Rochefort-en-Terre (and chteau), 27, 136-138. - -Rochers, Chteau of, 324-328. - -Roc'hqurezen, 229. - -Roc'hquillion, 229. - -Roc'huivlen, 229. - -Roscanvel, 217. - -Roscoff, 43, 75, 238-240, 369. - -Rosporden, 31, 194, 195-196, 201, 351, 369. - -Rostrenen, 337. - -Rothneuf, 286-287. - -Rumengal, 346, 350, 369. - - -Sauzon, 175. - -Savenay, 41, 124-125, 128, 130. - -Scar, 349, 351, 370. - -Seven Isles, 256-257. - -St. Briac, 27, 290-291. - -St. Brieuc, 19, 29, 60, 262, 263-266, 268, 270. - -St. Cast, 26, 67, 290, 355. - -Ste. Anne de la Palude, 346, 350, 370. - -Ste. Marguerite, 127. - -St. nogat, 273, 288, 289-290. - -St. Fiacre, 26, 191-192, 370. - -St. Gildas de Rhuis, 27, 148, 370. - -St. Gunol, 211. - -St. Jacut, 27, 272-273, 290. - -St. Jean-Brevelay, 352. - -St. Jean du Doigt, 247-248, 346, 350, 352-353, 369. - -St. Lunaire, 27, 290. - -St. Malo (and bay), 9, 19, 27, 39, 43, 44, 54, 56, 57, 61, 63, 67, 94, -249, 271-274, 276-283, 285, 288, 291, 300. - -St. Maurice, Abbey of, 190-191. - -St. Men, 334. - -St. Nazaire, 39, 109-111, 112, 121, 122-124, 128, 144. - -St. Nicolas, 205. - -St. Pol de Lon, 19, 27, 60, 206, 238, 242-244. - -St. Rnan, 236. - -St. Servan, 27, 271, 272, 276, 283-285. - -St. Thgonnec, 350. - -St. Yves, 346, 350. - -Suscino, Chteau of, 148-150. - - -Taureau, Chteau du, 44. - -Tentniac, 306. - -Tombelaine, Isle of, 34, 302-303. - -Trbone, 351. - -Trguier, 19, 24, 60, 94, 206, 250, 252-256. - -Trlaze, 29. - -Tristan, Ile, 215-216. - -Tromnie de St. Ronan, 346. - - -Val Andr, 263, 269-270. - -Vannes, 19, 24, 43, 54, 60, 75, 128, 134, 136, 138, 139, 140-148, 150, -175, 187, 221. - -Ville Martin, 44. - -Vitr (and chteau), 24, 54, 262, 310, 318-324. - - * * * * * - -Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber: - -Le trente-un du mois d'aut=> Le trente-un du mois d'aot {pg 68} - -is by no mean inexplicable=> is by no means inexplicable {pg 3} - -must known these principal provinces by name=> must know these principal -provinces by name {pg 7} - -general eerie espect=> general eerie aspect {pg 138} - -busy litle Breton port=> busy little Breton port {pg 214} - -religious architecure.=> religious architecture. {pg 226} - -in the sixth entury=> in the sixth century {pg 304} - - - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Rambles in Brittany, by Francis Miltoun - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RAMBLES IN BRITTANY *** - -***** This file should be named 42866-8.txt or 42866-8.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/4/2/8/6/42866/ - -Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive) - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license - - -Title: Rambles in Brittany - -Author: Francis Miltoun - -Illustrator: Blanche McManus - -Release Date: June 3, 2013 [EBook #42866] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RAMBLES IN BRITTANY *** - - - - -Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive) - - - - - - -</pre> - -<hr class="full" /> - -<p class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/cover_lg.jpg"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="343" height="520" -alt="bookcover" title="bookcover" /></a> -</p> - -<div class="boxx"> -<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary=""> -<tr><td><p>Every attempt has been made to replicate the original book as printed.</p> -<p>Some typographical errors have been corrected. No attempt has been made -to correct or normalize the printed accentuation or spelling of French -names or words.</p> -<p>The images have been moved from the middle of a paragraph to the -closest paragraph break.</p> -<p class="c">(etext transcriber’s note)</p></td></tr> -</table> -</div> - -<p> </p> -<p> </p> - -<p class="cb"><big>RAMBLES IN BRITTANY</big></p> - -<p> </p> -<p> </p> - -<div class="bboxx"> -<p class="c"><i>WORKS OF<br /> <big>FRANCIS MILTOUN</big></i></p> - -<p class="c"><i>The following, each 1 vol., library 12mo, cloth, gilt top, profusely -illustrated. Net, $2.00; postpaid, $2.16</i></p> - -<p><i>Rambles in Normandy</i></p> - -<p><i>Rambles in Brittany</i></p> - -<p><i>The Cathedrals and Churches of the Rhine</i></p> - -<p class="c"><i>The following, each 1 vol., library 12mo, cloth, gilt top, profusely -illustrated. Postpaid, $2.50</i></p> - -<p class="c"><i>The Cathedrals of Northern France</i></p> - -<p class="c"><i>The Cathedrals of Southern France</i></p> - -<p class="c"><i>L. C. PAGE & COMPANY</i><br /> -<i>New England Building, Boston, Mass.</i></p> -</div> - -<p><a name="frontispiece" id="frontispiece"></a></p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width:300px;"> -<a href="images/front_lg.jpg"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/front_sml.jpg" width="298" height="497" alt="Constable’s Tower, Vannes -Constable’s Tower, Vannes -(See page 147)" /></a> -<br /> -<p class="caption"><span class="un"><i>Constable’s Tower, Vannes</i></span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 70%;"><small>(<a href="#page_147">See page 147</a>)</small></span></p> -</div> - -<h1> -Rambles<br /> - -in<br /> - -B R I T T A N Y</h1> - -<hr /> - -<p class="cb"><span class="smcap">By Francis Miltoun</span><br /> -<br /> -<i>With Many Illustrations</i><br /> -<br /> -<span class="smcap">By Blanche McManus</span></p> -<hr /> - -<p class="cb"> -<br /> -<img src="images/colophon.jpg" -width="120" height="250" -alt="colophon" /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="smcap">Boston</span><br /> - -L. C. PAGE & COMPANY<br /> - -1906</p> - -<p> </p> - -<p class="c"><small> -<i>Copyright, 1905</i><br /> -<span class="smcap">By L. C. Page & Company</span><br /> -(INCORPORATED)<br /> -——<br /> -<i>All rights reserved</i><br /> -<br /> -Published October, 1905<br /> -<br /> -<i>COLONIAL PRESS<br /> -Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds & Co.<br /> -Boston, U. S. A.</i></small></p> - -<h3><a name="APOLOGIA" id="APOLOGIA"></a>APOLOGIA</h3> - -<p class="figcenter"> -<img src="images/bar.png" width="80" height="10" alt="decorative bar" -title="decorative bar" /> -</p> - -<p>N<small>O</small> promise given to the hostess of one’s inn is alleged as an excuse -for writing this book, but it is true that rosy, busy Madame X of the -Soleil d’Or, in the fishing village in which the work received its -final collation and revision, watched its growth for many a week, daily -declaring her hope of some day receiving a volume containing “your -impressions.” And, indeed, her hope shall not be vain, for one of the -first copies shall be most speedily despatched to her. Moreover, the -author and artist hope that it may be acceptable to her critical mind, -for she is not likely to be lenient, though she knows full well that to -the many authors and artists who make a refuge of her modest inn for -months she owes her livelihood.</p> - -<p>The book is a record of many journeys and many rambles by road and rail -around the coast, and in no sense is it put forth either as a special or -as a complete survey of things and matters Breton.</p> - -<p>Many lights and shadows have been thrown upon the screen from various -points, but the effort has been made to blend them all into a pleasing -whole, which shall supplement the guide-books of convention.</p> - -<p>It were not possible to do more than has been attempted within the -limits of a volume such as this, and therefore many details of routes, -and historical data of a relative sort, and a certain amount of -topographical information have been scattered through the volume or -placed in the appendix, in the belief that such information is greatly -needed in a work attempting to purvey “travel talk” even in small -measure.</p> - -<p>Some of this knowledge is so little subject to change that it may well -stand for all time, and, in these days of well-nigh universal travel, -may be not thought out of place in a volume intended both for the -armchair traveller and also for him who journeys by road and rail. That -only a very limited quantity of such information can be included is a -misfortune, inasmuch as such a handbook is often used when no other aid -is accessible to the traveller.</p> - -<p>Finally, the illustrative material, the large number of drawings of -sights and scenes, of great architectural monuments, and of the dress -of the people, is offered less as a complete pictorial survey than as a -panorama of impressions received on and off the beaten track,—and more -satisfying and truthful than the mere snap-shots of hurried travel.</p> - -<p>In addition, many maps, plans, and diagrams should give many of the -itineraries a lucidity often lacking in the usual railway maps.</p> - -<h3><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS"></a>CONTENTS</h3> - -<table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" summary=""> - -<tr><td><small>CHAPTER</small></td> <td> </td><td><small>PAGE</small></td></tr> - -<tr><td> </td><td><span class="smcap"><a href="#APOLOGIA">Apologia</a></span></td><td><a href="#APOLOGIA">v</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td align="center" colspan="3"><a href="#PART_I">PART I.</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td align="right" valign="top"><a href="#CHAPTER_I-1">I.</a></td><td> <span class="smcap">Introductory</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_003">3</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td align="right" valign="top"><a href="#CHAPTER_II-1">II.</a></td><td> <span class="smcap">The Province and the People</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_011">11</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td align="right" valign="top"><a href="#CHAPTER_III-1">III.</a></td><td> <span class="smcap">The Topography of the Province</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_033">33</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td align="right" valign="top"><a href="#CHAPTER_IV-1">IV.</a></td><td> <span class="smcap">Travel Routes in Brittany</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_045">45</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td align="right" valign="top"><a href="#CHAPTER_V-1">V.</a></td><td> <span class="smcap">The Breton Tongue and Legend</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_059">59</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td align="right" valign="top"><a href="#CHAPTER_VI-1">VI.</a></td><td> <span class="smcap">Manners and Customs</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_070">70</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td align="right" valign="top"><a href="#CHAPTER_VII-1">VII.</a></td><td> <span class="smcap">The Fisheries</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_088">88</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td align="center" colspan="3"><a href="#PART_II">PART II.</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td align="right" valign="top"><a href="#CHAPTER_I-2">I.</a></td><td> <span class="smcap">The Loire in Brittany</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_099">99</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td align="right" valign="top"><a href="#CHAPTER_II-2">II.</a></td><td> <span class="smcap">Nantes To Vannes</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_116">116</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td align="right" valign="top"><a href="#CHAPTER_III-2">III.</a></td><td> <span class="smcap">The Morbihan—Vannes and the “Golfe”</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_140">140</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td align="right" valign="top"><a href="#CHAPTER_IV-2">IV.</a></td><td> <span class="smcap">Auray and the Megalithic Monuments of<br /> -Morbihan</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_159">159</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td align="right" valign="top"><a href="#CHAPTER_V-2">V.</a></td><td> <span class="smcap">Morbihan—Lorient and Its Neighbourhood</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_179">179</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td align="right" valign="top"><a href="#CHAPTER_VI-2">VI.</a></td><td> <span class="smcap">Finistère—South</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_187">187</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td align="right" valign="top"><a href="#CHAPTER_VII-2">VII.</a></td><td> <span class="smcap">Finistère—North</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_221">221</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td align="right" valign="top"><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII-2">VIII.</a></td><td> <span class="smcap">The Côtes du Nord</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_249">249</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td align="right" valign="top"><a href="#CHAPTER_IX-2">IX.</a></td><td> <span class="smcap">The Emerald Coast</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_271">271</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td align="right" valign="top"><a href="#CHAPTER_X-2">X.</a></td><td> <span class="smcap">On the Road in Brittany—Mayenne,<br /> -Fougères, Laval, and Vitré</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_309">309</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td align="right" valign="top"><a href="#CHAPTER_XI-2">XI.</a></td><td> <span class="smcap">Rennes and Beyond</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_329">329</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td align="right" valign="top"><a href="#CHAPTER_XII-2">XII.</a></td><td> <span class="smcap">Religious Festivals and Pardons</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_341">341</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td> </td><td><span class="smcap"><a href="#APPENDICES">Appendices</a></span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_359">359</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td> </td><td><span class="smcap"><a href="#INDEX_OF_PLACES">Index</a></span>: -<a href="#A-ind">A</a>, -<a href="#B-ind">B</a>, -<a href="#C">C</a>, -<a href="#D">D</a>, -<a href="#E">E</a>, -<a href="#F">F</a>, -<a href="#G">G</a>, -<a href="#H">H</a>, -<a href="#J">J</a>, -<a href="#K">K</a>, -<a href="#L">L</a>, -<a href="#M">M</a>, -<a href="#N">N</a>, -<a href="#O">O</a>, -<a href="#P">P</a>, -<a href="#Q">Q</a>, -<a href="#R">R</a>, -<a href="#S">S</a>, -<a href="#T">T</a>, -<a href="#V-ind">V</a>.</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_373">373</a></td></tr> -</table> - -<h3><a name="LIST_OF_ILLUSTRATIONS" id="LIST_OF_ILLUSTRATIONS"></a>LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS</h3> - -<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="2" summary=""> - -<tr><td align="right" colspan="2"><small>PAGE</small></td></tr> -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Constable’s Tower, Vannes</span> (<i>See <a href="#page_147">page 147</a></i>)</td><td><a href="#frontispiece"> <i>Frontispiece</i></a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">The Loire at Nantes</span></td><td align="right">facing <a href="#page_004">4</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Device of Anne of Brittany</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_017">17</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Anne of Brittany</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_018">18</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Breton Post-card</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_021">21</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">St. Brieuc</span></td><td align="right">facing <a href="#page_030">30</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Croisic</span></td><td align="right">facing <a href="#page_042">42</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Map of Brittany</span></td><td align="right">facing <a href="#page_044">44</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">The Main Roads of Brittany</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_048">48</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Travel Routes in Brittany</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_055">55</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">St. Pol de Léon</span></td><td align="right">facing <a href="#page_060">60</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">The Breton Tongue</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_062">62</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Gilles de Laval</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_066">66</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Young Bretons</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_078">78</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">From the Artist’s Sketch Book</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_080">80</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">La Coiffe Polka</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_081">81</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Ironing Coifs</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_083">83</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Breton Types</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_085">85</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Douarnenez</span></td><td align="right">facing <a href="#page_088">88</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Pornic</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_113">113</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Donjon of Clisson</span></td><td align="right">facing <a href="#page_114">114</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">St. Nazaire</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_123">123</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Ancient Fortifications of Guérande</span> (<span class="smcap">Diagram</span>)</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_126">126</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Châteaubriant</span></td><td align="right">facing <a href="#page_128">128</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Children of Redon</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_133">133</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Tour d’Elven</span></td><td align="right">facing <a href="#page_138">138</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Market-woman, Vannes</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_142">142</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">The Country near Vannes</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_143">143</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Ancient City Walls, Vannes</span> (<span class="smcap">Diagram</span>)</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_147">147</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Château of Suscino</span></td><td align="right">facing <a href="#page_148">148</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">General Plan of Château of Suscino</span> (<span class="smcap">Diagram</span>)</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_149">149</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Ploërmel</span></td><td align="right">facing <a href="#page_152">152</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Shrine of St. Etienne, Josselin</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_154">154</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Château de Josselin</span></td><td align="right">facing <a href="#page_156">156</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Interior of Market-house, Auray</span></td><td align="right">facing <a href="#page_160">160</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Shrine of St. Roch, Auray</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_162">162</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">The Lines of Carnac</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_168">168</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">The Lines of Carnac</span></td><td align="right">facing <a href="#page_168">168</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Map of Carnac and the Surrounding Country</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_170">170</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Quiberon</span></td><td align="right">facing <a href="#page_172">172</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Hennebont</span></td><td align="right">facing <a href="#page_182">182</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Quimperlé</span></td><td align="right">facing <a href="#page_188">188</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Market-house, Faouët</span></td><td align="right">facing <a href="#page_192">192</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Market-day</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_193">193</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Rosporden</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_196">196</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Stone Crucifix, Concarneau</span></td><td align="right">facing <a href="#page_198">198</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Concarneau</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_199">199</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Pont Aven</span></td><td align="right">facing <a href="#page_202">202</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Environs of Pont Aven</span> (<span class="smcap">Map</span>)</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_204">204</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">From the Museum at Quimper</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_207">207</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Cape de la Chèvre</span></td><td align="right">facing <a href="#page_214">214</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Woman of Chateaulin</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_217">217</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Camaret</span></td><td align="right">facing <a href="#page_220">220</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Landerneau</span></td><td align="right">facing <a href="#page_224">224</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Calvary, Plougastel</span></td><td align="right">facing <a href="#page_228">228</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Lighthouse of Créac’h, Ouessant</span></td><td align="right">facing <a href="#page_236">236</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Roscoff</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_239">239</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Ma Douez</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_244">244</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Carved Wood Staircase, Morlaix</span></td><td align="right">facing <a href="#page_246">246</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Procession of Sailors, St. Jean du Doigt</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_247">247</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Old House, Tréguier</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_253">253</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">House of Ernest Renan, Tréguier</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_254">254</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Shrine of St. Yves, Tréguier</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_256">256</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">A Binou Player</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_261">261</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Binic</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_267">267</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Ramparts of St. Malo</span></td><td align="right">facing <a href="#page_272">272</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">House of Duguay-Trouin, St. Malo</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_281">281</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Tower of Solidor, St. Servan</span></td><td align="right">facing <a href="#page_284">284</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Plans of the Tower of Solidor</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_285">285</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">The Valley of the Rance</span> (<span class="smcap">Map</span>)</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_292">292</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Duguesclin</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_293">293</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Rez-de-Chaussée of Donjon, Dinan</span> (<span class="smcap">Diagram</span>)</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_295">295</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Coif of Miniac</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_307">307</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Mayenne</span></td><td align="right">facing <a href="#page_310">310</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Plan of the Ancient Walls and Towers Of<br /> -Fougères</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_314">314</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Beucheresse Gate, Laval</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_319">319</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Plan of Vitré in 1811, Showing City Walls</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_321">321</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Château de Vitré</span></td><td align="right">facing <a href="#page_322">322</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Tower of St. Martin, Vitré</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_323">323</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Château de Rochers</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_325">325</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Arms of Madame de Sévigné</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_327">327</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Monastery of St. Mélaine, Rennes</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_331">331</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Huelgoat</span></td><td align="right">facing <a href="#page_340">340</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Pardon of St. Jean du Doigt</span></td><td align="right">facing <a href="#page_352">352</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">The Provinces of France</span> (<span class="smcap">Map</span>)</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_359">359</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">The Ancient Provinces of France</span> (<span class="smcap">Map</span>)</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_361">361</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Comparative Metric Scale</span> (<span class="smcap">Diagram</span>)</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_364">364</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Sketch Map of Circular Tour in Brittany</span></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_366">366</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Architectural Names of the Various Parts Of<br /> -A Feudal Château</span> (<span class="smcap">Diagram</span>)</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_367">367</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Tide and Weather Signals in the Ports of<br /> -Brittany</span> (<span class="smcap">Diagram</span>)</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_368">368</a></td></tr> - -</table> - -<p><a name="page_001" id="page_001"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="PART_I" id="PART_I"></a>PART I.</h2> - -<p><a name="page_002" id="page_002"></a></p> - -<p><a name="page_003" id="page_003"></a></p> - -<h1>RAMBLES IN BRITTANY</h1> - -<p class="figcenter"> -<img src="images/bar.png" width="80" height="10" alt="decorative bar" -title="decorative bar" /> -</p> - -<h3><a name="CHAPTER_I-1" id="CHAPTER_I-1"></a>CHAPTER I.<br /><br /> -<small>INTRODUCTORY</small></h3> - -<p>T<small>HE</small> regard which every one has for the old French provinces is by -no means inexplicable. Out of them grew the present solidarity of -republican France, but in spite of it the old limits of demarcation -are not yet expunged. One and all retain to-day their individual -characteristics, manners, and customs, and also a certain subconscious -atmosphere.</p> - -<p>Many are the casual travellers who know Normandy and Brittany, at least -know them by name and perhaps something more, but how many of those who -annually skim across France, in summer to Switzerland and in winter to -the Riviera or to Italy, there to live in<a name="page_004" id="page_004"></a> seven-franc-a-day pensions, -and drink a particularly vile brand of tea, know where Brittany leaves -off and Normandy begins, or have more than the vaguest of vague notions -as to whether the charming little provincial capital of Nantes, on the -Loire, is in Brittany or in Poitou. A recollection of their school-day -knowledge of history will help them on the latter point, but geography -will come in and puzzle them still more.</p> - -<p>There are many French writers, and painters for that matter, who have -made these provinces famous. Napoleon, perhaps, set the fashion, when -he wrote, in 1786, that eulogy beginning: “It is now six or seven years -since I left my native country.” More familiar is the “Native Land” of -Lamartine. Camille Flammarion wrote “My Cradle,” meaning Champagne; -Dumas wrote of Villers-Cotterets, and Chateaubriand and Renan of -Brittany; but head and shoulders above them all stand out Frederic -Mistral and his fellows of the Félibres at Avignon and Arles.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width:500px;"> -<a href="images/illpg_004_lg.jpg"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/illpg_004_sml.jpg" width="476" height="317" alt="The Loire at Nantes" -title="The Loire at Nantes" /></a> -<br /> -<p class="caption">The Loire at Nantes</p> -</div> - -<p>All this offers a well-nigh irresistible fascination for those who -love literary and historic shrines,—and who does not in these days of -universal travel, personally conducted or otherwise? Not every one can -follow in the footsteps<a name="page_005" id="page_005"></a> of Sterne with equal facility and grace, or -bask in the radiance of a Stevenson or a Gautier. Still, it is given -to most of us who know the lay of the land to discover for ourselves -the position of these celebrated shrines, whether the pilgrimage be -historical, literary, or artistic.</p> - -<p>This is what gives a charm to travel, and even where no new thing is -actually discovered, no new pathways broken, there is, after all, a -certain zest in such an exploration rivalling that to be obtained from -an expedition to the uttermost confines of the Dark Continent, to Tibet, -or to Tierra del Fuego.</p> - -<p>Primarily, the ancient provinces of France have a story of historical -and romantic purport not equalled in the chronicles of any other nation. -The distinctive types are but vaguely limned, but the Norman and the -Breton stand out most distinctly, and such figures as the Norman and -Breton dukes of real history live even more vividly in one’s mind than -D’Artagnan and his fellows in the great portrait-gallery of Dumas.</p> - -<p>One need not be of the antiquary species in order to revel in the great -monuments of history abounding in Brittany even as in Normandy. There -are many and beautiful shrines<a name="page_006" id="page_006"></a> elsewhere,—and doubtless some are more -popularly famous than any in Brittany,—but none have played greater or -more important rôles in the history and development of the France of -to-day than those of the two northwestern provinces.</p> - -<p>As has been said, each of the great provinces into which France -was divided previous to the Revolution possessed characteristics, -unmistakable even to-day. As to the topography of any single one, -the question is so vast in its detail that more than mention of -principal features can hardly be made in a book such as this. It is -then perhaps enough that some slight information concerning Brittany -and its principal places should be recorded here, and that the chief -configurations of its territory should be outlined.</p> - -<p>In addition to the principal old-time governments, there were the -ancient fiefs and local divisions, and these in many cases had names -often encountered in history and literature. Sometimes these were relics -of the still earlier day, of Gaul before the Roman conquest, their -ancient names having come down through the ages with but little change.</p> - -<p>If one would understand the economic or agricultural aspect of France of -to-day, he<a name="page_007" id="page_007"></a> must know these principal provinces by name at least.</p> - -<p>When one is at Chartres, he must be aware that he is on the edge of the -great plateau of Beauce,—the granary of France,—and that as he crosses -into Brittany—perhaps through Perche, whence come the great-footed -Percherons—he enters the country of the ancient Veneti. Farther west -lies rock-bound Cornouaille, which in every characteristic resembles -Cornwall in Britain; Léon on the north, and finally Penthièvre.</p> - -<p>The traveller remakes his history where he finds it. If he have a good -memory, this is not a difficult process, but, in any case, the French -guide-books, that is to say, those written in French, not the English or -Anglo-German variety, are sufficiently explicit as to dates and events -to set him on the right track.</p> - -<p>The armchair traveller usually desires something more. He likes -his plain stories garnished with a not too elaborate series of -embellishment, both as to text and illustration, giving him some -tangible reminder of things as they are in this enlightened twentieth -century, when tram-cars have taken the place of the diligence, and the -electric light has supplanted the tallow dip, and one may well say with -Sterne:<a name="page_008" id="page_008"></a> “Since France is so near to England, why not go to France?”</p> - -<p>Here, in spots all but unknown even in Normandy and Brittany, the -traveller finds for himself monuments of a civilization gone before and -of a local history not yet completely erased, and as interesting as -those of any land made famous by antiquaries whose only claim to fame -rests upon their questionable ability in propounding new theories, of -which the chief merit is plausibility,—a process of history-making -sadly overdone of late in some parts.</p> - -<p>Both in Brittany and in Normandy there are innumerable glorious -architectural monuments of a past from which history may be builded -anew. Character counts for a great deal with cities as with individuals. -One can love Rouen as the capital of the ancient Normandy, or Nantes as -the capital of Lower Brittany, but he will no more have the same sort of -affection for Lyons or for Nice than he will have it for Manchester or -for Chicago.</p> - -<p>In the days of old, when each little town had its dignitaries, who may -have been counts or who may have been bishops, there was perhaps more -individuality than in the present age of monotonous prefects and mayors. -Nantes had its dukes, and Rouen had its prelates, and both<a name="page_009" id="page_009"></a> of them, -even to-day, overshadow the civic dignitaries of their time; hence it is -the memory of the parts played by them which induces an association of -ideas prompting a desire to know personally the ground trodden by them.</p> - -<p>Normandy and Brittany are supposed to be the happy hunting-grounds of -cheap tourists and trippers, but, as a matter of fact, the former do -not go beyond Dieppe, or the latter beyond the Channel Islands,—with -possibly a day excursion to St. Malo,—so no discomfort need really -arise from the fear of their presence. Furthermore, the tourists from -across Channel that one does meet in Normandy or Brittany to-day are not -so outrageous in their dress and manners as the type pictured by <i>Punch</i>.</p> - -<p>It is a generally recognized fact that no special hardship is involved -in modern travel; caravansaries have for the most part given way to inns -which, if not exactly palatial, at least furnish creature comforts of a -quality quite as good or a great deal better than those to which most -travellers are accustomed at home. One may, and most likely will, miss -his or her particular brand of tea or tobacco, but will find substitutes -quite as excellent, and as far as the language question is concerned,<a name="page_010" id="page_010"></a> -why, that lies at one’s own door, unless one wants to go out as a -disciple of Esperanto, the modern successor of Volapuk, dead years ago -of sheer weight of consonants.</p> - -<p>This book, then, is meant to ensure better knowledge on the part of -the casual traveller of that delectable land which may be somewhat -vaguely described as old France, of which Brittany and Normandy are as -representative in their survivals as any other part.<a name="page_011" id="page_011"></a></p> - -<h3><a name="CHAPTER_II-1" id="CHAPTER_II-1"></a>CHAPTER II.<br /><br /> -<small>THE PROVINCE AND THE PEOPLE</small></h3> - -<p>B<small>RITTANY</small>, the ancient province which underwent such a strife of warfare -and bloodshed in the struggle against invaders, and finally against -France, has become one of the most loyal of all the old-time divisions -making up the present republic. Her struggle against a curtailment of -her ancient rights and the attempts to conserve her liberties were -futile, and when the Duchess Anne took Louis XII. for her second -husband, Brittany became a part of the royal domain never to be -separated therefrom.</p> - -<p>It was Duguesclin who saved it for France, Duchess Anne who enriched it, -Chateaubriand, Lamennais, Laennec, and Renan who made it illustrious in -letters, and Duguay-Trouin, Jacques Cartier, Surcouf, Du Couëdic, and -many besides who added to all this the spirit of adventure and romance -with which the chronicles of Brittany have ever abounded.</p> - -<p>Commonly it has been called a land of granite, an expression which has -been consecrated<a name="page_012" id="page_012"></a> by the usage of many years, but it is also a land most -picturesque, melancholy, and dreamy, with immense horizons of sea and -sky, and a climate strictly temperate throughout all the year.</p> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“O landes, O forêts, pierres sombres et hautes,<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Bois qui couvrez nos champs, mers qui battez nos côtes,<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Villages où les morts errent avec les ventes,<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Bretagne! d’où te vient l’amour de tes enfants.”<br /></span> -</div></div> - -<p>Brittany in early days had a parliament the most important in France. -Armorica was its more ancient name, which in old Breton signified “near -to the sea,” or “on the sea.”</p> - -<p>From the beginning of the fifth century, for a matter of perhaps a -hundred years, the peninsula was known as Armorique, and its people -as Armoricans. After this time the name disappeared from general -use, and Brittany and Breton came. From the sixth century onward the -change became permanent, and such chroniclers as Gregory of Tours, for -instance, always referred to Britannia, Britanniœ, Britanni, and -Britones, in writing of the peninsula and its people.</p> - -<p>When first peopled from Britain across the Channel, Brittany was the -most thinly populated part of all Gaul. Each wave of immigration, as -the Britons from across the water fled<a name="page_013" id="page_013"></a> from the invading Saxons, added -to the population of the land, until ultimately it became as a hundred -Britons against ten Armoricans. At least, this is the way the French -historians and antiquaries put it, and so Armorique became Brittany, -and such is the origin of French Brittany, quite independent of the -etymology of the word Breton itself.</p> - -<p>The inhabitants even to-day—more than in any other of the ancient -provinces of France—have preserved the ancient nomenclature of the land -and its people, and everywhere one finds only Bretons whose home is -Brittany.</p> - -<p>Mercator, the map-maker, was more of a success than Mercator, the -historical chronicler. He said of the Bretons, in 1595, that they were -“for the most part avaricious and largely given to making distinctions -between glasses and tumblers.” As a matter of record, this is not so -true of the Bretons as it is of the Normans, or of the Germans, or of -the Spaniards. Up to the time of Cæsar the name Armorica seems to have -been applied to all the coast of Northwestern France of to-day, with a -little strip running as far south as the mouth of the Garonne, but more -particularly it afterward designated the peninsula of Brittany as we -know it to-day.<a name="page_014" id="page_014"></a></p> - -<p>The region was early put under the guardianship of a chieftain, who -invariably, here as elsewhere in those days, took advantage of every -opportunity to advance his frontiers.</p> - -<p>This attempted aggrandizement was not so successful here as in other -parts, and by the fifth century Armorica had shrunk to the region lying -entirely between the Seine and the Loire. In the life of St. Germain of -Auxerre one reads:</p> - -<div class="poem"> -“Gens inter geminos notissima clauditur amnes<br /> -<span style="margin-left: .45em;">Armoricana prius veteri cognomine dicta est.”</span> -</div> - -<p>Finally, at the close of the sixth century, Armorica merged itself in -Brittany, but the “Concile de Tours” makes a remarkable distinction -between the new settlers and those who had previously been known as -Romans. This distinction was also clearly made by St. Samson, who wrote -in the seventh century that Britannia was the name given to Armorica by -the exiled Britons who had fled from the Saxons and the Angles and had -there taken up their home.</p> - -<p>Before the Roman conquest there were five tribes in the country, named -by Cæsar as the Nannetes, the Veneti, the Osismii, the Curiosolitæ, -and the Rhedones,—names which, with but slight evolution, exist even -to-day. Things went on quietly under Roman control, but when<a name="page_015" id="page_015"></a> Clovis -became the master of a part of Gaul he was obliged to treat with the -Armoricans. Finally the Britons from across the sea came “like a -torrent,” and established themselves, changing the names of certain -regions to Cornouaille, Léon, Bro-Waroch, etc. Conquered in 799 by a -lieutenant of Charlemagne, the Bretons revolted again some little time -after, and, at the death of the great emperor, successfully withstood -the attacks of the formidable army which Louis the Amiable had sent -against them. For a quarter of a century Brittany now suffered attack -and pillage by the Normans, relieved only when Alain Barbe-Torte drove -the invaders from his territory. Previous to the Norman inroad, the -Bretons lived in petty tribes, of which each formed a “<i>plou</i>,” a prefix -still often met with in Breton place-names. The chief of a <i>plou</i> was -known as a <i>machtiern</i>.</p> - -<p>Up to this time no foreign customs had been introduced, but, after the -victories of Alain Barbe-Torte, tribal organization was succeeded by -that of the fief.</p> - -<p>By the tenth century feudalism was thoroughly established throughout -most of the ancient provinces of France, and the land was covered with -seigniories, great and small, the one more or less dependent upon the -other.<a name="page_016" id="page_016"></a> Dukes, counts, and seigneurs, each in his own territory, played -the hereditary sovereign in little, and above them was the suzerain -power of which they were vassals.</p> - -<p>After the expulsion of the Normans, the ancient Breton kingdoms of -Domnonée, Cornouaille, and Bro-Waroch disappeared, and the sovereign of -all Brittany bore the title of duke.</p> - -<p>Historians write of the nine ancient barons of Brittany, among whom -was divided the governmental control of the country, all of them being -virtually subject to the reigning duke. They were:</p> - -<ul><li>I. Seigneur d’Avaugour or De Goëllo.</li> -<li>II. Vicomte de Léon.</li> -<li>III. Seigneur de Fougères.</li> -<li>IV. Sire de Vitré.</li> -<li>V. Sire de Rohan.</li> -<li>VI. Seigneur de Chateaubriand.</li> -<li>VII. Seigneur de Retz.</li> -<li>VIII. Seigneur de la Roche-Bernard.</li> -<li>IX. Seigneur du Pont.</li> -</ul> - -<p>These original baronies expanded into a round hundred by the fifteenth -century, and the list of them contains the ancestral names of the Breton -nobility.</p> - -<p>Henry II. of England dealt severely with<a name="page_017" id="page_017"></a> Brittany, but his son Geoffrey -married Constance, the daughter of Duke Conan IV., and this made the -condition of the province more tolerable.</p> - -<p>The first step toward the union of Brittany with the kingdom of France -came when—through the intrigues of Philip Augustus—the daughter of -Geoffrey Plantagenet married Pierre Mauclerc, Count of Dreux, and a -prince of the blood royal of France. Joan of Penthièvre also married the -Count of Blois, another lieutenant of the King of France.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 259px;"> -<a href="images/illpg_017_lg.jpg"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/illpg_017_sml.jpg" width="259" height="117" alt="Device of Anne of Brittany" -title="Device of Anne of Brittany" /></a> -<p class="caption">Device of Anne of Brittany</p> -</div> - -<p>The war of succession in Brittany between the ducal houses of Blois and -Montfort was, up to the fourteenth century, the principal event of the -province’s early history. The Montforts achieved final victory at Auray -in 1364. Upon the death of Francis II., his daughter Anne, the chief -figure in all Breton history, so far as<a name="page_018" id="page_018"></a> existing memorials of her life -are concerned, became duchess.</p> - -<div class="figleft" style="width: 147px;"> -<a href="images/illpg_018_lg.jpg"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/illpg_018_sml.jpg" width="147" height="231" alt="Anne of Brittany" -title="Anne of Brittany" /></a> -<p class="caption">Anne of Brittany</p> -</div> - -<p>In 1491, she married Charles VIII. of France, and eight years later his -successor, Louis XII. The daughter of this last marriage, the Princess -Claude of France, married the Duke of Angoulême, afterward Francis -the First, and the fortunes of Brittany and France were thenceforth -indissolubly allied, for, upon becoming Queen Claude of France, the -inheritor of Brittany ceded the province to her royal spouse and his -descendants in perpetuity. Queen Claude died in 1524, which event for -ever assured France of this province,—the most beautiful gem in the -royal crown. The union of Brittany and France was celebrated with much -pomp in 1532.</p> - -<p>The ancient county or duchy of Bretagne was bordered on the east by -Anjou and Maine, on the west by the Atlantic, on the north by<a name="page_019" id="page_019"></a> the -British Channel and Normandy, and on the south by Poitou. The province -had two territorial divisions, Upper and Lower, and Rennes was the -parliamentary capital.</p> - -<p>Upper Brittany comprised the five episcopal dioceses of Dol, Nantes, -Rennes, Saint-Brieuc, and St. Malo, and Lower Brittany counted four -similar divisions, Quimper, St. Pol de Léon, Tréguier, and Vannes. Thus -the political divisions of a former day corresponded exactly with those -of the Church.</p> - -<p>To-day Brittany is divided into five departments: Côtes du Nord, -Finistère, Ille-et-Vilaine, Loire-Inférieure, and the Morbihan.</p> - -<p>The administrative government of Brittany, or rather of its present-day -departments, like that of the rest of France, radiates from the -capital of the department, which is the residence of the prefect, the -tax-collector, the bishop, and, in general, of all heads of departments. -The chief town is also the seat of the General Council and (with few -exceptions) of the assize court.</p> - -<p>The most ancient codified law of Brittany was known as the little book, -but the manuscript copy has been lost. The most ancient work which -recites the “customs” of this great province dates only from 1330. This -curious<a name="page_020" id="page_020"></a> document is known as the “Very Ancient Law,” and contains 336 -articles. “The Ancient Law” was compiled and published at Nantes in -1549, and contains 779 articles.</p> - -<p>Brittany has been, and perhaps ever will be, considered by Frenchmen -an alien land, where, in its great plains and mountainous regions, in -the valleys of its bubbling rivers, and on its rock-bound shores, the -people, one and all, “speak a tongue so ancient and so strange that he -who hears it dreams of a vanished race.”</p> - -<p>Yes, Brittany is a land of menhirs, of legends and superstitions, but -all this but makes a roundabout journey the more enjoyable, and one -must really cross and recross it to its uttermost confines in order to -realize its great variation of manners and customs, to say nothing of -speech, for, even though the Breton tongue is dying out as a universal -language, one still buys his post-card with a queer legend on its face, -which looks like Dutch at first glance, but really is Breton.</p> - -<p>In Madame de Sévigné’s time the ladies of Lower Brittany were famous -for their beauty. In “Letter XLIV.,” written to her daughter, Madame de -Sévigné said: “Many beauties of Lower Brittany were present at the great -<a name="page_021" id="page_021"></a>ball, the brilliant Mademoiselle de L——, a fine girl who dances very -well.”</p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 297px;"> -<a href="images/illpg_021_lg.png"> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<img src="images/illpg_021_sml.png" width="297" height="191" alt="Breton Post-card" -title="Breton Post-card" /></a> -<p class="caption">Breton Post-card</p> -</div> - -<p>Things do not seem to have changed greatly to-day, and, although Madame -de Sévigné wrote of court beauties only, in the Lower Province one -frequently meets such beauty of face as one does not see everywhere in -France. It must be owned that the figures, if not exactly found wanting, -are often too ample. The sternness of the land, like the bleakness of -Holland, has, apparently, added no end of grace to the features of the -women, whatever may have been its hardening effect upon the men.</p> - -<p>In Cornouaille, Latin <i>Cornu-Galliæ</i>, one finds almost the same name -and the same derivation<a name="page_022" id="page_022"></a> as in English Cornwall, and the topographical -aspect is much the same in both instances. “The people of Cornuaille are -faithful to tradition, and above all others merit the name of Bretons,” -says J. Guillon.</p> - -<p>The Province of Léon forms the northern part of the Department of -Finistère. The name was a development from Pagus Legionensis, a large -military colony having been quartered there in Roman times.</p> - -<p>In the south the ancient Breton Province of Bro-Waroch became the -county of Vannes, the counts being in reality dependents of the Duke -of Brittany; their people spoke, and retain even to-day, a distinct -dialect, greatly varying from that of the rest of Brittany.</p> - -<p>In the earliest times, both Nantes and Rennes were the seat of important -administrative governments, but the Counts of Nantes ceded their fiefs -to the Bretons in the eleventh century. Chief of these were the fiefs of -the Baron of Retz, the Seigneur de Clisson, who defended the southern -frontier against Poitou, and the Baron of Ancenis, who was the bulwark -between Brittany and Anjou.</p> - -<p>In the north, the ancient Breton kingdom of Domnonée was, in the twelfth -century, divided<a name="page_023" id="page_023"></a> into two counties, that of Penthièvre and Tréguier.</p> - -<p>It was Duke Geoffrey who introduced feudalism of the Anglo-Norman and -French variety. In earlier times, when a nobleman died, his children -divided his lands and goods in equal parts among them, but in Normandy -and France the estate went to the eldest of the line.</p> - -<p>It was only in the twelfth century that the Bretons went outside their -own domain. Previously, they were decidedly an untravelled race, but -under Philip the Fair Paris came to know Breton well, though chiefly -through the poorer classes.</p> - -<p>They went to the schools and seminaries of Orleans to become clerics; -sold their cattle and horses in the markets of Paris, and their wheat -in Maine and Anjou, and their feudal lords, it is perhaps needless to -say, bought their dress in the capital of fashion, and their wines in -Gascony. From this time, Brittany may be said to have been opened to the -world.</p> - -<p>Not always were the Bretons a peaceful, law-abiding race, at least -they did not always appear in such a light to their contemporaries. -According to Bouchart, Duke Francis II. received a letter wherein his -brother-in-law, the Count of Foix, said: “Monseigneur, I declare<a name="page_024" id="page_024"></a> to -God, I would rather be the ruler of a million of wild boars than of such -a people as are your Bretons.”</p> - -<p>In 1460, Francis II. founded the University of Nantes, thus doing away -with the necessity of the young Breton’s going to Paris, Orleans, or -Angers for his education.</p> - -<p>Printing was discovered in Germany, and all in good time it appeared -in Brittany, at Lannion, and at Tréguier. There were establishments -devoted to the art even before they existed in such important places as -Lyons or Montpellier. One of the first books printed in Brittany was a -French-Breton dictionary, published in 1499, and known as the Catholicon -of Jean Lagadeuc.</p> - -<p>By this time, a remarkable form of government, unique in all the -world, was established in Brittany. In some respects it was modelled -on the English Parliament, but in no way resembled that of the French -legislative body.</p> - -<p>The Estates met each year at Rennes, at Vannes, at Nantes, at Redon, at -Vitré, or at Dinan, and at last, under Francis II., Parliament came to -be a fixture at Rennes.</p> - -<p>Even after the union of Brittany with France, the ancient rights, -privileges, and liberties were assured to the old province until the -Revolution.<a name="page_025" id="page_025"></a> These sittings of the Estates at Rennes were sumptuous -affairs, accompanied by a round of feasting and dancing at which -appeared all the aristocracy who could.</p> - -<p>Madame de Sévigné wrote to her daughter of one of the grand affairs as -follows:</p> - -<p>“The good cheer is excessive; the roasts are brought on entire, and the -pyramids of fruit are so huge as to make it necessary to take down the -doors for their entrance.... After dinner, MM. de Locmaria and Coëtlegon -danced with two Breton girls, taking some amazing steps.... Play is -continuous, balls endless, and thrice a week there are comedies.”</p> - -<p>The relations between the nobility and peasantry in seventeenth-century -Brittany were perhaps closer and more affectionate than in any other -part of France. The noblemen frequently visited the peasants on their -farms, and on Sunday the peasants danced in the courts of the castles -and manor-houses.</p> - -<p>“Virtually, under the old system, Brittany was peopled by rural -nobility,” says Cambry, and indeed this must have been so, for within a -small radius of Plougasnou were more than two hundred noblemen’s houses, -“so poor,” says the chronicler, “that their inhabitants<a name="page_026" id="page_026"></a> might well be -classed with the labourers themselves.”</p> - -<p>Brittany’s part in the Revolution was equivocal. The Republicans really -had beaten the Royalists, but they had also aided the Girondins, and at -Paris the Girondins were as much hated as the Royalists themselves. The -Convention sent its representatives into the province, not to thank the -Bretons for their help in the great struggle, but with the idea of still -further arousing the passions of the people.</p> - -<p>Among these representatives were Geurmer, Prieur de la Marne, -Jean-Bon-St.-Andre, and the rascally and heartless Carrier, who drowned -his hundreds at Nantes, and guillotined twenty-six Bretons in one day at -Brest.</p> - -<p>The Breton feeling and sympathy was in the main with the Republicans, -though manifestly the majority had no sympathy with the rule of -the Terrorists. It is curious to note, however, the change in the -nomenclature of places in the endeavour to eliminate the religious -and aristocratic prefixes and suffixes with which many of the Breton -place-names were endowed.</p> - -<p>St. Cast became Havre-Cast.</p> - -<p>St. Fiacre became Fiacre-les-Bois.</p> - -<p>St. Gildas became Gildas du Chaneau.</p> - -<p>St. Gilles-les-Bois became Bellevue.<a name="page_027" id="page_027"></a></p> - -<p>St. Jacut-de-la-Mer became Isle Jacut and Port Jacut.</p> - -<p>Chateaulin became Cité sur Aôn.</p> - -<p>Pont l’Abbé became Pont Marat.</p> - -<p>Quimper became Montagne sur Odet.</p> - -<p>St. Martin des Champs became Unité des Champs.</p> - -<p>St. Pol de Léon became Port Pol.</p> - -<p>Belle Ile en Mer became Ile de l’Unité.</p> - -<p>Château Fouquet became Maison-des-Sans-Culottes.</p> - -<p>Isle aux Moins became Isle du Morbihan.</p> - -<p>Roche-Bernard became La Roche Sauveur.</p> - -<p>Rochefort en Terre became Roche des Trois.</p> - -<p>St. Gildas de Rhuis became Abélard.</p> - -<p>St. Briac became Port Briac.</p> - -<p>St. Lunaire became Port Lunaire.</p> - -<p>St. Malo became Port Malo.</p> - -<p>St. Servan became Port Solidor.</p> - -<p>With the incoming of the Empire, most of these names reverted to their -early form.</p> - -<p>In our day, while many of the old provinces of France have suffered—if -they really do “suffer”—from a decreasing population, Brittany has -augmented her numbers continually. It is a well-worn saying among the -political economists of France that the “fine and healthy race of -Bretons is one of the greatest<a name="page_028" id="page_028"></a> reserves and hopes of the republic.” -Three-quarters of all those who man French ships come from the Breton -peninsula.</p> - -<p>Hamerton has said that no race, more than the English, had so strong -a tendency to form attachments for places outside their native land. -There may be many reasons for this, and assuredly the subject is too -vast and varied to be more than hinted at here. Brittany, at any rate, -has proved, in and out of season, a haven, as safe as a home-port, -for the Briton and his family, when they would not wander too far. -Possibly it comes after Switzerland, though France as a whole, “the most -architectural country in Europe,” has been sadly neglected, for, as has -been said before, no Englishman ever loved France as Browning loved -Italy.</p> - -<p>The native love of the Frenchman for the land of his birth is, to him, -above all else. It is almost incomprehensible to an outsider; it is -something more than mere patriotism; it is the love of an artist for his -picture, as Balzac said of his love of Touraine. This sentiment goes -deep. After the province comes the immediate environment of his village, -and then the village. “<i>Rien n’est plus beau que mon village, en verité -je vous le dis.</i>” Thus has written and spoken many a great Frenchman.<a name="page_029" id="page_029"></a></p> - -<p>Nowhere in the known world is provincialism so deep and profound a trait -as in France; and the Breton is always a Breton, contemptuous of the -Norman, God-fearing, and peaceful toward all. There is throughout France -always an intense provincial rivalry, though it seldom rises to hatred -or even to jealousy.</p> - -<p>Probably there is no great amount of truth in the following quatrain, -evidently composed by a resident of Finistère, and there first heard -by the writer of this book, but it reflects those little rivalries and -ambitions which have appeared in the daily life-struggle among the -inhabitants of other nations since the world began:</p> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“Voleur comme un Léonard,<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Traitre comme un Trégarrais,<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Sot comme un Vannetais,<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Brutal comme un Cornouaillais.”<br /></span> -</div></div> - -<p>Sometimes the love of one’s own country may be carried to an extreme. -We read that for long years, and until recently, the inhabitants of -Trélaze positively refused to assimilate with outside conditions of life -to the least degree, and finding a Breton of this little zone or islet -who spoke French was as improbable as to find one who spoke English. -At St. Brieuc there is a special quarter where the Breton-speaking<a name="page_030" id="page_030"></a> -folk live to the number of two thousand, and this out of a population -of only twenty-two thousand, while at Nantes the Bretons number ten -thousand. At Angers there is a large and apparently growing Breton -colony; likewise at Havre, in Normandy, where they have a special chapel -in which the priest preaches in the Breton tongue. At Paris, too, there -are various Breton colonies, and the Church of St. Paul and St. Louis, -in St. Anthony’s Street, has a Breton priest. It is the same with the -church of Vaugirard. At Havre there are something over three thousand -Breton-speaking persons, and in Paris seven thousand.</p> - -<p>Perhaps Brittany has produced fewer great painters and sculptors than -any other section of France, but all Bretons are artists in no very -small way, as witness their wonderfully picturesque dress and their -charmingly stage-managed fêtes and ceremonies.</p> - -<p>The pioneer painter of Breton subjects was doubtless Adolph Leleux, who, -as one of the romantic school in Paris, found in this province what many -another of his contemporaries was seeking for elsewhere, and discovered -Brittany, as far as making it a popular artists’ sketching-ground is -concerned. His first paintings of<a name="page_031" id="page_031"></a> this region were exhibited in the -Salons of 1838-39-40, and Paris raved over them. His peasant folk, -with their embroidered waistcoats and broad-brimmed hats, had the very -atmosphere of Brittany.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 321px;"> -<a href="images/illpg_030_lg.jpg"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/illpg_030_sml.jpg" width="321" height="510" alt="St. Brieuc" -title="St. Brieuc" /></a> -<p class="caption">St. Brieuc</p> -</div> - -<p>Leleux’s success was the signal for a throng of artists to follow in his -footsteps, and to-day their number is countless, and the very names of -even the most famous would form too long a list to catalogue here.</p> - -<p>Among Leleux’s most celebrated canvases were “La Karolle, Danse -Bretonne” 1843; “Les Faneuses,” 1846; “Le Retour du Marché,” 1847; -“Cour de Cabaret,” 1857; “Jour de Fête en Basse Bretagne,” 1865; and -successively the “Foire Bretonne,” “Les Braconniers,” “Le Pêcheur de -Homards,” “Pèlerinage Breton,” and “Le Cri du Chouan.”</p> - -<p>In all these works one finds the true Brittany of Rosporden and -Penmarc’h.</p> - -<p>Fortin’s “Cahute de Mendicant dans le Finistère” (1857), “La -Bénédicité,” and “La Chaumière du Morbihan” follow Leleux as a good -second, then Trayers with “Marché Breton and “Marchande de Crepes à -Quimperlé.”</p> - -<p>Among other noted pictures are Darjours’s “Palaudiers du Bourg de Batz” -and the<a name="page_032" id="page_032"></a> “Fagotiers Bretons”; Guerard’s “Jour de Fête” and “Messe du -Matin, Ille-et-Vilaine”; Fischer’s “Chemin du Pardon” and “Auberge à -Scaër,” and Roussin’s “Famille Bretonne.”</p> - -<p>Gustave Brion, with his “Bretons à la Porte d’une Eglise”; Yan -Dargent, with his “Sauvetage à Guisseny,” and Jules Noel, with his -“Danse Bretonne,” and various landscapes of Brest, Quimper, Auray, and -Douarnenez, are on the list of names of those who made the Breton region -famous in the mid-nineteenth century.</p> - -<p>Since then, the followers in their footsteps have been almost too many -to number.</p> - -<p>Most folk call to mind with very slight appreciable effort such -masterpieces as Jules Breton’s “Retraite aux Flambeaux” and “Plantation -d’un Calvaire,” now in the museum at Lille, and Charles Cottet’s -“Bateaux de Pêche à Camaret” in the Luxembourg gallery.</p> - -<p>In addition, there have been innumerable “great pictures” painted by -English and American artists whose very names form too long a list to -catalogue here.<a name="page_033" id="page_033"></a></p> - -<h3><a name="CHAPTER_III-1" id="CHAPTER_III-1"></a>CHAPTER III.<br /><br /> -<small>THE TOPOGRAPHY OF THE PROVINCE</small></h3> - -<p>O<small>NE</small> reason for the diversified interests of France and the varying -methods of life is the vastly diversified topographical features. “Great -plains as large as three Irelands,” said Hamerton, “and yet mountainous -districts quite as large as the whole of the British Isles.” This -should have served to disabuse British travellers of some false notions -regarding France, but many of them still hold to the views which are to -be gained by railway journeys across the lowlands of Gaul, forgetting -for a moment that well within the confines of France there are fifty -mountain peaks above eleven thousand feet high, and that majestic Mont -Blanc itself rises on French soil.</p> - -<p>Then there are the two thousand miles of seacoast which introduce -another element of the population, from the dark-skinned sailor of the -Mediterranean to his brother of Finistère, who is brought into the world -chiefly to<a name="page_034" id="page_034"></a> recruit the French navy. The Norman sailorman is a hardy, -intrepid navigator even to-day, but he is to a great extent of the -longshore and fishing-boat variety, whereas the true Breton is a sailor -through and through.</p> - -<p>Before now, Brittany has been compared, disparagingly, with Provence, -and with some justness perhaps. Provence, however, does not persistently -broil under a “fierce, dry heat,” and Brittany is not by any means -“a wind and wave swept land, where nothing nourishes itself or grows -fat.” Potatoes are even fattening, and Brittany, in all conscience, -grows enough of that useful commodity to feed all France. In three -things Brittany and Provence more than a little resemble one another. -Both preserve, to a very remarkable extent, their ancient language and -their old-time manners and customs, though in all three they are quite -different one from the other.</p> - -<p>The general topographical aspect of the coast of the whole Breton -peninsula is stern and wild, whether one encounters the dreary waste of -sand, in the midst of which sit Mont St. Michel and Tombelaine, or the -cliffs away to the westward, or the bleak and barren Belle Ile en Mer, -where Fouquet built his famous stronghold.<a name="page_035" id="page_035"></a></p> - -<p>On the “Emerald Coast” the sea and sky are often of a true Neapolitan -clearness, and, indeed, the climate of the whole peninsula is, even in -winter, as mild as many a popularly fashionable Mediterranean resort; -but it is not always so bright and sunny; there is a deal of rain in -winter, and often a penetrating dampness, whose only brother is the -genuine Scotch mist.</p> - -<p>Still, in all but four months of the year, there is a brilliancy and -softness about the climate of the coast of Brittany which encourages -violets, roses, onions, and potatoes to come to maturity at so early a -date that the Londoner has ceased to raise the question as to whether or -not they may be “best English,” when he sees these products laid out of -an early morning in his beloved Covent Garden.</p> - -<p>To know a country or its people at its best, one should really take one -of its great men for a guide. Hear then what Chateaubriand says of “La -Terre Bretonne”:</p> - -<p>“This long peninsula, of a wild and savage aspect, has much of -singularity about it: its narrow valleys, its non-navigable rivers -bathing the feet of its ruined castle-keeps and châteaux, its old -abbeys, its thatch-covered houses, and its cattle herded together in its -arid pastures.<a name="page_036" id="page_036"></a> One valley is separated from another by forests of oak, -with holly bushes as large as beech-trees, and druidical stones around -which sea-birds are for ever circling.</p> - -<p>“Of an imagination lively, but nevertheless melancholic, of a humour as -flexible as their character is obstinate, the Bretons are distinguished -for their piety, and none the less for their bravery, their fidelity, -their spirit of independence, and their patriotism. Proud and -susceptible, but without ambition and little suited to the affairs of -court or state, they care nothing for honours or for rank.”</p> - -<p>The picture is not very vivid, but it is wonderfully true, and of this -one meets continual evidence in a journey around the coast, from the Bay -of St. Michel in the north to Belle Ile or Nantes in the south.</p> - -<p>No part of France has a physiognomy more original than Bretagne; none -has been marked by nature in a more emphatic manner than this ancient -home of the Celts.</p> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“...la terre du granit<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Et de l’immense et morne lande.”<br /></span> -</div></div> - -<p>It is indeed a land of contrasts, where ancient, mystical, and weird -menhirs and dolmens, relics of prehistoric times, are mingled with<a name="page_037" id="page_037"></a> -mediæval monuments and modern forts, arsenals, and viaducts.</p> - -<p>The country is by no means unlovely, but it partakes of none of the -conventional beauties of other parts. It is not sterile, though it is -stern; it is not very fertile, but its product is ample; and it stands -as the most westerly point of the mainland of Northern Europe, open to -all the wild buffetings of the tempestuous Atlantic which has sculptured -its coast-line into such fantastic forms that a shipwrecked mariner must -think himself fallen upon the most stern and rock-bound of coasts.</p> - -<p>The general aspect of Brittany is green and gray. It is, as the Breton -himself says, an austere heath,—the country-side half-effaced in -demi-tints, and the sea boisterous and wicked.</p> - -<p>This, however, is only one of its moods; to-morrow it may be as -brilliantly sunlit as the Bay of Naples, and may have a sea and sky of -gold and turquoise. But this mood passes quickly, and again it settles -down to a misty softness and mildness of climate that has given its name -to one of the five great climatic divisions of France, the Armorican.</p> - -<p>The sunsets of Brittany are always glorious. Nowhere on the rim of great -ocean’s mirror are there more splendid and grandly scenic<a name="page_038" id="page_038"></a> effects to be -observed. An exceedingly realistic Frenchman once described a sunset in -the Bay of Douarnenez as a “bloody apotheosis,” the real aspect of which -is readily inferred. Of this Breton Cornouaille, Béranger sang:</p> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“Faisons honte aux hirondelles.<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Tu croiras, sur nos essieux,<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Que la terre a pris des ailes<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Pour passer devant les yeux.”<br /></span> -</div></div> - -<p> -The country inland is as original as the coast, -and both the peasant on shore and the sailor -on the sea are Breton to the core. Never has -Brittany been called charming or gracious, -never lovely or sweet, but always cold, though -not so in climate, which is always terrible and -austere.</p> - -<p>But, for all that, it is delightful, and when -one has tired of the stupid gaieties of Switzerland -or the Rhine, let him rough it a bit among -the low hills and valleys of the Côtes du Nord, -or the rocky promontories and inlets of Finistère, -or, on the south coast between Quimper -and Nantes, on one of those little tidal rivers -such as the Aven, and let him learn for himself -that there is something new under the sun, even -on well-trodden ground.<a name="page_039" id="page_039"></a></p> - -<p>Truth to tell, Brittany is not nearly so well -known to English-speaking folk as it should be. -There is a fringe of semi-invalid, semi-society -loiterers centred around St. Malo, and enlivened -in the summer months by the advent of -a little world of literary and artistic folk from -Paris. Then there is an artist colony or two -in Lower Brittany, where the visitors work -hard, dress uncouthly, and live cheaply for -four or five months of the year. At Nantes -there is the overflow of tourists of convention -from the châteaux district of Touraine, and -up and down the length and breadth of Brittany, -from Mont St. Michel to St. Nazaire, and -from Dol to Brest, are to be found occasional -wanderers on bicycles or in motor-cars.</p> - -<p>The great mass, however, is herded around -the conventionally “gay” five o’clock resorts -of Dinard, Paramé, and St. Malo, and in by -far the greater area of the province the seeker -for pleasure and true edification is far more -rare than is popularly supposed. The occasional -rather wretched hotel has hitherto kept -the fastidious away, and the terrific hobnails -of the Breton wooden shoe have all but driven -travellers in motor-cars and bicycle riders to -despair. Both these deterrents, real and fancied, -are disappearing, however. The hygienic -bedrooms of the Touring Club are found here -and there, and the peasants, or, at least, some -of them, now wear a sort of cast-iron sole apparently -clamped or riveted to the wooden -shoe; at least there are no big, pointed, mushroom-headed -tacks to drop out, point uppermost, -in dry weather.</p> - -<p>The topographical aspect of Brittany is -largely due to the two great zones of granite -formation which come together at their western -extremities,—the mountains of Alençon and -the jutting rocks that come to the surface from -Poitou northward.</p> - -<p>In general, the whole aspect of Brittany -echoes the words of Brizeaux, the Lorient poet:</p> - -<p class="c">“O terre de granit, recouverte de chênes.”</p> - -<p>One would hardly call Brittany mountainous, but its elevations are -notable, nevertheless, in that they rise, for the most part, abruptly -from the dead level of the ocean. Inland, the topography takes on more -of the nature of a rolling moorland, with granite cropping out here and -there in the elevations. The following quatrain describes it exactly:</p> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i2">“<small>À MON PAYS</small><br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“O ma chère Bretagne,<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Que j’aime tes halliers,<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Tes verdoyants graniers,<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Et ta noire montagne.”<br /></span> -<span class="i8">—<i>Corbinais.</i><br /></span> -</div></div> - -<p><a name="page_041" id="page_041"></a></p> - -<p>The greatest altitudes in Brittany are: The Sillon de Bretagne (near -Savenay), eighty-nine metres; La Motte (Montagnes Noires between Quimper -and Brest), 289 metres; Menez Hom (Montagnes Noires), 330 metres; Mont -St. Michel (Montagne d’Arrée), 391 metres.</p> - -<p>The Breton rivers are not great rivers as the waterways of the world go, -although they are important indeed to the country which they irrigate. -Chief among them are the Vilaine, navigable to Rennes, the Rance, the -Odet, the Aulne, and of course the Loire, which flanks the southern -boundary of the old province nearly up to its juncture with the Mayenne, -and continues its navigable length in Brittany up to, and a trifle -beyond, the town of the same name. The Couesnon, flowing northward -into the vast Bay of Mont St. Michel, forms the northeastern boundary -separating Brittany from Normandy.</p> - -<p>The great length of irregular coast-line accounts for the continuation -of the generally severe and stern aspect of the interior, the sombre -granite cliffs jutting far out into the open, half-enclosing great bays -and forming promontories and headlands which are characteristically -Breton and nothing else. They might resemble those of the Greek -mainland<a name="page_042" id="page_042"></a> and archipelago were they but environed with the life and -languor of the South, but, as it is, they are Breton through and -through, and their people have all their hopes and sympathies wrapped up -in the occupations of a colder clime.</p> - -<p>The old territorial limits of the Province of Brittany embraced a small -tract south of the Loire, known as <i>Le Rais</i>, or the Retz country.</p> - -<p>Here is Clisson, the feudal castle and estate so constantly recurring in -French history. Pornic, Paimbœuf, and the Lac de Grande Lieu also lie -southward of the Loire in this old appanage, but, in the main, Breton -history was played on the Armorican peninsula north of the Loire.</p> - -<p>The height of the tides on the Breton coast varies considerably. All -this is caused by the flow of the North Sea and the Straits of Calais -meeting the current coming directly from the Atlantic, so that in some -instances the flood-tide rises to a height of from fifty to sixty feet -above “dead water,” as the French call it.</p> - -<p>The immense Bay of Mont St. Michel, at low water, is a stretch of bare -sand more than three hundred square kilometres in extent, but it is -completely covered and converted into a great tranquil gulf by the -rising tide.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 304px;"> -<a href="images/illpg_042_lg.jpg"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/illpg_042_sml.jpg" width="304" height="462" alt="Croisic" -title="Croisic" /></a> -<p class="caption">Croisic</p> -</div> - -<p>At Croisic, at the mouth of the Loire, there<a name="page_043" id="page_043"></a> is a 5.16 metre rise of -the tide, which around the Breton coast-line varies as follows:</p> - -<table border="0" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="0" summary=""> -<tr><td>Port Navalo, Morbihan</td><td align="right">4.72</td></tr> -<tr><td>Lorient</td><td align="right">4.60</td></tr> -<tr><td>Concarneau</td><td align="right">4.68</td></tr> -<tr><td>Douarnenez</td><td align="right">6.16</td></tr> -<tr><td>Brest</td><td align="right">6.42</td></tr> -<tr><td>Ouessant</td><td align="right">6.38</td></tr> -<tr><td>Roscoff</td><td align="right">8.22</td></tr> -<tr><td>Ile Brehat</td><td align="right">9.90</td></tr> -<tr><td>St. Malo</td><td align="right">11.44</td></tr> -<tr><td>Iles Chausey</td><td align="right">11.74</td></tr> -<tr><td>Mont St. Michel</td><td align="right">12.30</td></tr> -</table> - -<p>The aspect of the region round about Dol, in the north, is that of a -little Holland, with its flats and windmills and its cultivated ground -protected from the sea by a rim of downs and dikes. It is not so very -great an expanse that follows these outlines, but the likeness is one -to be remarked. To the westward lie the jutting rocks and capes, beyond -which are the isolated islands of Ouessant and its fellows, and all -around the coast extend landlocked bays and harbours sheltering the -great fishing ports of Douarnenez and Concarneau and the commercial -ports of St. Malo, Morlaix, Brest, Lorient, and Vannes.</p> - -<p>From a military and strategic point of view the whole northwest coast of -France, from the<a name="page_044" id="page_044"></a> mouth of the Loire through Brittany and Normandy, is -exceedingly well protected, with a great port and base of supplies both -at Brest in Brittany and at Cherbourg in Normandy.</p> - -<p>Forts Minden, Ville Martin, and Penthièvre, Port Louis, Lorient, and -Brest, and the Forts du Pilier, Le Palais, Lacroix, Cezon, and Château -du Taureau, with St. Malo and Fort des Rimains, protect the whole Breton -seashore in practically unassailable fashion, though there are still the -sea fights at Ouessant, in 1778 and 1794, and The Hogue in 1692, to say -nothing of the land engagements at Quiberon in 1795, to remember.<a name="page_045" id="page_045"></a></p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 475px;"> -<a href="images/illpg_044_lg.jpg"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/illpg_044_sml.jpg" width="475" height="331" alt="Map of Bretagne" -title="Map of Bretagne" /></a> -</div> - -<p><a name="page_046" id="page_046"></a></p> - -<h3><a name="CHAPTER_IV-1" id="CHAPTER_IV-1"></a>CHAPTER IV.<br /><br /> -<small>TRAVEL ROUTES IN BRITTANY</small></h3> - -<p>T<small>OURISTS</small> are commonly supposed to belong to the pleasure-seeking -or invalid class, and so they mostly do, still one may travel for -instruction (which is pleasure, also) and be mindful of the conditions -of life around him, and profit accordingly, unless he absolutely demands -the life of the boulevards of Paris or the homœopathic excitements of -the little horses in some popular watering-place.</p> - -<p>It is undoubtedly true that most tourists are of limited interests, -which may be pleasure, or art, or architecture, or worshipping at -historical shrines. All this is well enough in its way, but if one could -combine a modicum of each he would profit much more largely, to say -nothing of being amused and instructed, too.</p> - -<p>The time has long since passed when travellers reviled Brittany as -a province where “husbandry was no further advanced than among the -Hurons,” as a writer of the eighteenth<a name="page_047" id="page_047"></a> century said within twenty-four -hours after he had crossed the boundary between Normandy and Brittany, -at Pontorson, where the causeway road branches off to Mont St. Michel. -Evidences of husbandry are still very much to the fore, but it is more -advanced in the interior, at least; on the coast the harvest of the sea -takes its place.</p> - -<p>Brittany, in husbandry, may not be so advanced as some other parts. -There are no such elaborate operations going on here as in the regions -where high farming is practised—in Beauce, or Normandy, or Anjou. -Neither are such numbers of mechanical farming-tools in operation, -but in spite of all this there is a very considerable and prosperous -industry born of the soil of which most strangers to Brittany, and some -who have travelled there, are entirely ignorant. All along the great -highways crossing and recrossing Brittany one sees the little roadside -farms with their attendant small flocks of live stock, sheep, cattle, -geese, ducks, and fowls, which point, at any rate, to the fact that the -peasant need not be as ill-nourished as he is generally supposed to be; -and really he is not.</p> - -<p>The charm of journeying by road in France is indescribable, perhaps, -to its fullest degree.<a name="page_048" id="page_048"></a> Natural beauties count for much, but in a land -peopled with historic castles, churches, and abbeys, as Normandy and -Brittany are, it is found doubly enjoyable even though one professes no -expert architectural knowledge, or no profound aptitude for historical -research. These, however, are but side-lights, which make the actual -pilgrimage among such shrines greatly to be cherished among one’s -personal experiences.</p> - -<p>It is the whole which pleases, and not fragmentary and piecemeal -beauties and charms; and never was this more true than of a well-beloved -land, be it one’s own or an alien shore.</p> - -<p>Brittany and its travel routes, whether by road or rail, offer as full a -measure of all these attractions as it is possible for one to conceive.</p> - -<p>The great highways of Brittany have not the same favour with travellers -by road as those of other parts of France. They are equally important -and equally well cared for by a paternal government, but their inclines -are steeper—sometimes suicidal—and certainly more frequent than -elsewhere in France, and distances stretch out interminably.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 506px;"> -<a href="images/illpg_048_lg.jpg"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/illpg_048_sml.jpg" width="506" height="265" alt="The Main Roads of Brittany" -title="The Main Roads of Brittany" /></a> -<p class="caption">The Main Roads of Brittany</p> -</div> - -<p>The great national road which stretches from Paris to Brest covers a -distance nearly equal to<a name="page_049" id="page_049"></a><a name="page_050" id="page_050"></a> that from Paris to Turin, or from Paris to -Amsterdam.</p> - -<p>There are, however, in Brittany no long stretches of unrolled road -surface, and for the most part the roadways are as smooth as can -anywhere be found. Were it not for the eternal switchbacks, and the -aforementioned hobnail, with its pointed end usually upmost, Brittany -would be a far more popular touring-ground for the automobile than it -is. The hooded cart of Normandy and Brittany, such as one meets going -to and from the market-towns, is another real dread to the man in the -motor-car.</p> - -<p>It is not that the occupant is unwilling to hear one’s horn, but it is -almost impossible that he should against a head-wind, until you are -close upon him. It is useless to point to your ear as you whisk by and -ask him—in a shout—if he is deaf, or to say: “Well, now, you sleep -well.” He will pay little or no attention to you, and anyway, most -likely, he was <i>not</i> asleep, as are so many of his fellows that one -meets on English roads.</p> - -<p>In Brittany the traveller by road often meets an obstruction in the -shape of a flock of sheep slowly making its way toward one, or in the -opposite direction, or even a flock of ducks or<a name="page_051" id="page_051"></a> geese, which are even -more dreadful. Sheep are stupid, hens and chickens are silly, but geese -are arrogant and obstinate.</p> - -<p>It is very disconcerting, of course, for the motor-car driver at full -speed to have to draw in his ten, or twenty, or thirty horses in order -to avoid decapitating a whole goose and gosling family, but it lends a -charm to the travel, which a badly paved stretch of roadway—in Picardy, -for instance—wholly lacks.</p> - -<p>Here when one does actually run into a flock of geese, such as one sees -on the high-coloured posters advertising a certain make of car, and in -the comic journals, it is one of the real humours of life. The amount of -curiosity an old goose or gander can show in a death-dealing motor-car -as it rushes by, and the chances they take of sudden death, are enough -to give an ordinarily careful driver innumerable heart-leaps.</p> - -<p>This is about all the trouble one is likely to meet on Breton roads, -except, of course, the always present grazing cows, which here, though -they are always attended,—generally by a small boy or girl, who often -is not able to keep them in line as one would wish,—are allowed to -stray freely, and are not tethered as they are throughout Normandy.<a name="page_052" id="page_052"></a></p> - -<p>It is not for the aforesaid reasons alone that motor-cars are scarce -in Brittany, for, after all, they form but minor troubles as compared -with the eccentricities of the machinery itself, and the tourist in -a motor-car is usually prepared for most things which are likely to -happen to him <i>en route</i>. So really if one likes a hilly country—and -it is not without its charms—Brittany offers much in the way of varied -and natural beauties that certain other provinces lack. Touraine, for -instance, delightful as it is as a touring-ground, is as proverbially -flat as a billiard-table.</p> - -<p>There are, in the first place, not nearly so many motor-cars owned in -Brittany, and accordingly there are astonishingly few shelters and -repairers. Apparently, the Breton does not care for the new-fangled -means of locomotion, not recognizing, perhaps, that it has come to stay. -Still less does the Breton peasant’s brother, the Breton sailor or -fisherman, care for the motor-boat, which ought to have a great vogue in -such great inland seas as Morbihan, the Bay of Douarnenez, or the Goulet -or the roadstead of Brest.</p> - -<p>The sailor of Brest or Lorient and the little fishing villages of the -west will tell you: “I<a name="page_053" id="page_053"></a> like my boat better, with my sail and my arms -for motors.”</p> - -<p>Often these great stretches of Breton roadway show an aspect of human -nature that is probably the same the world over; a peasant man or woman -is leading a cow,—always on the wrong side of the road, of course,—or -a sleepy farm-hand is drawing his cart to or from market,—still on the -wrong side of the road,—when the whirr and snort of a motor-car does -something more than awaken echoes.</p> - -<p>The cows entangle themselves in their leading ropes, and the usually -placid horses bolt with the cart into the ditch. The native, of course, -reviles the car and its occupants, not because he hates them,—for they -are one of the mainstays of the inns of the countryside,—but merely to -display that untamable spirit of independence, which every mother’s son -of a French peasant has developed to a high degree.</p> - -<p>In Brittany, as in most other lands,—in summer,—the traveller by road -gathers in a fine crop of wingy, stingy things, which project themselves -into one’s eyes with a formidable force when one goes at them with a -swift-moving car.</p> - -<p>Occasionally one thinks he has come upon a<a name="page_054" id="page_054"></a> vast convention of them, -so many are they in numbers and variety—flies, wasps, bees, and what -not, with a peculiar Gallic species of fly so infinitesimal that one -only stops to clear them out when he feels that his eyes are so full -of them that they may be uncomfortably crowded. The real or fabled -Jersey mosquito would go out of business with his Breton brother as a -competitor. Truly this is a new terror, and one that certainly was not -apparent, to anything like the present extent, before the advent of the -motor-car.</p> - -<p>One comes upon a dull week in Brittany often, even in summer, when the -sky remains overcast, and great clouds roll up from out of the western -ocean. Often it is not cold, but it is bitterly damp and sticky, even -though it does not rain, but the native does not seem to mind it, at -least, he never complains.</p> - -<p>The only objector ever met with by the writer was a Gascon who kept -a pharmacy at Quimper. He discussed it as follows: “Hideous country! -The wind blows here every day in the year, and the rest of the time it -rains,” he continued, enigmatically. “Yes, that abominable wind always -plays the same trick on me! What a country!” He was probably thinking of -his own bright and sunny home<a name="page_055" id="page_055"></a> in the South, where seldom, if ever, are -conditions other than brilliantly tranquil.</p> - -<p>There are three great highroads which cross Brittany from east to west, -the main road of Brittany from Alençon in Normandy, through Mayenne, -Fougères, Dol, Dinan, Guingamp, and Morlaix to Brest; the southern road -from Paris via Le Mans, or even following the Loire valley down from -Orleans to Nantes, and thence westward via Vannes, Lorient, and Quimper -to Brest, thus making the complete circuit of the Breton coast. A midway -course lies in almost a direct line east and west through Laval, Vitré, -Rennes, Ploërmel, Pontivy, and Carhaix.</p> - -<p>These three highroads cover completely the itinerary of Brittany, in so -far as they follow the north and south coast and the country-side lying -between.</p> - -<p>Cross country, from the Bay of Mont St. Michel to the mouth of the -Loire, one “route nationale” lies directly through Rennes, and another -ends at Vannes, in Morbihan.</p> - -<p>These cover practically all the regular lines of traffic, and include -all the chief points of historical and topographical instances.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 514px;"> -<a href="images/illpg_055_lg.jpg"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/illpg_055_sml.jpg" width="514" height="276" alt="Travel Routes in Brittany" -title="Travel Routes in Brittany" /></a> -<p class="caption">Travel Routes in Brittany</p> -</div> - -<p>Distances of themselves are not great in Brittany. From St. Malo to -Nantes is but 180 kilometres; from Laval to Brest but 337 kilometres;<a name="page_056" id="page_056"></a> -and from Nantes to Brest is but 324 kilometres.</p> - -<p>In these days of motor-cars and even bicycles, these distances are not -great, and so long as they are not taken at a rush,—which forbids -enjoyment,—they form no drawback to the pleasures of travel by road in -Brittany. One has only to add two or three hundred kilometres more, in -order to reach the starting-points of Nantes, Laval, or St. Malo from -Paris. Then the tour may seem a lengthy one; but even this is nothing -to find fault with; the intermediate country is in itself delightful, -whether one journeys down through the Orleanais, Touraine, and Anjou, or -westward through the heart of Normandy.</p> - -<p>The railways in Brittany, except on some of the cross-country routes, -are developed to a high stage of efficiency. The great express lines of -the Western Railroad to St. Malo and to Brest run due west from Paris, -straight almost as the crow flies. Again, one may make his entry via -Nantes and the Loire valley through Touraine and Anjou by the Orleans -line, and have the satisfaction of setting out from Paris by the world’s -finest and most modern railway station, that wonderfully convenient and -artistic structure on the Quay of Orsay.<a name="page_057" id="page_057"></a></p> - -<p>Rennes is the great railway centre of Brittany, and accordingly all -roads lead to Rennes. Here one may make up his itinerary at a price -which will include nearly every place west of that point for a matter -of <i>frcs.</i> 65 for first-class, and <i>frcs.</i> 50, second-class, and if -he tell the clerk of the booking-office at his point of departure for -Rennes that he intends doing this (and agrees with the formalities) he -will get a discount of forty per cent, on the price of first or second -class tickets up to that point. A plan of this itinerary and further -particulars are given in the appendix.</p> - -<p>Third-class railway travel in Brittany ought to form one of the -long-remembered experiences of one’s visit to that province.</p> - -<p>There is much amusement to be got out of a journey across Brittany from -St. Malo to Nantes, with mob-capped peasant-folk and blue-bloused and -picturesque farmers, all laden with huge baskets and bundles, and an -occasional live fowl, or perhaps a rabbit, or even a guinea-pig, though -one must not believe that Frenchmen eat guinea-pigs. The writer, at -least, never saw one being eaten, though what use they are really put to -is an open question.</p> - -<p>Occasionally there will be a want of elbow-room in a third-class -carriage, but this is no<a name="page_058" id="page_058"></a> great inconvenience, as the Breton mostly -travels short distances only, and at the next station one may be left -alone with only a drowsy Breton sailor—off on a furlough from a -man-of-war—to keep him company, with his red-knobbed tam-o’-shanter -rakishly over one ear.</p> - -<p>Often a <i>foreigner</i> will throw himself into one’s compartment,—an -American or an English artist, with his sketching paraphernalia, white -umbrella and all,—for artist-folk are mostly of the genus who travel -third-class. Good-naturedly enough, if his journey be a long one, he -will tell you much of the country round about, for your artist is one -who knows the byways as well as the highways—and perhaps a little -better. By this procedure, one stands a chance of gathering information -as well as being edified and amused.<a name="page_059" id="page_059"></a></p> - -<h3><a name="CHAPTER_V-1" id="CHAPTER_V-1"></a>CHAPTER V.<br /><br /> -<small>THE BRETON TONGUE AND LEGEND</small></h3> - -<p>T<small>HE</small> speech of Brittany, like its legend and folk-lore, has ever been a -prolific subject with many writers of many opinions.</p> - -<p>The comparison of the speech of the Welshman with that of the Breton -has often been made, but by no one so successfully as by Henri Martin, -the historian, who, in writing of his travels in Wales, told how he had -chatted with the Celtic population there and made himself thoroughly -understood through his knowledge of Breton speech.</p> - -<p>In its earliest phases, the Breton tongue had a literature of its own, -at least a spoken literature, coming from the mouths of its bards -and popular poets. In our own day, too, Brittany has its own songs -and verses, which, though many of them have not known the medium of -printer’s ink, have come down from past generations.</p> - -<p>The three ancient Armorican kingdoms or<a name="page_060" id="page_060"></a> states, Domnonée, Cornouaille, -and the Bro-Waroch, had their own distinct dialects.</p> - -<p>There is and was a considerable variation in the speech throughout -Brittany, though it is and was all Breton. The dialects of Vannes, -Quimper, and Tréguier are the least known outside their own immediate -neighbourhood; the Léonais of St. Pol de Léon is the regular and common -tongue of all Bas Bretons.</p> - -<p>The old-time limits of the Breton tongue are wavering to-day, and -from time to time have drawn appreciably toward the west, so that the -boundary-line, which once ran from the mouth of the Loire to Mont St. -Michel, now starts at the mouth of the Vilaine, and finishes at a point -on the northern coast, a little to the westward of St. Brieuc.</p> - -<p>It was during the decadence of the Breton tongue—known to philologists -as the third period—that the monk Abelard cried out: “The Breton tongue -makes me blush with shame.”</p> - -<p>The nearer one comes to Finistère, the less liable he is to meet the -French tongue unadulterated. The numbers knowing the Breton tongue alone -more than equal those who know French and Breton, leaving those who know -French alone vastly in the minority. The figures<a name="page_061" id="page_061"></a> seem astonishing -to one who does not know the country, but they are unassailable, -nevertheless.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 506px;"> -<a href="images/illpg_060_lg.jpg"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/illpg_060_sml.jpg" width="506" height="314" alt="St. Pol de Léon" -title="St. Pol de Léon" /></a> -<p class="caption">St. Pol de Léon</p> -</div> - -<p>Here in this department at least, and to a lesser degree in the Côtes -du Nord and the Morbihan provinces, one is likely enough to hear -lisped out, as if it were the effort of an Englishman: “<i>Je na sais -pas ce que vous dîtes</i>,” or “<i>Je n’entend rien</i>.” No great hardship or -inconvenience is inflicted upon one by all this, but now and again one -wishes he were a Welshman, for the only foreigners who can understand -the lingo are Taffy’s fellow country-men.</p> - -<p>Breton legend is as weird and varied as that of any land. It is -astonishingly convincing, too, from the story of King Grollo and -his wicked daughter, who came from the Britain across the seas, the -Bluebeard legend, the Arthurian legend, which Bretons claim as their -own, as do Britons, to those less incredible tales of the Corsairs of -St. Malo and the exploits of Duguesclin and Surcouf.<a name="page_062" id="page_062"></a></p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 449px;"> -<a href="images/illpg_062_lg.jpg"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/illpg_062_sml.jpg" width="449" height="311" alt="The Breton Tongue" -title="The Breton Tongue" /></a> -</div> - -<p>There is a quaint Breton saying referring to little worries, which -runs thus: “When the wind blows up from the sea, I turn my barrel to -the north; when it blows down from the hills, I turn my barrel to the -south.” “And<a name="page_063" id="page_063"></a> when it blows all four ways at once?” “Why, then I crawl -under the barrel.”</p> - -<p>This is exactly the Breton’s attitude toward life to-day, but he finds -a deal of consolation in his legends and songs of the past, and in his -ruffled moments they serve to put him in a good humour again. This is -something more than mere superstition, it is a philosophical turn of -mind, and that is good for a man. The heroes of legend are frequently -those of history. One may cite Joan of Arc with relation to old France, -and Duguesclin in Brittany. There is a difference, of course, and it is -wide, but the comparison will serve, as there is no other character in -all the history of Brittany—unless it be that of Duguay-Trouin, the -Corsair of St. Malo—who stands out so distinctly in the popular mind as -does Duguesclin, “the real Breton.”</p> - -<p>There is none in his own country, however illiterate he may be, and the -Breton peasant, in some parts, is notoriously illiterate, who knows -not this hero’s name and glory. Still more deeply rooted are the old -folk-lore superstitions which have come down through the ages by word of -mouth, no doubt with the accruing additions of time.</p> - -<p>Morlaix is the very centre of a land of mystery,<a name="page_064" id="page_064"></a> tradition, and -superstition. Among these superstitious legends, “Jan Gant y tan,” as it -is known by its Breton title, stands out grimly.</p> - -<p>Jan, it seems, is a species of demon who carries by night five candles -on the five fingers of each hand, and waves them wildly about, calling -down wrath upon those who may have offended him.</p> - -<p>Another is to the effect that hobgoblins eat the cream which rises on -milk at night.</p> - -<p>Yet another superstition is that the call of the cuckoo announces the -year of one’s marriage or death.</p> - -<p>Another, and perhaps the most curious of all, is that, if an infant by -any chance gets his clothes wet at certain pools or fountains, he will -die within a year, but he will live long years if he fall in, yet is -able to preserve his garments from all dampness.</p> - -<p>When one drinks of the Fountain of De Krignac three times within the -hour, says the peasant of Plougasnou, and is not cured of the fever, let -him abandon all thoughts of a remedy and prepare for death.</p> - -<p>There are two legends associated with Brittany which are little known. -Both relate to Bluebeard. This legend is of Eastern origin,<a name="page_065" id="page_065"></a> as far as -concerns the story of the man who slew his wives by dragging them about -by the hair, ultimately decapitating them; but the French Academy of -Inscriptions and Polite Learning evolves a sort of modern parallel as -another setting for the same apocryphal story. It concerns a certain -Trophime, the daughter of a Duke of Vannes, in the sixth century. She -was married to the Lord of Gonord, whose castle was situated on Mont -Castanes, and was the eighth wife of her husband. He killed her because -she discovered the bodies of her seven predecessors; but her sister Anne -prayed to St. Gildas, who came with her two brothers to the rescue. St. -Gildas restored Trophime to life, and the Bluebeard of Gonord and his -castle were swallowed up by the earth.</p> - -<p>The origin of the story has always been in doubt, but the generally -accepted theory is that Perrault founded the tale on the history of -Gilles de Laval, Seigneur de Rais.</p> - -<p>The Academy, however, destroys all this early conjecture in favour of -the Gilles de Laval affair. Since Gilles de Laval was a kinsman of the -Dukes of Brittany, the following is given as his claim to having played -the part, though, as the report of the Academy goes on<a name="page_066" id="page_066"></a> to say, De Laval -proved himself to be but a fanatical sorcerer.</p> - -<div class="figleft" style="width: 175px;"> -<a href="images/illpg_066_lg.jpg"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/illpg_066_sml.jpg" width="175" height="168" -alt="Gilles de Laval, after an engraving of the fifteenth century in the Bibliothèque Nationale." -title="Gilles de Laval, after an engraving of the fifteenth century in the Bibliothèque Nationale." /></a> -<p class="caption2">Gilles de Laval, after an<br /> -engraving of the fifteenth -century in the<br /> -Bibliothèque Nationale.</p> -</div> - -<p>Gilles de Laval was born in 1404, and was a member of the family of -Laval-Montmorency. He was handsome, well born, rich, and a most valiant -soldier, and one of the warmest supporters of Joan of Arc, whom he -defended against all who spoke ill of her, constituting himself her -personal champion. He fought valiantly with the “Maid,” and was made a -marshal of France when twenty-six years of age. He was very wealthy, -and he doubled his possessions when he married at the early age of -sixteen. His extravagances, however, were greater than his riches. He -had a refined taste, and loved illuminated manuscripts, stamped Spanish -leather, Flemish tapestries, Oriental carpets, gold and silver plate, -music, and mystery plays. After peace was made, he and his wife retired -to their castles and lands in the Vendée, where<a name="page_067" id="page_067"></a> Gilles soon found -himself hopelessly in debt. He had to find money somehow, for he was of -a fine, open-handed disposition, and had never denied himself anything. -It was only natural in that century that he should turn his thoughts -toward alchemy and the philosopher’s stone.</p> - -<p>Francesco Prelati, an Italian with a reputation as a magician and a -maker of gold, was installed, with all his alchemist’s apparatus, in -Gilles’s castle; but when he was asked to make gold, he confided to -his patron that it would be necessary to summon the aid of the devil, -and that for this purpose the blood of young children was absolutely -required. The two then scoured the country round for children, whom -they murdered with horrible rites, until at last their crimes became -so notorious that they were arrested and tried at Nantes. Gilles de -Laval and his accomplice were accused of murdering no fewer than twelve -hundred children, and were tried for sorcery and found guilty. The Lord -of Laval was strangled, and his body was burned; but Francesco Prelati, -as a mere vulgar sorcerer, was burned alive.</p> - -<p>At Saint Cast in the Côtes du Nord, one hears vague and fabulous reports -from the natives, even to-day, of a pirate ship—a veritable sister -ship to those of Duguay-Trouin of St. Malo<a name="page_068" id="page_068"></a>—named the <i>Perillon</i> and -commanded by one Besnard, known as the terror of the seas. Like other -songs of seafarers of the days gone by, that concerning the terror of -the seas is good enough to incorporate into the text of some rattling -story of pirates and corsairs, such as boys—and some grown-ups—the -world over like. Another popular Breton air was known as “Biron ha -D’Estin” (“Byron and D’Estaing”), and had to do with the war in America. -Another was the “Chant du Pilote,” and had for its subject the combat of -the <i>Surveillante</i> and the forts at Quebec in 1780.</p> - -<p>Of the same period was the “Corsairs’ Song,” which is very well known -throughout Upper Brittany even to-day, beginning thus:</p> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“Le trente-un du mois d’août.”<br /></span> -</div></div> - -<p>Throughout Upper Brittany also one hears the old housewives still -mumbling the old words and air of the song current in the times of -Francis the First.</p> - -<p>It was when the prince was treating for his release from captivity that -the words first took shape and form:</p> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“Quand le roi départit de France,<br /></span> -<span class="i3">Vive le roi!<a name="page_069" id="page_069"></a><br /></span> -<span class="i0">À la male heure il départit,<br /></span> -<span class="i3">Vive Louis!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">À la male heure il départit (bis).<br /></span> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">. . . . . . . . . .</span><br /> -<span class="i0">Il départit jour de dimanche.<br /></span> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">. . . . . . . . . .</span><br /> -<span class="i0">Je ne suis pas le roi de France.<br /></span> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">. . . . . . . . . .</span><br /> -<span class="i0">Je suis un pauvre gentilhomme<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Qui va de pays en pays.<br /></span> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">. . . . . . . . . .</span><br /> -<span class="i0">Retourne-t-en vite à Paris.”<br /></span> -</div></div> - -<p><a name="page_070" id="page_070"></a></p> - -<h3><a name="CHAPTER_VI-1" id="CHAPTER_VI-1"></a>CHAPTER VI.<br /><br /> -<small>MANNERS AND CUSTOMS</small></h3> - -<p>T<small>O-DAY</small> the Bretons are the most loyal of all the citizens of the great -republic of France. In reality they are a most democratic people, though -they often affect a devotion for old institutions now defunct. They may -be a superstitious race, but they are not suspicious, although they have -marked prejudices. When thoroughly understood, they are both likable and -lovable, though their aspect be one of a certain sternness and aloofness -toward the stranger. Their weapons are all in plain view, however, like -the hedgehog’s; there is nothing concealed to thwart one’s desires for -relations with them.</p> - -<p>Their country, their climate, and their environment have much to do -with their character, manners, and customs; and environment—as some -one may have said before—is the greatest influence at work in shaping -the attitude of a people toward an outsider, and every<a name="page_071" id="page_071"></a> one is still an -outsider to a Breton, be he French, English, or American.</p> - -<p>The Breton is really a gayer person than his expression leads one to -suppose. Madame de Sévigné wrote, with some assurance, as was her wont: -“You make me prefer the gamesomeness of our Bretons to the perfumed -idleness of the Provençals.”</p> - -<p>Certainly, to one who knows both races, the comparison was well made. It -is a case of doing mischief against doing nothing.</p> - -<p>Brittany has not Normandy’s general air of prosperity, and indeed at -times there is a very near approach to poverty and distress, and then it -is bruited abroad in the public prints that the fisheries have proved a -failure.</p> - -<p>The Breton farming peasant, however, is not the poverty-stricken wretch -that he has sometimes been painted. He lives humbly, and eats vast -quantities of potatoes and bread, little meat, some fish, always a -salad, and, usually, a morsel of cheese, but he eats it off a cleanly -scrubbed bare board and from clean and unchipped plates.</p> - -<p>In his stable, such few belongings in the form of live stock as he has -are well fed and contented, and his chickens and ducks and pigs and cows -are as much a pride and profit to him as<a name="page_072" id="page_072"></a> to the peasant of other parts; -but, after all, Brittany is not a land of milk and honey. The peasant -lives in the atmosphere of dogged, obstinate labour, but he draws a -competence from it, and it is mostly those who live in the seacoast -villages, and those who will huddle themselves in and about the large -towns and ports, such as Quimper and Brest, that are ever in want, and -then only because of some untoward, unexpected circumstance.</p> - -<p>Agriculture and the business of the sea are closely allied in Brittany. -Hundreds upon hundreds of young men work in the winter upon farms far -inland, and come down to the sea with the coming of February and March, -to ship in some longshore fishing-smack, or even to go as far away as -Newfoundland, the Orkneys, or to Iceland.</p> - -<p>This gives not only a peculiar blend of character, but also a peculiar -cast of countenance to the Breton; he is a sort of half-land and -half-sea specimen of humanity, and handy at the business of either.</p> - -<p>In many ports, the Breton struggles continually against shifting -sand,—sand which is constantly shifting when piled in banks on the -seashore, and becomes of the nature of quicksand when lying beneath the -water where<a name="page_073" id="page_073"></a> the Breton moors his lobster-pots. Between the two, he is -constantly harassed, and until the off season comes has little of that -gaiety into which he periodically relaxes. Every one will remark that -the aspect of both men and women is sombre and dark, even though their -spontaneous gaiety and dress on the feast of a patron saint or at a -great pardon gives one the impression of gladness.</p> - -<p>One sees this when on the great holidays the Breton peasant is moved -to song, and chants such lines as the following, which more nearly -correspond in sentiment to “We won’t go home till morning” than anything -else that can be thought of.</p> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“J’ai deux grands bœufs dans mon étable,<br /></span> -<span class="i1">J’ai deux grands bœufs marqués de rouge;<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Ils gagnent plus dans une semaine<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Qu’ils n’en ont couté, qu’ils n’en ont couté.<br /></span> -<span class="i3">J’aime Jeanne ma femme!<br /></span> -<span class="i3">J’aime Jeanne ma femme!<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Eh bien! j’aimerais mieux la voir mourir,<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Que de voir mourir mes bœufs.”<br /></span> -</div></div> - -<p>Doubtless there is not so much hard-heartedness about the sentiment as -is expressed by the words, which, to say the least and the most, are not -wholly up to the standard of “love, cherish, and protect.<a name="page_074" id="page_074"></a>”</p> - -<p>Once in awhile one sees the type of man who is known among his fellows -as <i>Breton des plus Bretons</i>. Like his Norman brother, the Breton in -the off season works hard playing dominoes or cards in the taverns, -where one reads on a sign over the door that <i>Jean X donne à boire et à -manger</i>, that is, if the sign be not in Breton, which more often than -not it is.</p> - -<p>The landlord does not exactly “give” his fare; he exchanges it for -copper sous, but he caters for the inner man at absurdly small prices, -and accordingly is well patronized, in spite of his refusal of credit.</p> - -<p>Bowls is the national game of Brittany, having a greater hold upon the -simple-minded Breton, particularly in the neighbourhood of the Lannion, -than any other amusement. No respectably ambitious inn in all Brittany -is without its bowling-alley. As a distraction, it is mild and harmless, -and withal good exercise, as we all know.</p> - -<p>The religious fervour of the Breton folk has been remarked of all who -know them howsoever slightly. It is universal, and, if it be more -apparent in one place than any other, it is in the Department of -Finistère, and it is not in the cities and towns that it reaches its -greatest<a name="page_075" id="page_075"></a> height, but mostly in the country-side, or on the seacoast -among the labourers and the fisher-folk.</p> - -<p>The religion of Brittany to-day is of the people and for the people. It -is one of the great questions of the world to-day, but from a dogmatic -point of view it shall have no discussion here. Suffice it to say that -throughout France, with the numerous great, and nearly always empty, -churches ever before one, one can but realize that the power of the -Church is not what it once was.</p> - -<p>The churchgoers are chiefly women; seldom, if ever, except on a -great feast-day, are the churches filled with a congregation at all -representative of the population of the parish, and even in the great -cathedrals the same impression nearly always holds good.</p> - -<p>In Brittany, the case is somewhat different, in the country districts -at least, and even at Roscoff, Quimper, Vannes, and Rennes, where -there are great cathedrals. In Brittany, in every parish church and at -every wayside shrine, is almost always to be found not only a little -knot of devoutly kneeling peasants, but, on all occasions of mark, a -congregation overflowing beyond the doors. What this all signifies, as -before said, is no concern of the writer<a name="page_076" id="page_076"></a> of this book. It is simply a -recorded state of affairs, and, judging from the attitude of the people -themselves—when seen on the spot—toward the subject of religion, -the most liberal thinker would hardly consider that here in Brittany -religion was anything else than spontaneous devotion on the part of the -people.</p> - -<p>Of religion and priests, Brittany is full, but the people are not by -any means priest-ridden, as many uncharitable and slack observers have -asserted before now. No priest bids a Breton worship at any shrine. They -do it of their own free will, and, though a churchman always officiates -at the great pardons and festivals, the worshippers themselves are as -much the performers of the ceremony as the priest.</p> - -<p>In Brittany to-day the piece of money which passes current in most -transactions, though in numbers it is infrequently handled by the -traveller, is <i>la pièce</i>, the half-franc or ten-sous coin.</p> - -<p>It is confusing when you are bargaining for a carriage to drive to some -wayside shrine, to be told the price will be “<i>deux pièces</i>,” when—in -Normandy—you have just formed the habit of realizing offhand that <i>deux -cent sous</i> is the same thing as ten francs. It’s all very simple, when -one knows what they are talking about, and the Breton likes still to -think his<a name="page_077" id="page_077"></a> institutions are different from those of the rest of France, -and so he goes on bargaining in <i>pièces</i>, when in other parts they are -counting in <i>sous</i>, which is even more confusing, or in <i>francs</i>.</p> - -<p>Most of the farmhouses of Brittany are constructed of stone and wood, -with their roofs covered with a straw thatch. Of course this is a -dangerous style of building to-day, as the authorities admit. Indeed -a decree has gone forth in some parts forbidding the erection of any -new straw-thatched building, and again in other parts against using -any structure so built as a dwelling-house. The law is not absolutely -observed, but it is by no means a dead letter, and the homely and -picturesque thatched roof has now all but disappeared, except from the -open country.</p> - -<p>To enter the Breton peasant’s farmhouse, one almost invariably descends -a step. The interior is badly lighted, and worse ventilated, but, as -it is mostly the open-air life that the peasant and his family lead, -perhaps this does not so much matter. Usually the house is composed -of but one room, with a floor of hard-trodden earth. This is the -dining-room, kitchen, and bedroom of all the family. The ceiling is -composed of great rough-hewn rafters,<a name="page_078" id="page_078"></a> sometimes even of trunks left -with the bark on, and from it are hung the knives and forks and dishes, -as in a ship’s cabin.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 274px;"> -<a href="images/illpg_078_lg.jpg"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/illpg_078_sml.jpg" width="274" height="295" alt="YOUNG BRETONS -B. McManus—1905" title="YOUNG BRETONS -B. McManus—1905" /></a> -</div> - -<p>Furniture has been reduced to the most simple formula. Two or three -great closed and panelled beds or bunks line one side of the wall, with -perhaps a wardrobe, where the “Sunday-best” of the whole household is -kept. Beneath the great beds is a series of oaken chests, and there -the household linen is stored. These, with a long table, with a bench -and a wide passage<a name="page_079" id="page_079"></a> on either side, the great, yawning fireplace, -with its crane and the inevitable highly polished pots and pans, form -the furnishings of this remarkable apartment. All this is homely and -strange, but it is comfortable enough for the occupants, if one does not -mind being crowded, and it is the typical dwelling throughout Brittany.</p> - -<p>Everywhere in the Breton country one sees oxen, cattle, and, above -all, the horses of the indefatigable Breton race, “ready and willing -to work and full of spirit in warfare.” So said Eugene Sue, and the -same observation holds true to-day. None of the animals are so large -or so fat as in the neighbouring provinces, but this is not because of -malnutrition or because they are ill-tended. The cows of Brittany are by -no means such plump, dainty animals as the cows of the Cotentin, and the -Breton horses are certainly undersized when compared to the Norman sires -and the great-footed Percherons, but one and all possess good qualities -purely their own, and one thing above all should be noted,—Brittany is -exceedingly rich grazing country, if not agricultural.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 512px;"> -<a href="images/illpg_080_lg.jpg"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/illpg_080_sml.jpg" width="512" height="331" alt="From the ARTIST’S SKETCH BOOK." -title="From the ARTIST’S SKETCH BOOK." /></a> -</div> - -<p>Much of the local character is shown in the dress of the people, and -throughout the country-side and the seacoast villages alike both<a name="page_080" id="page_080"></a><a name="page_081" id="page_081"></a> -men and women show that remarkable attention to dress which marks the -strong individuality of the race,—individuality which has come down -through the ages, and endures to this day in very nearly, if not quite -all, its original aspect. One knows this dress through photographic -reproductions, and from having occasionally seen it on the comic opera -stage, but actually to live among such picturesquely dressed folk is -like a step back into the past.<a name="page_082" id="page_082"></a></p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 241px;"> -<a href="images/illpg_081_lg.jpg"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/illpg_081_sml.jpg" width="241" height="309" alt="LA COIFFE POLKA—The Smallest Coiffe in Brittany - -B. McM. 1905" title="LA COIFFE POLKA—The Smallest Coiffe in Brittany - -B. McM. 1905" /></a> -</div> - -<p>The costumes of Brittany are greatly varied, but all look theatrical, -and many of them are remarkably embroidered in multicoloured braid. On -all great occasions, feast-days and fairs, on Sundays and on the days -of the pardons, many ancient costumes, not modern reproductions, are -seen. Particularly is this to be noted at Pont l’Abbé, Pont Aven, and -elsewhere in the far west. The coifs of the women and the embroidered -waistcoats and velvet-ribboned hats of the men mark them as a species of -Frenchmen different from their Norman brethren; lovers of fanciful dress -and customs quite Southern in gorgeousness, and not the least like the -colder fashions of other dwellers in the same latitude.</p> - -<p>At Quimper is an interesting Ethnological Museum, where one may study -the subject at length, and in the town one may buy fabrics and stuffs -and articles of wearing apparel fashioned in the genuine Breton manner.</p> - -<p>The greatest activity of life in Brittany is in the coast towns, for -there the populace has for the longest time been in touch with the ideas -of an advanced civilization.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 297px;"> -<a href="images/illpg_083_lg.jpg"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/illpg_083_sml.jpg" width="297" height="361" alt="Ironing Coifs" -title="Ironing Coifs" /></a> -<p class="caption">Ironing Coifs</p> -</div> - -<p>By the very geographic position of Brittany this was inevitable, as the -country was not in the direct path of any great current of commerce,<a name="page_083" id="page_083"></a> -and had no great navigable river, except the Loire, which bordered it -upon the south. There had been malicious critics of things Breton before -him, but there could have been no real justification for the lament of -Paul St. Victor, who must have had an exceedingly<a name="page_084" id="page_084"></a> bad dinner at his inn -when he delivered himself of the following:</p> - -<p>“Breton dialect is full of barbarisms, and Brittany is not even a -healthy country for painters. It is a land of monasteries and dull -routine; the same types and the same costumes; no men, no women, all -Bretons, all of Brittany.”</p> - -<p>As a race, the Breton may well be summed up as follows: They are the -descendants of the men of a primitive epoch, from whom they inherit -traits which even time has not entirely eradicated. Their intuitions are -correct, and their convictions profound; their will tenacious, and their -energies equal to all that may be demanded of them. They are proud, -truthful, courageous, intrepid, hospitable, and religious.</p> - -<p>The manufacturing industry throughout Brittany is practically null, if -one except the work of the great arsenals and ship-building ports, and -the production of such articles of local consumption as sail-cloth.</p> - -<p>Flax and hemp are grown in considerable quantities, but the ordinary -crops of cereals rise to nothing like the proportions of those reared -in Normandy or Perche. The Breton is strong on bee-keeping, however, -and keenly watches the busy workers of his hives as they<a name="page_085" id="page_085"></a> gather their -harvest from the abundant crop of wild flowers covering the hillsides.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 466px;"> -<a href="images/illpg_085_lg.jpg"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/illpg_085_sml.jpg" width="466" height="309" alt="Breton Types" -title="Breton Types" /></a> -<p class="caption">Breton Types</p> -</div> - -<p><a name="page_086" id="page_086"></a></p> - -<p>The Breton communes are of vast extent compared with those of other -parts of France, but the population is scattered. Gathered around the -parish church are the dwellings of the market-towns of three, four, -or five hundred inhabitants or more. Upon the whole, Brittany is not -thinly peopled, the mean of its population exceeding that of most of -the other provinces of France. Whatever the aborigines were, whether -of Indo-Germanique type or of a species hitherto unplaced, the present -Breton population has been developed along lines close to those of -Britain. And the Bretons are not far behind, and herein undoubtedly lies -the charm of Brittany for the English-speaking traveller.</p> - -<p>Writing of his stay at Guingamp,—which is about the dividing line -where one passes from the zone of the French tongue to that of the -Breton, where one is frequently to hear the short exclamation, “I do -not understand you,”—Arthur Young tells us of putting up at a roadside -inn “where the hangings over his bed were full of cobwebs and spiders.” -The inn-keeper remarked to him that he had “a superb English mare,” and -wished to buy it from him. “I gave him half a dozen flowers of French -eloquence for his impertinence,” said the witty<a name="page_087" id="page_087"></a> traveller, “when he -thought proper to leave me and my spiders in peace.” “Apropos of the -breed of horses in Lower Brittany,” he continues, “they are capital -hunters, and yet my ordinary little English mare was much admired, while -every stable round about is filled with a pack of these little pony -stallions sufficient to perpetuate the local breed for long to come.”</p> - -<p>To the humble inn—one of the regular posting-houses on the great -highroad from Paris to Brest—he is not so complimentary. “This -villainous hole,” said he, “which calls itself a great house, is the -best inn of the town, at which marshals of France, dukes, peers, -countesses, and so forth, must now and then, by the accidents to -which long journeys are subject, have found themselves. What are we -to think of a country that has made, in the eighteenth century, no -better provision for its travellers?” In this our author was clearly a -faultfinder, or at least he was unfortunate in not living at a later -day, for the above is certainly not true of the inns of France to-day, -though it may truthfully be said that, even to-day, the inns of Brittany -are a <i>little</i> backward, but it is not true of the Hôtel de France at -Guingamp, which has even a dark room for the kodaker, and a <i>fossé</i> for -the motor-car traveller.<a name="page_088" id="page_088"></a></p> - -<h3><a name="CHAPTER_VII-1" id="CHAPTER_VII-1"></a>CHAPTER VII.<br /><br /> -<small>THE FISHERIES</small></h3> - -<p>W<small>HAT</small> the cider-apple crop is to Normandy, that the fisheries are to -Brittany, and more, for the fisheries turn over more money by far than -the cider of Normandy, which is grown purely for home consumption. The -Breton young person of the male sex takes to the sea in the little -pilchard-boats, the three-masters of the deep-sea fishery, or the -whalers, for the purpose of earning his livelihood, and also to secure a -prescribed term of exemption from military or naval service. With such -an object, it is no wonder that the industry employs so many hands, -and has become so important and considerable in its returns. Of course -the geographical position of the country has more than a little to do -with this, and also the stony soil of the country-side, suggesting the -harvest of the sea as a more ample crop.</p> - -<p>In Brittany, the sea nourishes the land, though perhaps but meagrely.<a name="page_089" id="page_089"></a></p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 316px;"> -<a href="images/illpg_088_lg.jpg"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/illpg_088_sml.jpg" width="316" height="514" alt="Douarnenez" -title="Douarnenez" /></a> -<p class="caption">Douarnenez</p> -</div> - -<p>From the mouth of the Loire, around Finistère to Lannion, thousands upon -thousands of the inhabitants live by the harvest of the sea, whereas, -if it were not for this, they might be forced to emigrate, or to hie -themselves to the large towns, there to herd in unsanitary quarters, -which is worse.</p> - -<p>The pilchard fishery is practically at its best directly off the -Quiberon peninsula, opposite Lorient and Concarneau. It is important -also just offshore from Audierne, Douarnenez, and Camaret.</p> - -<p>It is well to recall just what the sardine really is, inasmuch as we -mostly buy any “little fishes boiled in oil,” which a pushful grocer -may thrust upon us. The “corporal’s stripe,” or the “cavalry corporal,” -as the sardine is known in France, is quite a different species from -the “armed policeman,” or common sea-garden herring. The Atlantic, the -North Sea, the Baltic, and some parts of the Mediterranean are its -home. It winters between 50 degrees and 60 degrees north latitude, in -a zone where the temperature is constant, but from March to October it -emigrates toward the north. Sometimes the future sardines are known as -pilchards; on the coasts of Normandy and Picardy as <i>hareng de Bergues</i>; -as sardines in<a name="page_090" id="page_090"></a> Brittany; as <i>royan</i> in Charente; and as <i>sarda</i> and -<i>sardinyola</i> in the Pyrénées Orientales.</p> - -<p>The best and most common method of preserving the sardine is by slightly -heating the oil before placing it with the fish in those little tin -boxes known the world over; then the boxes are soldered and put into -a double boiler and boiled for the better part of an hour, when the -exceedingly simple process is finished. So simple is it, and so readily -accomplished without a great capital investment, that the wonder is -that imitations of the “real Brittany sardines” are not more successful -elsewhere. Up to this time, however, nothing rivals the Breton product.</p> - -<p>Each year, at the feast of St. Jean, the barques set out from the -various ports, all richly decorated, and often sped on their way by a -religious ceremony, at which a priest officiates and gives his blessing.</p> - -<p>The profits vary considerably one year from another, as may be supposed. -The catch is by no means constant. Its ordinary receipts approximate -twelve million francs, and, when it drops below this figure, distress -is likely to ensue, particularly if a hard winter falls upon Brittany, -which in truth it seldom does.</p> - -<p>The little fish return each year, their feeding-ground<a name="page_091" id="page_091"></a> scarcely varying -thirty miles in any direction. Thus, in season, the boats with their -red sails and blue and brown nets put off for the same spots where -they took their catches last year, only to find that the habits of the -sardines have not in the least changed. Five or six men to a boat is -the average crew, and, if the wind be contrary, their speed is much the -same by means of oars. Once arrived on the ground, the skipper of the -boat throws overboard at intervals some handfuls of <i>rogue</i> as a bait; -this is a paste composed of the roe of the cod, and the only drawback is -that its cost is great. It comes mostly from Norway, and, after passing -through many intermediate hands, finally reaches the Breton fisherman, -who pays from sixty to seventy francs per hundred kilos. When the price -rises above this figure, the ingenious skipper fabricates a substitute, -a mixture of the real article and a local vegetable product known as -<i>farine d’arachides</i>. Its results are not so good as those from the real -article, and the local fishermen have a saying which is doubtless so -true as to have become a proverb: “One must bait with fish to catch a -fish.” Moreover, the fish caught by this means do not rank as a first -quality product in the markets of the Breton fishing ports, owing to<a name="page_092" id="page_092"></a> -the after-effects on the fish, which shall be undefined here. It may be -well to recall the fact, however, and, if you get a sardine which is not -what you think it ought to be, and is too much like a bad oyster, you -may depend upon it that it was caught with <i>farine d’arachides</i>.</p> - -<p>The Breton custom is to fish with buoyed nets, disdaining the drag-net, -though occasionally the latter is used.</p> - -<p>The buoyed nets merely scoop the surface of the water, but the drag-nets -are sunk to a depth of from forty to fifty metres. When the skipper -estimates that the net is full, or, at least, that he shall have a haul -worthy of his trouble, all hands, singing as all sailor-folk do, pull -the net inboard, and, with a clever turn, empty it of its freight of -silver-scaled fish, which are forthwith scooped up and placed in great -baskets. On the return to port, the fishermen still in harbour, the -factory hands, and all the inhabitants who are not otherwise employed, -even though they ought to be, to say nothing of curious peasant-folk -from the inland towns, and always a generous sprinkling of tourists, and -the inevitable American artist, are in waiting, curious as to the luck.</p> - -<p>Here the dealers come and bargain for the catch. Thirty to thirty-five -francs a thousand<a name="page_093" id="page_093"></a> is usually the market price, and the choicest fish -naturally sell first. Speculation comes in now and then, and a scare -as to the prospect of the catch being too abundant is as common and as -disastrous as the fear that it may not be large enough. Sometimes the -price will fall as low as a franc and a half, and then come “trials -without number for the sailors,” as an old fisherman told the writer. -Certainly, if thirty francs a thousand be only a paying wage, a franc -and a half must mean about the same as utter failure to the crew, who -generally work the boat on shares.</p> - -<p>The pilchard fishers have not forgotten the crisis of 1903, to combat -the recurrence of which it was proposed to establish special schools -for fishermen apprentices, and to forbid the use of the drag-net, and -they are seeking a rearrangement of conditions whereby the returns -may be more equally distributed among the workers than now. At the -present time the owner—who fits out the boat—claims a third, and the -skipper a third, the hands dividing the other third. According to this -arrangement, the novice or apprentice receives an infinitesimal share.</p> - -<p>As a Frenchman, a Breton of Quimper who was not in the sardine business, -said to us:<a name="page_094" id="page_094"></a> “<i>Ces pauvres diables! Ils mériteraient mieux.</i>” All of -which is true, so let all well-wishers, who are fond of the “little -fishes boiled in oil” at their picnic dinners, give a thought now and -again to the Breton fisherman.</p> - -<p>Besides the sardine fisheries, there is a considerable traffic from -such ports as Tréguier, St. Malo, and Morlaix in the deep-sea fishery, -and elsewhere in the mackerel and herring fishery in Icelandic waters -and the North Sea, and these give a prosperity that would otherwise be -wanting.</p> - -<p>Statistics are dry reading, and so they are not given here, but there -are some curious things with regard to the laws regulating the offshore -and deep-sea fisheries of France, just as there are with respect to -the line fishing, by which method one can legally take fish only if he -actually hold his rod or line in his hand: he may not lay it on the -ground beside him and doze until an unusually frisky gudgeon wakes him -up.</p> - -<p>On all of the French fishing-craft, which sail to the Banks or -to Iceland for cod, French salt must be used, and all masters of -fishing-craft must keep a supplementary log or diary relating to the -takings of fish alone.</p> - -<p>In deep-sea fishing the law prescribes that<a name="page_095" id="page_095"></a> a vessel which is fitted -out for the fishing-banks must remain on the ground a certain length of -time. This is to preclude the possibility of a decreasing catch, it is -to be presumed, as many a fisherman has been known, before now, to give -up the labour with holds half-filled simply because he had come upon a -meagre feeding-ground. It seems a wise precaution, and is another of -those parental acts which the French government is always undertaking -on behalf of its children. There is still the whalebone catch to reckon -with, for the French government specializes this industry, and offers -a bonus of seventy francs a ton displacement on leaving port for all -French equipments, and fifty francs per ton displacement upon returning -after the term prescribed.<a name="page_096" id="page_096"></a><a name="page_097" id="page_097"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="PART_II" id="PART_II"></a>PART II.</h2> - -<p><a name="page_098" id="page_098"></a></p> - -<p><a name="page_099" id="page_099"></a></p> - -<h3><a name="CHAPTER_I-2" id="CHAPTER_I-2"></a>CHAPTER I.<br /><br /> -<small>THE LOIRE IN BRITTANY</small></h3> - -<p>A<small>T</small> Ancenis, the Loire, that mighty river which rises near the frontier -of Garde, a Mediterranean department, enters Brittany on its way to the -Atlantic. For more than nine hundred kilometres above this point, the -Loire has been navigable for such fresh-water craft as usually are found -upon great waterways, and, having passed Orleans, Blois, and Tours, and -broadened out into a great, wide, shallow stream, it is to be reckoned -as one of the world’s great rivers. Mostly its appearance is that of a -broad, tranquil, docile stream, with scarce enough depth of water to -make a respectable current, leaving its bed with its bars of sand and -pebbles bare to the sky. This lack of depth, except at occasional flood, -is the principal and obvious reason for the comparative absence of -water-borne traffic.</p> - -<p>At the times of the great freshets there are twenty-three feet or more -registered on the<a name="page_100" id="page_100"></a> huge black and white scale of the bridge at Ancenis, -and again it falls to less than a fourth of that height, and then there -is a mere rivulet of water trickling through the broad channel at -Chaumont, at Blois, or at Orleans.</p> - -<p>In the olden time, as one passed from Anjou into Brittany, by way of -the valley of the Loire, he came to a great barrier across the road,—a -veritable frontier post, with a custom-house and examiners, as if -one were passing into a foreign country. The Revolution changed all -this, and now nothing but another of that vast family of great, white -departmental boundary-posts marks the dividing line between the Maine et -Loire and the Loire-Inférieure, the border departments between the old -province of the Counts of Anjou and that of the Breton dukes.</p> - -<p>Just above Ancenis, one passes vineyard after vineyard, and château -after château follows rapidly in turn,—all very delightful, as Pepys -would have said. Not so the bridge at Ancenis, quite the ugliest -wire-rope affair to be seen on the Loire, and one is only too glad to -leave it behind, though it is with a real regret that he parts from -Ancenis itself.</p> - -<p>Ancenis is one of those blessed spots possessing a château; it is -endowed with a wonderfully picturesque situation, and, moreover, is<a name="page_101" id="page_101"></a> -capable of catering for the inner man in so satisfactory a manner that -one can but put it down in his books as one of the spots to be favoured. -The Barons of Ancenis were a long and picturesque line, and their local -fame has by no means perished. The old-time château, constructed in the -fifteenth century, was the masterwork of a famous Angevin architect, -Jean Lespine by name. To-day this fine building, or what is left of it, -has become an Ursuline boarding-house. Much is still left to tell the -story of its former greatness, but it is not so accessible as one would -like.</p> - -<p>The most that can be remarked is a great doorway flanked by two towers, -with overpowering machicolations, another smaller tower,—a <i>tourelle</i>, -the French themselves would call it,—and a ruined pavilion, where, in -1468, Francis, Duke of Brittany, signed a treaty with Louis XI. On the -market-house of Ancenis is superimposed a sort of a belfry which, seen -in conjunction with the low-lying river-bank, imparts a low-country -aspect to the town. The old streets of Ancenis give shelter to many fine -mediæval houses, of which the most notable is perhaps the old “house of -the Croix de Lorraine.”</p> - -<p>Below Ancenis, navigation is not so difficult,<a name="page_102" id="page_102"></a> but the river current -is more strong. For a long distance, on the right bank, extends a -dike, carrying the roadway beside the river for a matter of a hundred -kilometres. This is one of the charms of travel by the Loire. When you -see any animation on its bosom, save an occasional fishing-punt, neither -it nor its occupant usually very animated, it is one of those great -flat-bottomed ferry-boats, with a square sail hung on a yard amidships, -such as Turner always made an accompaniment to his Loire landscapes.</p> - -<p>Conditions of traffic thereon have not changed much since those days. -Whenever one sees a barge or a boat worthy of classification with those -on the rivers of the east or north, or of the canals, it is only about -a quarter of the usual size, so, altogether, in spite of its great -navigable length, the waterway of the Loire is more valuable as a -picturesque and healthful element of the landscape than as a commercial -artery. Below Nantes is the “section maritime,” which from Nantes to the -sea is a matter of some sixty kilometres. Here the boats increase in -number and size. They are known as lighters, barges, and tenders, and go -down with the river current and return on the incoming ebb, for here the -river is tidal.<a name="page_103" id="page_103"></a></p> - -<p>From this one gathers that the Loire, so noble and magnificent, is the -most aristocratic river of France, and so, too, it is with respect to -its associations of the past.</p> - -<p>It has not the grandeur of the Rhône when the spring freshets from the -Jura and the Swiss lakes have filled it to its banks; and it has not the -burning activity of the Seine, as it bears its thousands of boat-loads -of produce and merchandise to and from market; it has not the prettiness -of the Thames, or the legendary aspect of the Rhine; but, in a way, it -combines something of the features of all, and has, in addition, a tone -that is all its own, as it sweeps the horizon through its countless -miles of ample curves, and holds within its embrace all that is best -of mediæval and Renascence France, the period which built up the later -monarchy and—who shall say not?—the present prosperous nation.</p> - -<p>The Loire is essentially a river of other days. Truly, as Mr. James has -said, “it is the very model of a generous, beneficent stream.... A wide -river which you may follow by a wide road is excellent company.” The -Frenchman himself is more flowery. “It is the noblest river of France. -Its basin is immense, magnificent.” All of which is true, too. For a -good<a name="page_104" id="page_104"></a> bit of local colour of this region, one should read Chapter V. of -“The Regent’s Daughter,” by Dumas, wherein the willing Gaston, in the -midday sunshine of a winter’s day, made his way from Nantes to Paris, -“travelling slowly as far as Oudon opposite Champtoceaux.” “At Oudon he -halted and put up at the Char-Couronne, an inn with windows overlooking -the highroad.” Some stirring events took place here, but the reader is -referred to the pages of Dumas for the details.</p> - -<p>Oudon, however, will not detain the cursory traveller of to-day, even if -he deigns to visit it at all.</p> - -<p>Champtoceaux, on the other hand, though only a small town of thirteen -hundred inhabitants, does awaken interest. Formerly it belonged to the -Counts of Anjou, and then to the Dukes of Brittany.</p> - -<p>Its site is most picturesque; it stands on a mound some two hundred -feet above the Loire. There are two fine mediæval churches, and an old -château, which, with the ruins of the ancient fortified castle, now -forms a part of the domain of a M. de la Touche, who will kindly permit -the visitor to inspect the details of this ancient feudal stronghold.</p> - -<p>The dismantled old walls are covered with<a name="page_105" id="page_105"></a> moss and lichens, and -their picturesqueness is of that quality that painters love to put -on canvas. The wonder is that Champtoceaux has not become a new -artists’ sketching-ground, such as are so often discovered—or -rediscovered—throughout France. Perhaps it is because of its distance -from Paris, for your artist-painter, be he French, English, or American, -dearly loves the streets of the Latin Quarter, and, as a rule, prefers -Fontainebleau and its circle of artist colonies to going farther afield.</p> - -<p>At last one beholds what a Frenchman has called the “tumultuous vision -of Nantes.” To-day the very ancient and historic city which grew up -from the Portus Nannetum and the Condivientum of the Romans is indeed a -veritable tumult of chimneys, masts and smokestacks, and locomotives. -But all this will not detract one jot from its reputation of being -one of the most delightful of provincial capitals, and the smoke and -activity of its port only tend to accentuate the note of colour, which -in the whole itinerary of the Loire has been but pale.</p> - -<p>The former reputation of Nantes as a little capital where gaiety and -wealth came in abundance is correct for to-day, but a comparison is -interesting. Here is a reminiscence of old<a name="page_106" id="page_106"></a> stage-coaching days, when -the post took four days to make the journey from Paris:</p> - -<p>“The neighbourhood of the theatre is magnificent, all the streets being -at right angles and of white stone. One is in doubt as to whether -the Hôtel Henri IV. is not the finest inn in Europe.” (It must have -disappeared since those days, but really its reputation still lives in -any one of the three leading hotels.) “Dessein’s” (also disappeared) “at -Calais is larger, but is not built, fitted up, or furnished like this, -which is new. It cost nearly five hundred thousand francs, and contains -sixty bedrooms. It is without comparison the first inn of France, and -very cheap withal.</p> - -<p>“The theatre must have cost a like sum, and, when its seats are full, -holds 120 louis d’or. The ground that the inn is built upon cost nine -francs a foot, and elsewhere in the city one may pay as much as fifteen -francs. This ground value induces them to build so high as to be -destructive of beauty.” Unquestionably this last observation was quite -true then, as it is now, but Nantes nevertheless fills very nearly every -qualification of a well-laid-out and attractive city.</p> - -<p>To some Nantes will be reminiscent of Venice, or at least some Dutch -city, for its five<a name="page_107" id="page_107"></a> river branches are continually crossing and -recrossing one’s path in most bewildering fashion, and bridges confront -one at every turn.</p> - -<p>The city’s attractions are many, from its great cathedral and its -château-fortress, enclosing a beautiful edifice wherein once lived the -Duchess Anne, to its great hotels, cafés, and shops of modern times.</p> - -<p>Five great events of history stand forth prominent in the memory of the -very name of Nantes: the struggle of John of Montfort against Charles -of Blois for the ducal power; the affairs of the League; the famous -Edict; the Cellamare conspiracy; and the rising of the Vendeans and the -rascally Carrier’s retaliation in Revolutionary days.</p> - -<p>Each and every one of these were vivid and bloody enough to furnish -inexhaustible material for a novelist of the Dumas school, should he -rise in the future, for the half has not yet been used. It was in -the Place of Bouffay that that execution of the Breton conspirators -took place, of which we read in the graphic pages of Dumas. Gaston, -who sought to deliver his former companions, was posting along the -road to Nantes with their reprieve safely guarded. Before the age of -steam and electricity, news travelled slowly, and Sèvres, Versailles, -Rambouillet,<a name="page_108" id="page_108"></a> Chartres, Mans, and Angers were then far apart. But the -faithful Gaston travelled fast, one of the bystanders at Rambouillet -calling to him: “If you go at that pace, you will kill more than one -team between here and Nantes.”</p> - -<p>Gradually he learned that a “courier of the minister’s” had passed -that way. This was the beginning of what Dumas called the “tragedy -of Nantes.” The event was historical, and Dumas’s account was most -dramatic, yet did not differ greatly from the facts. Gaston arrived too -late. Talhouet was dead, and the Place of Bouffay reeked with the blood -of the conspirators, who, guilty though they were, had received the -pardon of the Regent. The cry of De Conedic, as he bent his head to the -block, still echoes down through history: “See how they recompense the -services of faithful soldiers! Ye cowards of Bretagne,” he cried, as -the sword of the executioner fell upon him. Ten minutes afterward the -square was empty. One of the corpses still held a crumpled paper in his -hand,—it was the pardon of the other four, for the bearer had arrived -too late. Thus finished “the tragedy of Nantes.”</p> - -<p>Though this part of Brittany has the reputation of being the least -illiterate of any, as late<a name="page_109" id="page_109"></a> as the beginning of the last quarter of -the nineteenth century might be seen at Nantes the sign of the public -scrivener, which read:</p> - -<div class="bboxx"> -<p class="c"> -ÉCRIVAIN PUBLIQUE<br /> -<i>10 centimes par lettre</i></p> -</div> - -<p>Below Nantes the Loire basin has turned the surrounding country into a -little Holland, where fisherfolk and their boats, with sails of red and -blue, form charming symphonies of dull colour. In the drinking-places -along its shores there is a strange medley of peasants, seafarers, -and fisher men and women. Not so cosmopolitan a crew as one sees in -the harbour-side drinking-places at Marseilles, or even at Havre, but -sufficiently strange to be a fascination to one who has just come down -from the headwaters.</p> - -<p>Gray and green is the aspect at the Loire’s source, and green and gray -it still is, though of a decidedly different colour value, at St. -Nazaire, below Nantes, the real deep-water port of the Loire. By this -time the river has amplified itself into a broad estuary, and is lost in -the incoming and outgoing tides of the Bay of Biscay. From its source -the Loire has<a name="page_110" id="page_110"></a> wound its way gently, broadly, and with placid grandeur -through rocky escarpments, fertile plains, populous and luxurious -towns, all historic ground, by stately châteaux and through vineyards -and fruit-orchards. Now it becomes more or less prosaic and matter of -fact, though, in a way, no less interesting, as it takes on some of the -attributes of the outside world.</p> - -<p>Here one gives the last glance to the Loire, as an inland waterway, -for, by the time Nantes is passed, it is of the sea salty. Here the -Sèvre Nantaise comes from the Department Deux-Sèvres and numerous other -streams broaden the lower river until it meets the bay at St. Nazaire, -where coasters and deep-sea fishermen take the place of boat-haulers and -vineyard-workers as picturesque accessories to the landscape.</p> - -<p>Jacobites and their sympathizers will take pleasure in noting that it -was in the early days of St. Nazaire’s importance as a port that the -Young Pretender set sail thence in 1745, in a frigate provided by a Mr. -Walsh of Nantes.</p> - -<p>It is only now that one realizes to the full the gamut through which -run the varying moods of the Loire, from the hard, sterile lands around -Le Puy through the pleasant Nivernais, the Orleanais, the vineyards of -Saumur, to the<a name="page_111" id="page_111"></a> Sardinières and the salt works of the marshes of Bourg -de Batz and Croisic.</p> - -<p>It was from Croisic that Talhouet, one of the Breton conspirators of -“The Regent’s Daughter,” threatened to set sail if discovered in their -dastardly plot against the Regent.</p> - -<p>“I shall be off to St. Nazaire,” said he, “and from thence to Croisic; -take my advice and come with me. I know a brig about to start for -Newfoundland, and the captain is a servant of mine. If the air on shore -become too bad, we will embark, set sail, and adieu to the galleys.” -“Well, I for one,” said his companion, “am a Breton, and Bretons trust -only in God.”</p> - -<p>South of the Loire, in that small fragment of territory which formerly -belonged to the old province, is a wonderful collection of old-time and -gone-to-seed towns hardly ever visited by the general run of tourists.</p> - -<p>Paimbœuf and Pornic and Clisson are the three places which appeal -most strongly, and this chiefly by their accessibility to Nantes. To -the southwest is the Lake of Grand Lieu, which, according to an ancient -Armorican legend, was the former site of a city “flourishing, but -dissolute,” which was submerged for its sins by<a name="page_112" id="page_112"></a> the command of God. -This sounds apocryphal, but the moral is plain.</p> - -<p>Anciently the Retz country, lying just southward of the Loire, formed a -part of the ancient Breton province, and, although before the Revolution -and the rearrangement of provinces and departments anew this member had -been shorn away, yet Paimbœuf, on the south bank of the Loire, just -beyond Nantes, is of Breton nomenclature, known in French as Tête de -Bœuf. To-day it is but a relic of a former great port, now deserted; -St. Nazaire, its younger relative, with much more ample commercial -resources, has drawn its trade away, and its quays and docks are now -unoccupied, except by coasters and fishing-boats.</p> - -<p>Paimbœuf has already become depopulated, and the former little -fishing port of Pornic daily takes on more and more importance.</p> - -<p>Pornic itself has a charm which Paimbœuf entirely lacks. It is a -lively little fishing village of perhaps two thousand inhabitants. The -port, the bay, and the canal which empties into the salt waters of the -Atlantic form a delightful setting for artists’ foregrounds, let the -backgrounds be what they may. At present, it has taken on somewhat of -the aspect of a watering-place, but it is safe to say that it will -never<a name="page_113" id="page_113"></a> become popular as such, in spite of the fact that a casino has -already made its appearance.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 300px;"> -<a href="images/illpg_113_lg.jpg"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/illpg_113_sml.jpg" width="300" height="180" alt="Pornic" -title="Pornic" /></a> -<p class="caption">Pornic</p> -</div> - -<p>In addition to the charm of its situation, the chief attraction of -Pornic is its thirteenth and fourteenth century château, with its fine -towers and machicolations. Its history, like that of most others of its -kind, has been romantic, and by no means has it always had the placid -aspect which it has to-day. It was taken from Gilles de Retz by the -Dukes of Brittany during the civil wars, and to-day belongs to a M. de -Bourquency, who has restored it admirably.</p> - -<p>At the foot of the château is a great cross of stone, called the Croix -of the Huguenots, erected, it is said, by converted Calvinists. At<a name="page_114" id="page_114"></a> the -foot of this cross are buried the bones of over two hundred Vendeans -killed at Pornic.</p> - -<p>Clisson is a small town of something less than three thousand -inhabitants, whose very name will conjure up memories of the great -Constable Olivier de Clisson. There is much here of interest, but the -history of the town, the château, and of De Clisson himself are so -interwoven with the affairs of state and warfare of the nation that the -outline even may not be given here. The ruins of the old-time château -are a wonderfully impressive reminder of other days, other ways. As a -whole, it is a grand ruin only, although an architect or archaeologist -may build up somewhat of an approach to the former glorious fabric. The -great central tower has not even preserved its walls entire, but what -is left stands to-day as one of the most imposing examples of a great -feudal keep yet extant. Clisson has some right to be considered up to -date, in that some enterprising inhabitant has introduced an electric -light plant. In spite of this, however, the donjon is one of those -architectural splendours of the world which, like the Coliseum at Rome -and Melrose Abbey, should be seen by moonlight in order to be rightly -appreciated.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 337px;"> -<a href="images/illpg_114_lg.jpg"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/illpg_114_sml.jpg" width="337" height="502" alt="Donjon of Clisson" -title="Donjon of Clisson" /></a> -<p class="caption">Donjon of Clisson</p> -</div> - -<p>The chapel, in which was celebrated the marriage<a name="page_115" id="page_115"></a> of Duke Francis II. -and Margaret of Foix, the keep, the dungeons, the ramparts, and the -chief apartments occupied by the constable himself have been preserved, -and make Clisson well worth the half-day it will take to go there from -Nantes.<a name="page_116" id="page_116"></a></p> - -<h3><a name="CHAPTER_II-2" id="CHAPTER_II-2"></a>CHAPTER II.<br /><br /> -<small>NANTES TO VANNES</small></h3> - -<p>N<small>EXT</small> to Marseilles, Nantes is the finest provincial capital of France. -This may be disputed, but it is the opinion of the writer.</p> - -<p>Perhaps it is because of the glorious part that the city played in the -past to preserve its independence, and the independence of Brittany, -succumbing only with the second marriage of Queen Anne; but, for some -reason, the links that bind it with the past have never grown rusty, nor -have modern cosmopolitan characteristics destroyed the individuality of -the Breton.</p> - -<p>The situation doubtless has much to do with the air of geniality which -pervades the city. When the Loire glistens under the caressing rays of -the setting sun, and the roof-tops of the town are all of a reddened -gold, Nantes might indeed be even now the mediæval capital that it was -before the age of steam and electricity, which sound the only modern -notes to<a name="page_117" id="page_117"></a> be heard here. At night the spectacle is far more dramatic, -with the streets and quays lit by countless lamps; the subdued murmur -of the workaday world, now all but gone to rest; for an occasional -shriek from a locomotive or a wail from the siren of some great steamer -dropping down-river with the tide is all that one hears.</p> - -<p>There is a forest of masts of shipping, scores upon scores of great -chimney-stacks, of ship-houses, of sugar and oil refineries, and along -the quay-side streets there are yet sailors and longshoremen hanging -about and smoking a finishing pipe, or drinking a last drop of spirit -or glass of beer. But all is “drawing in,” and soon all will be hushed -in silence, and only the walls and towers of the great castle and the -cathedral will keep watch, as they have for five centuries past. This -is Nantes, the great trading port. Up in the town blaze forth the great -hotels that would do credit to Paris, and yet are so different, and -coffee-rooms as splendid and brilliant as any in the capital itself, -with the prices of the portions twenty per cent. less.</p> - -<p>They keep late hours in this part of Nantes, and night does not -actually fall until midnight, when, one by one, up go the coffee-room -shutters,<a name="page_118" id="page_118"></a>—to come down again in the same order between six and seven -in the morning. This is not bad for a climate which on the Loire -approaches almost Mediterranean mildness. It is a pity that cold and -austere England does not rise a little earlier in the morning. London, -it is true, sits up late enough, but she makes up for it by dawdling -away all the morning up to half-past ten or eleven.</p> - -<p>In spite of all its loveliness and gaiety, Nantes is a city more ancient -than modern,—this antique Namnêtes, the capital, by preference, of the -Dukes of Brittany, and the political rival of Rennes.</p> - -<p>The old lanes and crossways of the middle ages have disappeared in -making the spacious great streets of our own time, but there is much -left to remind one of other days in the old houses and in the ever -dominant cathedral and castle.</p> - -<p>The Cathedral of St. Pierre is not a masterpiece of itself, but it -encloses a treasure that may well be included in that category,—the -tomb of Duke Francis II. and Margaret of Foix. The great harmony of -this composition, under the half-light of the stained-glass windows, -reveals a charm that most mausoleums altogether lack. On a tablet of -white marble<a name="page_119" id="page_119"></a> lie the effigies of the duke and duchess, with two angels -kneeling at their heads, and, crouched at their feet, a greyhound, -supporting the escutcheon of Brittany. Four statues, at the corners of -the pedestal, symbolize Justice, Strength, Temperance, and Prudence. -This magnificent tomb is justly counted as Michel Colombe’s finest work.</p> - -<p>The castle of Nantes, like that of Angers, is now an arsenal, and -accordingly is less interesting than if it were even a shattered -ruin. It was the castle of the dukes, and the great lodge, a dainty -Renaissance building, with delicately sculptured window-frames and -balconies capriciously disposed, gives an idea of the comfort and luxury -with which pervasive Duchess Anne surrounded herself in the vivid days -when she lived at Nantes. Within the walls of the castle, one might yet -see—were one allowed to ramble over it at will—the chambers where the -odious Gilles of Laval, the Maréchal de Raiz, Fouquet, the Cardinal de -Retz, and the Duchess de Berri were imprisoned during the long years -that it served as a cage for the political prisoners of France. Madame -de Sévigné sojourned here in 1675, so the sombre and yet gay castle, -besides having entertained many of the Kings of France, from Louis XI. -onward,<a name="page_120" id="page_120"></a> has also somewhat of the aspect of a literary shrine.</p> - -<p>In the courtyard is a great well with an admirably worked decorative -railing in wrought iron, quite worthy to rank with Quintin Matsys’s -famous well at Antwerp. The museums of painting and of archaeology, -abounding in rare Breton antiquities, give the town prominence among the -artistic centres of provincial France. The former contains some fine -examples of the work of Philippe de Champaigne, Lancret, Watteau, and -Théodore Rousseau among others.</p> - -<p>The environs of Nantes are wonderfully picturesque for the artist, but -offer little for the amusement of the 125,000 inhabitants of this city -of affairs.</p> - -<p>To the north, the Erdre winds its way through flat banks, and widens out -here and there into a veritable lake.</p> - -<p>From Nantes to the ocean the wind blows more strongly and the horizon -widens; the great waterway of the Loire has already become practically -an arm of the sea, and one breathes its salt air. The aspect of nature -now grows more and more melancholy for the seeker after gaiety and life; -only the artist will revel in these dull brown and gray riverside and -seaside<a name="page_121" id="page_121"></a> towns, which follow the coast-line from St. Nazaire to Batz, -Croisic, and Guérande. It is what the French themselves call a land of -grayish twilight, with vast stretches of marsh-land and pebble-strewn -sands.</p> - -<p>At the extremity of the north bank of the Loire, at the apex of a bend -of the coast-line, is the Bay of Croisic and the Batz country.</p> - -<p>Like a needle pricking the horizon, the tip of the tower of Croisic -marks the location of this sleepy little port in the flat and saline -marsh-land round about. South lie the lighthouse and the tower of the -ruined church of Bourg de Batz, that little Breton village all but -isolated from the mainland itself.</p> - -<p>It is the true borderland or frontier between the sea and the land, the -one almost imperceptibly mingling with the other. Of it Jean Richepin -sang:</p> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“Mirage! Sahara! les Bédouins! Un Émir<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Est venu planter là ses innombrables tentes<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Dont les cônes dressés en blancheurs éclatantes<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Resplendissent parmi les tons bariolés<br /></span> -<span class="i1">De tapis d’Orient sur le sol étalés;<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Ses cônes dont les tas de sel sur les ladures,<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Et ses riches tapis aux brillantes bordures<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Ne sont que les Gabiers, les Fares, les Œillets.<br /></span> -<span class="i1">On l’évaporement laisse de gros feuillets<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Métalliques, moirés flottant d’or et de soir.<a name="page_122" id="page_122"></a><br /></span> -<span class="i1">Par l’étier et le tour qu’un paludier fossoil<br /></span> -<span class="i1">La mer entre, s’épand, s’éparpille en circuits,<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Puis arrive aux bassins....”<br /></span> -</div></div> - -<p>“The sea sells cheap” say the natives, who are mostly engaged in the -salt industry, as one would infer from the foregoing. Competition -has cut considerably into the industry of recovering salt from the -sea-water, but it is still kept up, and these little Breton coast -villages depend upon it, and on fishing, for their sustenance.</p> - -<p>St. Nazaire, where the sea first meets the waters of the Loire, is -quite new, created but yesterday by the march of progress. Tradition -connects the site of this busy port—the seventh in rank among the ports -of France—with the ancient Gallo-Roman port of Corbilon. No trace of -its former appellation exists since the sixth century, when Gregory of -Tours, in the first history of France, mentions the settlement as having -been pillaged by a Breton chief, and refers to it as Vic-Saint-Nazaire, -which nearly approaches its present name.</p> - -<p>In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the market-town was called -Port Nazaire, and was defended by a castle erected by the Dukes of -Brittany.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 489px;"> -<a href="images/illpg_123_lg.jpg"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/illpg_123_sml.jpg" width="489" height="284" alt="St. Nazaire" -title="St. Nazaire" /></a> -<p class="caption">St. Nazaire</p> -</div> - -<p>Modern navigation has replaced the old sailing-vessels, and to-day, with -its coastwise and<a name="page_123" id="page_123"></a><a name="page_124" id="page_124"></a> foreign trade and its great shipyards, St. Nazaire -is a busy, bustling town. The blemish it has, in the eyes of most, will -be its general aspect of modernity and its uncompromising, right-angled, -straight streets, laid out on a plan which suggests that of Chicago, -if one make an allowance for the difference in magnitude. St. Nazaire -surpasses Chicago, however, in having a sea front, instead of a lake -front, and its hotels are better and cost less. What more should a -passing traveller want of a modern city?</p> - -<p>Between Nantes and St. Nazaire, on the granite flank of Sillon de -Bretagne, sits Savenay, as if its houses were ranged around the steps -of an amphitheatre. It has fallen considerably from its proud position -of having been the flourishing capital of the district. It still is the -largest town, but none of the honours go with its size; decay has fallen -upon it, and the hotels are dull, sad places, and even the omnibus from -the railway has stopped its journeys.</p> - -<p>The town was the site of a terrific conflict in the Vendean wars, -and was well-nigh destroyed, and its inhabitants were massacred. Now -vineyards grow upon the very soil that a hundred or more years ago -covered thousands of corpses. Altogether it is a gruesome<a name="page_125" id="page_125"></a> memory which -Savenay conjures up, if one dare even to think of it.</p> - -<p>Between Savenay and Guérande, at an equal distance between the two, -are the peat-bogs of Grand Brière. They are the great resources of the -country. Would you see them worked? Then come in August, when you are -making your way to some seacoast resort of Lower Brittany. For nine -days only in the year do the authorities permit the sods to be cut, but -everybody takes part therein, you will be told; and enough peat will be -gathered, and dried, and pressed into “loaves,” as the Brièrons call -them, to warm Nantes for a year.</p> - -<p>Guérande is a capital not quite so dead and alive as Savenay; it is -the possessor of a past of a most momentous and vivid character in -its relation to the history of Brittany and of France. To-day, as in -other days, the town is avowedly Breton, as characteristically so as -any of its size in the province. Much has been sacrificed to the god -of progress, but enough of the ancient aspect of the place remains to -recall its features of the time of Duguesclin and Clisson, and the -Counts of Montfort and of Blois, who proclaimed peace here in 1365. The -enormous Saint Michael Gate is a great fortress-gateway, flanked with -two cylindrical and conical<a name="page_126" id="page_126"></a> roofed towers of the time when feudalism -ruled Brittany.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 237px;"> -<a href="images/illpg_126_lg.jpg"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/illpg_126_sml.jpg" width="237" height="184" alt="Ancient Fortifications of Guérande" -title="Ancient Fortifications of Guérande" /></a> -<p class="caption">Ancient Fortifications of Guérande</p> -</div> - -<p>“Guérande,” says a Frenchman, “has not unlaced its corselet of stone -since the fifteenth century.” To-day, even, it is surrounded by its -mediæval ramparts in a manner like no other northern city in France, -reminding one of those great walled cities of Aigues Mortes and -Carcassonne in Southern Gaul.</p> - -<p>This proud belt of machicolated ramparts, ten towers, and four great -gates, and its deep, though now herbage-grown, moat is indeed one of -the few monuments of the middle ages that remain to us in all their -undisturbed splendour.</p> - -<p>Guérande is not exactly a deserted village,<a name="page_127" id="page_127"></a> but its streets are, at -midday, as lone and silent as though its population had not been in -residence for many months. This is a notable feature in many small -French towns during the hour and a half of the midday meal, but nowhere -else is it more to be remarked.</p> - -<p>The old parish Church of St. Aubin of Guérande has a collection of -strangely carved capitals depicting horrible chimerical beasts, and -the Chapel of Notre Dame de la Blanche—a fine work of the thirteenth -century—is occasionally the scene of a marriage wherein the -participants dress themselves in the old-time resplendent costumes. Such -an occasion is rare, but should one be fortunate enough to meet with it, -he will carry away still another memory of the mediæval flavour still -lingering about this somnolent little Breton city.</p> - -<p>Seaward beyond Guérande are only Bourg de Batz and Croisic, a gay -little maritime city with a fine Gothic church of the highly ornamented -species, and many old, high-gabled houses of the variety which one sees -frequently in stage settings. There are the local watering-places, -too, of the Nantais, Ste. Marguerite and Baule, which have nothing of -interest, however, for the traveller who seeks to improve his mind and -amuse himself simultaneously.<a name="page_128" id="page_128"></a> They are undoubtedly of great healthful -and economic value to Nantes and St. Nazaire, however, and they do not -differ greatly from others of their class elsewhere.</p> - -<p>Again returning to the highroad, if one be travelling by road, “<i>Vous -prenez le chemin de Vennes” (Vannes) “par la Roche Bernard qui est aussy -celuy de Rhennes et de Rhedon</i>,” wrote a sixteenth-century chronicler, -and the direct road to-day lies the same way. It is known as “National -Road” No. 165.</p> - -<p>Straight as the crow flies, but now up and now down, like all Breton -roadways, this highway runs from Nantes to Quimper, 232 kilometres.</p> - -<p>The aspect of the country changes perceptibly as one leaves Savenay on -the way to the real Brittany. One crosses the Vilaine by the suspension -bridge of La Roche-Bernard, hung so perilously high that the great -three-masted coasters may pass beneath. It is unlovely, but convenient, -and saves a round of fifty kilometres on the journey, as one goes from -Nantes to Vannes, so it may be pardoned.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 328px;"> -<a href="images/illpg_128_lg.jpg"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/illpg_128_sml.jpg" width="328" height="511" alt="Châteaubriant" -title="Châteaubriant" /></a> -<p class="caption">Châteaubriant</p> -</div> - -<p>Northward lies the very ancient town of Châteaubriant, once the centre -and life of Breton warfare and political strife. It was an ancient -barony of the county of Nantes, and owes<a name="page_129" id="page_129"></a> its name to the compounding -of the word château with that of its original lord, who was named Brient.</p> - -<p>The ancient feudal fortress is now a ruin, but the castle built by -John of Laval, governor of Brittany under Francis I., still serves -the gendarmerie and the sous-préfecture offices. Above the portal of -the colonnade one reads this inscription, which gives the date of the -completion of the new castle:</p> - -<div class="bboxx"> - <p class="bxsmcap">DE MAL EN BIEN, DE BIEN MYCVLX<br /> - POUR LACHEVER IE DEVINS VIEVLX<br /> - 1538</p> -</div> - -<p>Each is most interesting, and so abundantly supplied with the lore of -romance and reality, that one can only get his fill of studying it on -the spot.</p> - -<p>The Church of St. Jean de Béré is a historical monument of almost the -first rank, and the remains of the ancient Benedictine convent of St. -Saveur date originally from a foundation of Brient I.</p> - -<p>On the thirteenth and fourteenth of September of each year, on the plain -behind the town, is held the celebrated fair of Béré, one of those -great combinations of marketing and merrymaking<a name="page_130" id="page_130"></a> for which old France -was noted, and which have so largely disappeared that to be a part and -parcel of one is to have a most agreeable experience. Guibray, near -Falaise, in Normandy, the “horse-fair” at Bernay, and the Fair de Béré -are the most celebrated in these parts.</p> - -<p>It was in the neighbouring forest, as Pontcalec recites in the pages of -“The Regent’s Daughter” of Dumas, that he met his adventure with the -“sorceress of Savenay.”</p> - -<p>“I saw an enormous faggot walking along,” said Pontcalec to his three -Breton friends. “This did not surprise me, for our peasants carry such -enormous faggots that they quite disappear under their load, but this -faggot appeared from behind to move alone.”</p> - -<p>A very good description this of what one may see even to-day, not only -in this particular forest, but in any other in France. French frugality -burns small sticks and twigs that in other lands would be made into -a brushwood fire, and who shall not say that this trait, along with -many others, does not contribute to the contentment of the French -peasant? for he is content, if not amply endowed with this world’s -goods; marvellously so as compared with his English, Irish, or Italian -brethren. There may<a name="page_131" id="page_131"></a> be other reasons, but his thrift is the principal -one.</p> - -<p>Any one seeking change and rest will certainly find what he is looking -for at Châteaubriant. It is somnolently dull all through the week and -doubly so on Sundays, but, in spite of all this, it is delightful, and -a romantic novelist—or even a writer of romantic novels—could hardly -find a more inspiring background than the country round about.</p> - -<p>There is a legend, too, in connection with the old château that might be -worked up into a first-class romance, either for the stage or as a sword -and cloak novel. After all, it is not exactly legend either, though it -is almost too horrible to appear true. The reader may judge for himself, -for here it is:</p> - -<p>In the old château lived for a time that unfortunate Frances de Foix -whom Francis I. had created Countess de Châteaubriant. To-day much of -the luxury with which this mistress of the royal lover had surrounded -herself has disappeared, though enough remains, through restoration -and preservation, to suggest the very splendid appointments of a -former time. The young Frances de Foix, herself of the house that once -possessed the crown of Navarre, married the old Count of<a name="page_132" id="page_132"></a> Laval, who -soon brooded himself into a passion of jealousy over the affair of -his wife and her princely lover, particularly as it was said that she -had gone to visit Francis while he was in prison after his capture at -Pavia. “The countess found the king’s prison very dismal,” said the -chroniclers of the time. This last act proved too much for the elderly -spouse, who speedily “shut up his young wife in a darkened and padded -cell, and finally had her cut into pieces by two surgeons,” as the story -goes. After this horrible event the murderer fled the country, as might -have been expected, in order, say the chroniclers again, “to escape the -vengeance of the king.”</p> - -<p>Redon, just to the north, is an unattractive place. Most folk know it -only as the railway official calls out: “Forty-five minutes’ stop for -luncheon, refreshments, and all the rest.”</p> - -<p>Very amusing are these railway lunch-rooms seen throughout France. But -withal they are most excellently appointed, although the passengers, -like their kind the world over, eat as though they had not a minute -to lose, and have a good fifteen left on their hands when they have -finished their repast.</p> - -<p>The meals are usually divided into three categories: the public table at -a set price, the<a name="page_133" id="page_133"></a> table for the aristocracy at three francs, the table -with set portions, the frugal repast at half as much, and the service -“to order,” which is the most costly of all.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 239px;"> -<a href="images/illpg_133_lg.jpg"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/illpg_133_sml.jpg" width="239" height="307" alt="Pan du menage" -title="Pan du menage" /></a> -</div> - -<p>Nothing is of an inferior quality, however, and, as all is served -from the same kitchen, it is merely a question as to whether one will -have more or less, or whether he will eat it off linen napery, with -a napkin to tuck under his right ear,—as is the French commercial -traveller<a name="page_134" id="page_134"></a>’s custom,—or whether he will be satisfied with an oilcloth -table-covering. The difference is more apparent than real, for the -“frugal repast” at a franc and a half is the three franc meal shorn of -its trimmings; you get the same dishes and the same service.</p> - -<p>As if to ease the process, a stentorian railway hand puts his head in -the door and shouts: “Ten minutes before the Vannes express starts!” -and returns again at the end of the allotted time to give a final call: -“Into the carriages, gentlemen!” It is much the same the world over, of -course, but they are more polite in France, and the food is better of -its kind, and much better served, two very appreciable differences.</p> - -<p>Redon itself and its great open square, on which are the railway -station, the hotels, and the gaunt, lone, dismembered tower of the -Church of St. Sauveur, is by no means attractive. The square is bare of -trees, and in the summer the sun beats down upon the frequenters of the -terrace coffee-rooms of the hotels in a manner which makes one wonder -why they do not move off and seek a shady spot elsewhere.</p> - -<p>The indifference shown by the natives of certain localities for the -pelting sunlight, which<a name="page_135" id="page_135"></a> makes some of us think of cabbage leaves for -our hats and “gin rickeys” for our stomachs, is curious. The Neapolitan -prefers to loll about in the blazing Italian sun, and says that no one -but an Englishman or a dog ever seeks the shade. The citizen of Redon is -like him, and does not care who knows it, and his sunlight, though it -comes to earth some hundreds of miles farther north, appears to be of -the same caloric value.</p> - -<p>Redon was an old monastic foundation of St. Convoïon’s, of the Vannes -church. He built the Abbey of St. Sauveur, of which the present church -and its lone tower are later additions. The main body of the present -edifice dates in part from the time of the foundation, though its fabric -was frequently added to and restored up to the twelfth century, from -which period it may really be said to date. The central tower of this -church is said to be the only Romanesque feature of its class in all -Brittany, and is certainly one of the most sturdy anywhere to be seen.</p> - -<p>Another remarkable feature is a chapel, the walls loopholed and -machicolated, and built by the Abbé Yves in the fifteenth century; -to-day it serves as the sacristy.</p> - -<p>The high altar, a rich and imposing affair,<a name="page_136" id="page_136"></a> was the gift of the great -Richelieu when he was in possession of the revenues of the abbey. The -city was surrounded by a fortification or wall by the Abbot John of -Treal in 1364, and in 1422 John V., Count of Brittany, established a -mint here.</p> - -<p>Questembert, westward toward Vannes, is a town of four thousand or so -inhabitants, and has many interesting old houses, but otherwise is -devoid of attractions either for the lover of architectural monuments or -for worshippers at religious or other shrines. It is, however, the place -for holding many local fairs or markets of considerable magnitude, where -one may make practically his first acquaintance with the Breton peasant, -becoiffed and beribboned as he, or she, only is on native heath.</p> - -<p>Rochefort-en-Terre is also a chief place; as its population numbers -less than seven hundred souls, it cannot be considered as even a -local metropolis. Its situation and its fine, though not stupendously -remarkable, architectural glories make up for what it lacks in the way -of population. It sits high on a hillside dominating the little river -Arz, a confluent of the Vilaine. Its name is due to the founder of -a château built here in the thirteenth century and destroyed by the -Catholic Leaguers in 1594,<a name="page_137" id="page_137"></a> though it was afterwards rebuilt and again -destroyed, this time by Revolutionary firebrands, in 1793. The ruins of -this château are to-day very satisfactory indeed as ruins, though they -include few or none of the architectural details with which the work -must once have been endowed. The lower courses of the walls are there, -remains of five towers, and an ancient well, with a curb of sculptured -granite.</p> - -<p>The ancient collegiate Church of Notre Dame de la Tronchaye -is an ecclesiastical monument of high rank, for a town like -Rochefort-en-Terre, and is an altogether lovable old shrine, with -admirable sculptures in stone and some curious wooden statues, in the -interior, said originally to have been those of Claude of Rieux and -Suzanne of Bourbon, Lord and Lady de Rochefort. These statues are now -converted into a St. Joseph and a Virgin. This may or may not have been -a sacrilege; it certainly was a desecration. The ancient city gates -remain, and there are numerous fifteenth and sixteenth century houses.</p> - -<p>The country round about Rochefort-en-Terre was brought into vogue by -the landscape-painter, Pelouze, some years ago, and other artists have -followed in his wake, making an over growing artist colony in the -summer-time.<a name="page_138" id="page_138"></a> Studies and sketches decorate the dining-room of the Hôtel -Lecadre in a surprising number; at least surprising to one who comes -upon this unassuming little town and its excellent, before named, little -hotel while journeying to Finistère.</p> - -<p>Still going toward Vannes one passes Elven, near which is the Manoir of -Kerlean, the family estate of <i>the</i> Descartes. The birth certificate of -the Descartes is in the records in the mayor’s office.</p> - -<p>Three kilometres to the north are the remains of the ancient fortress -of Largoet, whose tower, known as the Tour d’Elven, dates from the -fifteenth century. This tower has been called the most beautiful castle -keep in all Brittany, and so it is if one take into consideration -its moss-and-ivy-grown walls and its general eerie aspect heightened -perceptibly if seen by moonlight. This high, majestic tower of a feudal -castle, whose other members have practically disappeared, is also a -literary shrine of high rank, inasmuch as Octave Feuillet has placed -here some of the most moving scenes in his “Story of a Poor Young Man.” -Perhaps this true romance is not so well known to the present generation -as to a former, but it should be, and accordingly the clue is here<a name="page_139" id="page_139"></a> -given, and it should have a double significance so far as travellers in -Brittany are concerned.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 326px;"> -<a href="images/illpg_138_lg.jpg"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/illpg_138_sml.jpg" width="326" height="505" alt="Tour d’Elven" -title="Tour d’Elven" /></a> -<p class="caption">Tour d’Elven</p> -</div> - -<p>One enters Vannes, if it be a holiday or a Sunday, amid a gaiety and -uproar that is apparently inexplicable. To be sure Vannes is the -metropolis of the Morbihan, but one does not look for such continuous -gaiety on the part of a people supposed to be wholly devout and not very -rich, as possessors of this world’s goods count their gains. Devoutness -need not necessarily mean glumness, and so as it all seems, around -Vannes at least, to be for the general good, one is not sorry to have -his first introduction to a great Breton town in a way so pleasant.</p> - -<p>Really it is a sort of small gaiety, and strictly local, which goes on -here. There is nothing of the riotous order, but it is all very gay, -nevertheless.</p> - -<p>The simple folk of the Morbihan, who have crowded into Vannes for the -day, are as interested and amused with a hurdy-gurdy Punch and Judy -show, a travelling circus, or a merry-go-round as if they were the -latest distractions of Paris. Meanwhile one seeks his hotel, and there -comes another surprise.<a name="page_140" id="page_140"></a></p> - -<h3><a name="CHAPTER_III-2" id="CHAPTER_III-2"></a>CHAPTER III.<br /><br /> -<small>THE MORBIHAN—VANNES AND THE “GOLFE”</small></h3> - -<p>T<small>HE</small> “Golfe” or Bay of Morbihan is one of those great landlocked havens -in which the whole Breton coast abounds; its islands are as many as the -days of the year, as the natives have it.</p> - -<p>Morbihan itself is as much sea as land. The tides rise to a great height -along this whole southern coast of Brittany, and in the Bay of Morbihan -they have full play.</p> - -<p>The metropolis of Lower Morbihan is Vannes, which the railway porters -shout out at you, as you descend from the train, as Va-a-a-nnes.</p> - -<p>Leaving the station, one threads his way through whole batteries of -laundresses, their gull-winged head-dress nodding in rhythm with the -beating of their paddles, a most picturesque sight, but a process which -works disaster to one’s clothes, destroying pearl buttons, and causing -mysterious small holes to appear in<a name="page_141" id="page_141"></a> the most inconvenient places. An -accompaniment of song always goes with these shattering and battering -exercises. At Vannes, according to Theodore Botrel, it runs like this:</p> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i2">“Pan! pan! pan!<br /></span> -<span class="i3">Ma Doué!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Comme la langue maudite<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Marche bien au vieux lavoit.<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Pan! pan! pan!<br /></span> -<span class="i3">Vite! vite!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Plus vite que le battoir!”<br /></span> -</div></div> - -<p>It is the day of the local fair, the chief article of commerce being, -it would seem, pigs, as at Limerick. At any rate, there are hundreds, -if not thousands, of little porkers, who have just put foot to earth, -as their venders tell one; their own voices, too, strident and high -pitched, announce the same thing.</p> - -<p>Vannes, truth to tell, is not much of a capital, but it is a highly -interesting and picturesque old town, with manners and customs quite -different from those of any of its neighbours.</p> - -<p>The chief characteristics of the place seem to be pointed roofs of red -and moss-grown tiles and walls of blue granite. One can almost imagine -that Botrel chose it as the scene of the stanza:<a name="page_142" id="page_142"></a></p> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“Qui donc chante sous nos fenêtres<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Ces mystérieuses chansons?<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Ce sont les âmes des ancêtres<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Qui reconnaissent leurs maisons!”<br /></span> -</div></div> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 249px;"> -<a href="images/illpg_142_lg.jpg"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/illpg_142_sml.jpg" width="249" height="305" alt="Market-woman, Vannes" -title="Market-woman, Vannes" /></a> -<p class="caption">Market-woman, Vannes</p> -</div> - -<p>There is a blending of the seashore and the open country here which is -scarcely found in any other part of France. In some respects it is like -Holland, and again it is not, for it lacks the web of canals with which -that country is interwoven.<a name="page_143" id="page_143"></a></p> - -<p>The whole bay—“Le Golfe”—forms a dooryard for Vannes, and a yacht or a -boat is as much an appendage of the Vannes household of the better class -as a dog or cat.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 240px;"> -<a href="images/illpg_143_lg.jpg"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/illpg_143_sml.jpg" width="240" height="348" alt="The Country near Vannes" -title="The Country near Vannes" /></a> -<p class="caption">The Country near Vannes</p> -</div> - -<p>Vannes, the capital of the Morbihan, is a city of 23,000 souls, and has -two great modern, up-to-date hotels. Choose one, and you will “like<a name="page_144" id="page_144"></a> the -other best,” as Rubinstein said to the young pianist, who was to play -two of his compositions to the master. He said this, be it recalled, -after he had heard only the first one. Not that Vannes hotels are really -bad. Oh, no. Truth to tell, they are excellent in their way, but they -are unconvincing.</p> - -<p>When one is here, in the midst of a new, strange set of conditions -of life, he looks for something characteristic about his inn. If he -find it, he is content; if he do not, all the smugness and propriety -of imported manners and customs in the dinner service will not make -him so. The true traveller prefers taking his chances with the native -dishes to trifling with Paris culinary fashions at the hands of a Breton -peasant-chef,—if that is the exact classification one ought to give the -cooks of Vannes.</p> - -<p>To enter Vannes by road, one has come down a precipitous descent to -the sea-level, and accordingly rises again to an equal height when he -leaves, for Vannes is the great tidewater port for the whole of the -south coast of Brittany between Lorient and St. Nazaire. The traffic of -the bays of Morbihan and Quiberon is considerable, and the ceaseless -coming and going of many small steamers and sailing-craft is unlike -traffic elsewhere.<a name="page_145" id="page_145"></a></p> - -<p>The great bay is an inland sea almost surrounded by the jutting -peninsulas which terminate on either side of the narrow channel in -Pointe de Kerpenhir and Port Navalo. The name is compounded of two -Breton words, <i>mor</i> (sea) and <i>bihan</i> (little). The flat tree-grown -islands of this little sea make vistas and groups of a unique character, -and to learn the bay well by a voyage among them in a flat-bottomed -skimming-dish of a craft, or by the more facile motor-launch, is a -thoroughly agreeable experience.</p> - -<p>The chief of the islands are the Monks Isle and the Ile d’Arz, but the -enfolding shores of the mainland, with its little seaside-farmyard -villages, have the same characteristics.</p> - -<p>On the little passenger steamers, which ply between the islands and the -mainland, one meets a queer company of peasant-folk in coifs and round -velvet or straw caps, fowls, sheep, goats, and an occasional overgrown -calf.</p> - -<p>Such of the islands of the bay as are populated, and many of them -are, were colonized from the neighbouring country, and the women in -particular are physically admirable. They still wear the distinctive -costume of the country in a spirit uncontaminated by the electric lights -and railways of Vannes. Custom in<a name="page_146" id="page_146"></a> these isles allows the young women -to demand the hand of a likely swain in marriage, and the plan seems -to work well. The population seems generally happy, prosperous, and -contented. What better is expected as the outcome of marriage?</p> - -<p>The climate of all the Morbihan shore is mild and tranquil at all -seasons of the year, and one may sit beside the open window of his hotel -dining-room throughout the year. The mimosa flowers in winter, and -palms, rose-trees, camellias, and fig-trees prosper exceedingly in the -open air.</p> - -<p>Vannes was the ancient capital of the Veneti, a strong coast tribe of -other days which resisted the invasion of Cæsar and triumphed against -his fleet a half-century or more before the Christian era.</p> - -<p>When finally the Romans came, they made Vannes the centre of six -great highways which radiated to Corseul, to Angers, to Hennebont, to -Locmariaquer, to Rennes, and to Nantes. From this its importance may be -inferred.</p> - -<p>Christianity came to Vannes in 465, when St. Perpetus, Metropolitan of -Tours, consecrated St. Patern as first bishop. By the sixth century it -had become an independent county, but was joined again to the duchy -of Brittany<a name="page_147" id="page_147"></a> in 990. John IV. established his habitual residence at -Vannes, and constructed the celebrated Château de l’Hermine, with its -constable’s tower so famous in the history of Brittany as the place in -which he imprisoned Clisson, releasing him only after the payment of a -heavy ransom.</p> - -<p>The history of Vannes and the Morbihan is too long and stormy to be even -outlined here, but there are still many remains and memories which will -serve as a foundation upon which to build the fabric anew.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 269px;"> -<a href="images/illpg_147_lg.png"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/illpg_147_sml.png" width="269" height="129" alt="Ancient City Walls, Vannes" -title="Ancient City Walls, Vannes" /></a> -<p class="caption">Ancient City Walls, Vannes</p> -</div> - -<p>The port is most interesting, with its varied traffic and its great -ships of nearly a thousand tons which thread their way up through the -islands of the gulf, bringing lumber, coals, and all the small cargoes -of a great coasting port.</p> - -<p>At Vannes one may see a huge parti-coloured handkerchief of the -<i>bandanna</i> variety<a name="page_148" id="page_148"></a> waving before a narrow doorway. It is the “shawl,” -the sign of the hair-cutter, who will exchange its fellow for your -hair, if you be a Breton girl with dark brown tresses, or even an -elderly person whose hair is iron-gray. In Lower Brittany, on summer -fair-days, the dealer in hair makes a round exceedingly profitable to -his establishment, though at each stopping-place it leaves a hundred -or more young girls shorn of their crowning glory,—a loss which they -successfully cover with their daintily ironed head-dress.</p> - -<p>The chief of the sights and shrines of the neighbourhood of Vannes are -St. Gildas de Rhuis and the Château of Suscino. The former is revered -for its sixth-century monastic foundation of St. Gildas, called the -wise, and for some time in the twelfth century governed by the famous -Abelard. The ancient abbatial church is now the parish church. It dates -from the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries, and is an unusual work in -many respects, and rising to a height of grandeur seldom seen outside -the larger Breton cities and towns.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 315px;"> -<a href="images/illpg_148_lg.jpg"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/illpg_148_sml.jpg" width="315" height="491" alt="Château of Suscino" -title="Château of Suscino" /></a> -<p class="caption">Château of Suscino</p> -</div> - -<p>The castle of Suscino—or more properly the ruin—is a wonderful -thirteenth-century structure on the water’s edge, built by John the -Red-haired. It follows the best Gothic traditions<a name="page_149" id="page_149"></a> of its time, and -its crenelated walls and towers, the latter now unroofed, are perfect -of their kind. It was captured by Charles of Blois, and retaken by his -Montfort rival in 1364. An English garrison occupied it in 1373. Finally -it was given by Anne of Brittany to John of Chalons, Prince of Orange, -from whom it was taken by Francis I., and he presented it to Frances of -Foix, Lady of Châteaubriant, as she then was. The rest of its history is -equally varied, and as important as becomes so magnificent a mediæval -fortress.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 181px;"> -<a href="images/illpg_149_lg.png"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/illpg_149_sml.png" width="181" height="185" alt="Ground -plan Chateau of Suscino Morbihan" title="Ground -plan Chateau of Suscino Morbihan" /></a> -</div> - -<p>In form the château is an irregular pentagon, perhaps modified from -its original plan in 1420. Its orchid machicolations are remarkable -both for their beauty and their utility. Seven towers, of which six -remain, originally flanked its<a name="page_150" id="page_150"></a> gates and walls. The new tower is a fine -cylindrical keep of the fifteenth century. Over the entrance one still -reads a tablet inscription as follows:</p> - -<div class="bboxx"> - <p class="bxsmcap">Ici est né<br /> - Le duc Arthur III.<br /> - le 24 Août, 1393</p> -</div> - -<p>North of Vannes are Ploërmel and Josselin, two places which no one -should leave out of the itinerary of Brittany. Neither is easily -accessible by rail, but both are conveniently reached by road.</p> - -<p>Ploërmel has a railway connection with the line to Brest by way of -Rennes, and another with the line to Brest by way of Vannes, but -Josselin is off the beaten track, and one makes his way from Ploërmel by -omnibus or in a carriage.</p> - -<p>Ploërmel and its “pardon” have inspired an opera, one of Meyerbeer’s -most celebrated scores, known to English music lovers as “Dinorah,” but -in French called “The Pardon of Ploërmel.” The town owes its name to an -anchorite who, in the sixth century, retired here to a hermitage.</p> - -<p>The history of Ploërmel during the middle<a name="page_151" id="page_151"></a> ages was stormy. It was here -that the edict expelling the Jews from Brittany was issued in 1240. In -1273 the Comte de Richemont—upon his return from the Crusades—founded -at Ploërmel the first Carmelite convent known to France. This ancient -convent, situated without the walls, escaped from the disasters which -caused the city to be burned in 1347. The Calvinists came in time to -have a temple here, in which they held two synods of their church.</p> - -<p>To-day Ploërmel is a sleepy, old-world town, with two good inns, and -not much except the fragmentary reminders of old walls and buildings to -remind one of the parts played in other days.</p> - -<p>The Church of St. Armel, a reconstruction of 1511-1602, is in parts -highly decorated with stone sculptures and strange images, recalling, -says an ingenious, but profane, Frenchman, the “pleasantries of -Rabelais.” Of course he refers to the players on the bagpipes, the man -sewing up the mouth of his wife, and the wife tearing off her husband’s -cap. Certainly these quaint figures are not born of religious symbolism, -unless, by chance, that the symbolism of the religious builders of -Ploërmel differs greatly from that of others elsewhere.<a name="page_152" id="page_152"></a></p> - -<p>There are still remains of Ploërmel’s old city walls dating from the -fifteenth century, and also a fragment of a tower.</p> - -<p>Near by, on the road to Josselin, is a simple granite shaft perpetuating -the famous “Battle of the Thirty,” celebrated in history.</p> - -<p>According to Froissart, Robert of Beaumanoir, chatelain of Josselin, -one day provoked an English captain—Bromborough—who was encamped at -Ploërmel, and challenged him to battle; thirty of his men against thirty -Frenchmen. At the first attack four Frenchmen and two English fell. -Then the combat began again with swords, battle-axes, and lances. Eight -English only finally remained, including Bromborough himself; all the -others were killed or taken prisoners and led away to the dungeons of -the Château de Josselin.</p> - -<p>Froissart writes elsewhere of this same engagement: “Twenty-two years -after the battle of the thirty, I saw at the table of King Charles of -France one of the combatants, a knight called Yvain Charnel. His face -showed that the battle had been hot, for it was scarred all over.”</p> - -<p>This wayside column or pyramid just off the route bears the following -inscription:</p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 319px;"> -<a href="images/illpg_152_lg.jpg"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/illpg_152_sml.jpg" width="319" height="514" alt="Ploërmel" -title="Ploërmel" /></a> -<p class="caption">Ploërmel</p> -</div> - -<div class="boxx"> -<p class="c"> <span class="smcap">À la Memoire Perpetuelle<br /> - de la Bataille des Trante<br /> -que Mgr le Maréchal de Beau Manoir<br /> - a Gaignée dans ce Lieu l’An 1530</span></p> -</div> - -<p><a name="page_153" id="page_153"></a></p> - -<p>Josselin is now chief town of a commune of 2,500 inhabitants; it has a -fine mediæval château yet inhabitable, two ecclesiastical monuments of -more than unusual excellence, and a rather shaky and ill-situated inn -(Hôtel de France), which makes up in the abundance and excellence of its -fare for what it lacks in the way of electric lights and modern sanitary -arrangements.</p> - -<p>The first houses of Josselin were grouped around a miraculous effigy -of the Virgin, known as Notre Dame du Roncier, because it was found -beneath a blackberry-bush. To-day Notre Dame du Roncier, the church and -the chapel and its statue of the Virgin, are venerated highly by the -faithful who make the pilgrimage to the shrine on the Monday and Tuesday -of Pentecost and on the eighth of September, the birthday of the Virgin, -when the remains of her ancient statue are shown. This effigy was broken -and burned in the Revolutionary fury of 1793, but a modern replica was -crowned, in the Chapel Notre Dame du Roncier,<a name="page_154" id="page_154"></a> in 1868. The settlement -which grew up around the shrine was surrounded by a protecting wall by -the Count of Guéthénoc in 1008, and in 1030 it was given the name of -Josselin, after his son.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 242px;"> -<a href="images/illpg_154_lg.jpg"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/illpg_154_sml.jpg" width="242" height="340" alt="Shrine of St. Etienne, Josselin" -title="Shrine of St. Etienne, Josselin" /></a> -<p class="caption">Shrine of St. Etienne, Josselin</p> -</div> - -<p>In the thirteenth century, the county of Porhoet, <a name="page_155" id="page_155"></a>in which Josselin was -situated, passed to the house of Fougères, and its affairs were varied -and involved until Peter of Valois, Count of Alençon, sold it to the -Constable Oliver of Clisson, whose daughter brought it in marriage to -the Rohans, to whose descendants it still belongs.</p> - -<p>In the Church of Our Lady of the Blackberry-bush is a remarkable tomb -placed in the Chapel of St. Marguerite—the former oratory of the -constable—to Oliver of Clisson and Marguerite of Rohan.</p> - -<p>The castle rests on a rocky foundation beside the river Oust, and its -front is most imposing. Three towers with conical roofs flank the -riverside, and are an expression of the best fortress-château building -of its era (twelfth century), severe and gaunt in every line, and yet -beautifully planned. The interior court takes on quite a different -aspect, that of the “<i>architecture civile</i>” of the third ogival period, -when Renaissance forms and details had crept in, almost destroying -Gothic lines.</p> - -<p>The window openings of the two stories have an admirable decorative -effect, as beautiful as those of Blois and very nearly equalling those -of Chambord.</p> - -<p>An open gallery above the windows is a charming additional -interpolation, and between<a name="page_156" id="page_156"></a> each window is carved “A Plus,” the device -of the distinguished family of the Rohans, who built this part of the -structure. A keep and some later walls and parapets were added by -Clisson somewhere about the year 1400, but most of them disappeared in -1629, when the château ceased to be a stronghold of the League.</p> - -<p>In the main it is a twelfth and thirteenth century structure which is -so admirably preserved to-day. One may visit the interior, through the -courtesy of the family in residence, and, though it may be somewhat -disconcerting to walk through these historic apartments of another -day and see such modern innovations as electric bells and other -appurtenances of a late civilization, the experience is, after all, -a peep behind the curtain, and this the up-to-date motor-car tourist -always appreciates highly.</p> - -<p>The great hall, the library, with its magnificent chimneypiece and -its cipher, “A Plus,” carved in stone, and the dining-room ornamented -with a modern equestrian statue of Clisson, by Fremiet, are the chief -apartments shown.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 346px;"> -<a href="images/illpg_156_lg.jpg"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/illpg_156_sml.jpg" width="346" height="521" alt="Château de Josselin" -title="Château de Josselin" /></a> -<p class="caption">Château de Josselin</p> -</div> - -<p>In the court within the walls is an ancient<a name="page_157" id="page_157"></a> well surrounded by an -elaborate forged iron railing.</p> - -<p>One takes the road again, by the way of Locminé and Baud, for Auray, the -most dainty and charming of all Breton market-towns, passing through a -delightfully picturesque country of rolling hills and deep valleys and -fir forests, studded here and there with lakelets.</p> - -<p>Locminé, which derives its name from <i>Locmenec’h</i> (monk’s cell), was the -site of a monastery founded in the sixth century by St. Colomban. It was -burned by the Normans in the ninth century, after the pleasant custom of -these invaders, and reëstablished in 1006 by Geoffrey, Duke of Brittany, -as a priory attached to the Abbey of St. Gildas of Rhuis.</p> - -<p>In the present church of Locminé is a chapel dedicated to St. Colomban, -containing a painting representing scenes from the life of the saint; -others are carried out in the coloured glass of the windows.</p> - -<p>One reads the following,—a supplication on behalf of the dangerous -madmen who at one time occupied two cells beneath the pavement:</p> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“St. Colomban, patron of Locminé, pray for us!<br /></span> -<span class="i1">St. Colomban, help of idiots, pray for us!”<br /></span> -</div></div> - -<p>Behind the church is an elaborate ossuary dating from Renaissance times, -when these adjuncts<a name="page_158" id="page_158"></a> to burial-grounds were so plentifully scattered -over Brittany.</p> - -<p>Baud has an enormous parish church of the time of Louis XIV., with a -fine Gothic arcade and a great crucifix standing beside the outer wall. -Aside from this, there is not much else here to attract one, unless he -be a pilgrim affected with disease of the eye. If he be, and if he bathe -in the “Fontaine de la clarté,” and the fates be propitious, and he be -not too far gone otherwise, and everything else be as it should, he will -be cured forthwith—perhaps.</p> - -<p>It is unkind to scoff at these miraculous fountains scattered here and -there over the world, of course, but one has seen so many individual -cases that were not benefited, and heard of so many that were, that one -may be justified in a little skepticism.</p> - -<p>To Auray is twenty kilometres by a road which gently rolls down a matter -of 150 metres of elevation until it reaches sea-level at the little -market-town seaport known in Breton as Alre.<a name="page_159" id="page_159"></a></p> - -<h3><a name="CHAPTER_IV-2" id="CHAPTER_IV-2"></a>CHAPTER IV.<br /><br /> -<small>AURAY AND THE MEGALITHIC MONUMENTS OF MORBIHAN</small></h3> - -<p>A<small>URAY</small> is the real centre from which to make the round of the vast -collection of relics of the long lost civilization of Morbihan.</p> - -<p>Many have attempted to explain the significance of these rude stone -monuments. Some have said that the famous avenues of Carnac were the -streets of one of Cæsar’s camps, its roofs having fallen and mouldered -away, and that the famous “Merchants’ Table” at Locmariaquer was an -ancient druidical altar, to which the helpless were led to be sacrificed.</p> - -<p>All this and much more is for the antiquary alone, and a nodding -acquaintance with the history of these curious stone formations or -erections is about all for which most travellers will care.</p> - -<p>He who arrives at Auray on a market-day will seem to himself to come -into a region where every one speaks the Breton tongue. Not all,<a name="page_160" id="page_160"></a> of -course, for French is now compulsory with the school-children, but the -frequency of it here in the booths and stalls in and around Auray’s -lovely old timbered market-house is greatly to be remarked.</p> - -<p>It is a question if this same market-house be not quite the most -theatrical-looking thing of its kind in all France. It is for all -the world like a successful piece of stage carpentry, with a great -spectacular stairway running up into its garret above, quite in the -manner that one has seen upon the stage over and over again, when the -heroine or the villain—it does not much matter which—escapes from his, -or her, pursuers. Low built, heavily raftered, and with a leaky roof -allowing rays of sunlight to dribble through into the gloom within in a -most entrancing manner, this old market-house is the centre of the life -and activity of the place for fifty-two Mondays in each year.</p> - -<p>Within and without the walls of the market-house is gathered the most -varied conglomeration of wares imaginable. Beside the draper’s counter -are baskets of vegetables, eggs, or fish. A poor little calf, tied by -the legs and lying at full length on the ground, keeps company with his -former farmyard neighbours, the ducks and geese, but on either side is a -second-hand collection<a name="page_161" id="page_161"></a> of ironmongery and old shoes, and it should be -the envy of the provident, for two sous buy anything in the collection.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 510px;"> -<a href="images/illpg_160_lg.jpg"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/illpg_160_sml.jpg" width="510" height="309" alt="Interior of Market-house, Auray" -title="Interior of Market-house, Auray" /></a> -<p class="caption">Interior of Market-house, Auray</p> -</div> - -<p>The country-side Breton peasant who comes to Auray on a market-day is -the glass of fashion of his race, his jacket embroidered in braid of gay -colours, and velvet bands on his sleeves and collar. His shirt is high -and stiffly starched, and his felt hat or cap heavily hung with velvet -ribbons. The womenfolk are clad in equally spectacular fashion, with -high white caps and full-sleeved bodices, each with a black velvet band -around the sleeve, and full gathered skirts, spoiling all symmetry of -form as nature made it.</p> - -<p>The history of Auray, from the days when it belonged to John of Auray, -grand huntsman of Brittany, has left its mark in the annals of the -country in no indefinite manner. John of Montfort, the Counts of Blois, -Duguesclin, and many others stalk through its pages of history until -finally, in the wars of religions, it was held by the Catholic army -and the Spaniards in turn. Its old château, whose foundations now form -the fine Promenade du Loc, dates from the eleventh century; and it was -reconstructed and enlarged two centuries later, finally to disappear, -as the result of an order<a name="page_162" id="page_162"></a> for its demolition given by the castle -destroyer, Henry II., in 1558.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 197px;"> -<a href="images/illpg_162_lg.jpg"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/illpg_162_sml.jpg" width="197" height="325" alt="Shrine of St. Roch, Auray" -title="Shrine of St. Roch, Auray" /></a> -<p class="caption">Shrine of St. Roch, Auray</p> -</div> - -<p>The port of Auray is more daintily and charmingly environed than most -seaports. As it lies between the wooded, deep-cut banks of the little -river, its intermingling of ships and salt water, and country-side, and -sailor lads and rustic maidens, and all the motley population<a name="page_163" id="page_163"></a> of the -little town, is a marvellous thing to see.</p> - -<p>The smack of antiquity is about it all, and the historic legend of its -shrine of St. Anne—which lives as vividly to-day as ever it lived—most -touchingly connects the present with the past.</p> - -<p>One of the most celebrated, and certainly the most largely attended, -of all the “pardons” of Brittany is that held at St. Anne of Auray, -though Auray itself is something more than a mere place of religious -pilgrimage, and a good deal more than a wayside station on the railway -line where one leaves the train and hires a carriage for Carnac and -Quiberon, though apparently not many tourists know it. In the first -place, it is one of the largest and most characteristic of all the -little Breton market-towns, is a deep-water port of a considerable size, -and has a hotel which supplies one with the most ample and delightful -meals that the traveller will find westward of Nantes.</p> - -<p>This may be a mundane standard by which to judge of an old-world town’s -appeal to interest, but it is all-sufficient, and the most marvellous -attractions the world may have to offer will hardly be appreciated by -a travel-worn and hungry traveller, and such should plan to arrive<a name="page_164" id="page_164"></a> in -town for the Monday dinner at the Golden Lion; also he should not hurry -through the town merely for the sake of visiting the shrine of St. Anne, -which is tawdry enough in its general aspect, except when it is thronged -on the great days of the “pardon,” March seventh and July twenty-fifth.</p> - -<p>The great festival of the Pardon of St. Anne of Auray is held in July, -on the birthday of St. Anne, the mother of the Virgin Mary. Its origin -dates back to 1623, when a peasant of the country-side, one Yves -Nicolazic, was commanded by St. Anne, who appeared to him in a vision, -to found a chapel in her honour in the fields of Bocenno, where, she -said, an ancient shrine had existed nearly a thousand years earlier. -Guided by explicit directions and a mysterious star, Yves found a -precious image, which ultimately was transported and set up anew in -the church built at Auray. This miraculous statue was lost during -the Revolution, but a fragment was preserved and is included in the -present shrine, which is surrounded by a modern edifice dating from the -mid-nineteenth century.</p> - -<p>Near by is the miraculous fountain, which, like others of its kind -elsewhere, is exceedingly erratic as to the miracles it performs. It -was<a name="page_165" id="page_165"></a> beside this fountain, then but a humble little rock-gushing spring, -but now neatly set about with a concrete basin, that St. Anne first -appeared to Yves.</p> - -<p>Each year, by train, by boat, by country cart, and on foot, pilgrims -come from miles around, many of them camping out the night by the -roadside, all, in spite of the solemn purport of their pilgrimage, in -the gayest spirits. There is always a certain amount of discord to be -encountered at all these great festivals,—beggars, deformed or ill -with incurable disease, crippled or what not, all expectant of reaping -a thriving harvest from the simple-minded frequenters of the shrine. -Whether deserving or not, all of them appear to receive liberal alms, -for the custom of giving alms is as much a component part of the -event as any of the other observances, nor is it ever frowned upon or -curtailed by the religious or civic authorities.</p> - -<p>The order of the day includes the massing of the pilgrims at open-air -services, the placing of candles before the shrine, the inspection of -the relics of the saint, the drinking of, or bathing in, the miraculous -fountain, and sermons and admonitions uncounted, all in the Breton -tongue, incomprehensible to outsiders, but to be taken as salutary. The -great feature is the<a name="page_166" id="page_166"></a> procession of priests and pilgrims, the former -in their brilliant vestments, many of the latter bearing tall, gaudily -coloured candles and gay silken banners. Grouped around each banner -will be found the Breton men and women from a particular section, each -group differently clad from those of other sections, but all gay with -brilliant colouring.</p> - -<p>“Saint Anne, pray for us!” is the cry one would hear were it in English, -or “<i>Sainte Anne, priez pour nous</i>” in French; in Breton, its sadness is -indescribable, more like the wail of a <i>banshee</i> than anything else.</p> - -<p>Usually the Bishop of Vannes delivers an exhortation, in the Breton -tongue, of course, from the top of the Holy Steps, after which the -throng—or, at least, such as are truly and sincerely devout—climb to -the top on their knees. According to the printed notice at the foot, -each step mounted on the bended knee, accompanied of course by a prayer, -is good for a nine years’ absolution of a soul in purgatory. In the -cloister behind the church is a great crucifix, in which the peasant -pilgrims stick pins, each recording a prayer said or a vow made.</p> - -<p>On the night of July twenty-sixth, St. Anne’s Day, a grand torchlight -procession marches. The “Marche aux Flambeaux,” a celebrated<a name="page_167" id="page_167"></a> painting -by Jules Breton, now owned in America, well shows the effect of one of -these great demonstrations, except that it lacks the weirdness of the -sombre background of night itself.</p> - -<p>This ends the great days of the pardon, but throughout the year pilgrims -make their way to the shrine to say a prayer, or to drink or bathe in -the waters of the fountain, or perhaps to carry a jugful home to some -bedridden member of their families.</p> - -<p>Among the offerings in fulfilment of vows made at the shrine of Ste. -Anne d’Auray are a number of very ancient inscriptions, such as the -following best illustrate:</p> - -<p>“William Genin, bitten by a mad dog, vowed himself to St. Anne and -obtained a perfect cure in 1631.”</p> - -<p>“Helen Sausse, abandoned by her mother, vomited a two-headed snake and -recovered her health.”</p> - -<p>On the way from Auray to Plouharnel, Carnac, Quiberon, and Locmariaquer -are worth one day or three, accordingly as one may feel inclined. The -distance is not great; a dozen kilometres will cover the journey out, -and a little more circuitous return route will take in a half-dozen or -more old centres of a civilization<a name="page_168" id="page_168"></a> of which all knowledge is lost in -the night of time.</p> - -<p>Whatsoever the great megalithic monuments of Carnac may mean, certain it -is that they tell—or could tell if one could feel sure he understood -it correctly—a story quite out of keeping with the manners and customs -of to-day. Like the tall, gaunt windmills plentifully besprinkled -hereabouts, these great stones rear their heads skyward in fashion most -strange. Long rows of them, like files of soldiers, or like the trees of -the forest, stand to-day for the curious to marvel at, as they stood so -long ago that their origin is not to be definitely traced.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 291px;"> -<a href="images/illpg_168_lg.jpg"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/illpg_168_sml.jpg" width="291" height="184" alt="The Lines of Carnac" -title="The Lines of Carnac" /></a> -<p class="caption">The Lines of Carnac</p> -</div> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 530px;"> -<a href="images/illpg_168a_lg.jpg"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/illpg_168a_sml.jpg" width="530" height="316" alt="The Lines of Carnac" -title="The Lines of Carnac" /></a> -<p class="caption">The Lines of Carnac</p> -</div> - -<p>Of the Lines of Carnac, as the strange population<a name="page_169" id="page_169"></a> of -tombstone-looking monoliths is known, much has been written by -antiquaries, archæologists, and geologists ever since the tide of travel -set this way. What these stones actually mean—some thousands of them -in all, set out in regular rows—only a vain, presumptuous person could -answer. They offer a prospect of a strange grandeur, for they really -are grand, if not stupendous, and, as they stretch away in long, silent -lines almost to the horizon, they are as phantoms looming to-day out of -the mysterious past to which they belong.</p> - -<p>There are three great companies of these menhirs here. Those of Ménec, -composed of 1,169 members in eleven ranks; of Kermario, 1,120 members -in ten rows; and of Kerlescan, thirteen rows made up of 579 individual -stones.</p> - -<p>Carnac has another ancient monument in the tumulus of Mont St. Michel, -which, like other elevations bearing the same name, is a sky-nearing -little peak of land which supposedly formed a firm earthly foothold for -the archangel.</p> - -<p>The parish church of Carnac is dedicated to St. Cornély, who, according -to legend, lived in the neighbourhood and was many times saved from -an untimely death by the oxen of the region. Just how this was -accomplished<a name="page_170" id="page_170"></a> no one seems to know, but enough of the tradition still -lives to inspire a grand celebration on the saint’s day, the thirteenth -of September, when many animals are offered up to him, as one learns -from the kindly, tall-coifed guardian of the church.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 292px;"> -<a href="images/illpg_170_lg.jpg"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/illpg_170_sml.jpg" width="292" height="260" alt="Map of Carnac and the Surrounding Country" -title="Map of Carnac and the Surrounding Country" /></a> -<p class="caption">Map of Carnac and the Surrounding Country</p> -</div> - -<p>The painted ceilings of the Church of St. Cornély are remarkable works -of art, if not for their excellence, at least for their ingenuity. The -north porch is an astonishing Renaissance addition, which, from its -curves and curls,<a name="page_171" id="page_171"></a> would seem to be the precursor of “<i>l’art nouveau</i>.”</p> - -<p>To the westward of Carnac, at the shore-end of the peninsula of -Quiberon, is Plouharnel, another centre around which are grouped many -curious stone monuments.</p> - -<p>The Chapel of Our Lady of the Flowers is a singularly beautiful small -church built of the granite of the country. It contains a notable -bas-relief in alabaster in the form of what is known in ecclesiastical -art as a “Jesse Tree.”</p> - -<p>Just why the promoters of a railway had the temerity to push it to the -very end of the snake-like peninsula of Quiberon is a problem which will -ever remain unsolved so far as the general public is concerned. Stendhal -has written some gloomy views of scenes enacted at Fort Penthièvre, -half-way down the peninsula, and Victor Hugo wrote of the same times -(now a hundred years ago):</p> - -<p>“<i>Mourir plus d’un soldat à son prince fidèle, un prêtre fidèle à son -Dieu.</i>”</p> - -<p>The aspect of this long, narrow peninsula is everywhere the same, from -its juncture with the mainland to the sandy point fifteen kilometres -away, from which one sees the flash of the twinkling light on Belle Ile.</p> - -<p>Quiberon has what may almost be called an<a name="page_172" id="page_172"></a> ideal hotel, except that it -is unworldly and not the least new. A travelling salesman, whom we met -at Auray, told us that it was kept by an old cook, one of the Vatels -of the stove. Simple and modest, but clean withal as the proverbial -door-step of Holland, it is one of those inns that the traveller loves -out of sheer inability to find fault with it.</p> - -<p>Quiberon has two ports, Port Haliguen and Port Maria, both in danger -of becoming popular seaside resorts, for the guide-books are already -describing them as places where the sojourn will be agreeable for -persons of simple habits.</p> - -<p>The fish-market of Quiberon is one, if not the chief, of its sights for -the student of manners and customs. “<i>Cinq lubines pour douze francs -et deux cent quarante maquereaux pour trente-un francs</i>” was the way -the market ran on the occasion of the visit of the author, all of which -argues that Quiberon is a good place for the fish to come.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 515px;"> -<a href="images/illpg_172_lg.jpg"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/illpg_172_sml.jpg" width="515" height="315" alt="Quiberon" -title="Quiberon" /></a> -<p class="caption">Quiberon</p> -</div> - -<p>The lobsters, too, are a great feature of the trade here, and are sold -by their length, measuring from the eye up to the first scale of their -tails. An average price is rather over four sous, and Paris takes the -best of the lot. They travel first-class and by express, the lobsters<a name="page_173" id="page_173"></a> -of Quiberon, when they take their first and last voyage to the “shining -city,” and there are plenty of friends awaiting them at the station. -They invariably arrive at the fish-market for the earliest sales, and at -noon the epicure may eat them at Marguery’s, which sounds like a French -version of the “Alice in Wonderland” tale.</p> - -<p>One hour from Quiberon, by a tiny steamboat, and one finds himself -skirting the cliff walls surrounding and sheltering the little port and -town of Palais on Belle Ile, overlooked by the powerful citadel built by -Vauban, who, as the fortress-builder of France, stood in his profession -where Napoleon did in his.</p> - -<p>This “<i>plus belle île de l’ocean</i>” has forty-eight kilometres of -coast-line, and every one of them has been so cut and serrated by -the action of the waves that the island would form a veritable ocean -graveyard were it situated on the direct line of travel by sea.</p> - -<p>For the most part, visitors content themselves with making an excursion -to the northerly end of the island, a visit to the apothecary’s grotto, -and another to the lantern of the great lighthouse, which at night sends -its electric rays far out to sea.</p> - -<p>What tourists may not do is to roam over<a name="page_174" id="page_174"></a> the old citadel now occupied -as a national fort, and this is a pity, for there they might conjure up -a reminder of other days that would be like a chapter out of Dumas.</p> - -<p>The citadel was built by Marshal de Retz in 1572, and was the refuge of -the cardinal of the same name when he fled from Nantes in 1653. Not far -away is the Château Fouquet. Nicholas Fouquet, Marquis of Belle Ile, -was Superintendent of Finance under the regency of Anne of Austria, -and continued the important office after the accession of Louis XIV. -The consensus of opinion is that Fouquet was insinuating, specious, -hypocritical, and sensual. It was at the great fête given by Fouquet at -Vaux that the king planned his arrest, “fearing he would escape to Belle -Ile,” then thought to be an impregnable fortress. Both in the pages of -the historians and in the romances of Dumas one may read the story.</p> - -<p>Belle-Ile-en-Mer, also, was made the home of Aramis after Dumas had -given him episcopal rank. The minute details given in “Le Vicomte de -Bragelonne” would form an admirable supplement to any guide-book.</p> - -<p>The great Sara Bernhardt has of recent years made her home on this -barren and desolate isle. It is not altogether desolate, however,<a name="page_175" id="page_175"></a> for -there are hotels at Palais and Sauzon, and tourists, solitary and in -droves, are continually making excursions thither in the season from the -neighbouring Breton coast, from Vannes, Quiberon, or Lorient.</p> - -<p>Although Belle Ile is only a pin-head on most maps of France, it has a -considerable population. Palais is a town of five thousand souls, and -Sauzon counts something over sixteen hundred, and so Belle Ile, being -only about 21,000 acres in extent, is a very thickly populated part of -the globe.</p> - -<p>Returning to the mainland, a call at Locmariaquer is inevitable, if one -be a true and genuine traveller, even if it be “out of the world,” which -virtually it is, being at the tip end of another peninsula like that of -Quiberon.</p> - -<p>The town itself owns to fifteen hundred or more souls, and all of them -look prosperous and contented. Where all of them get their livelihood, -it is difficult to see, for there is not much intercourse with the -outside world.</p> - -<p>Locmariaquer has not even a railway, as Quiberon has, but lies twenty -kilometres or so south of Auray, almost at the mouth of Morbihan Bay. -The church of Locmariaquer is a fine twelfth-century work, but the -foundation of the little town lies much farther back in<a name="page_176" id="page_176"></a> antiquity than -this. It was the ancient Doriorigum of the Romans.</p> - -<p>The Chapel of St. Michel is built up from the Roman remains of a -structure known as <i>er c’hastel</i>.</p> - -<p>The great celebrities of Locmariaquer are, however, those members -of the great family of menhirs, dolmens, and cromlechs with which -this part of Morbihan is so thickly strewn. The chief of these are -the dolmen known as Mané-Lud, Mountain of Ashes, of vast dimensions -and having a grotto beneath it. Not far off is a tumulus and another -dolmen known as Dol-er-Groh, an enormous stone table or altar. Another -is known as Mané-er-H’roeck, the stone of the fairies; it is quite -seventy feet long, or was, for it now lies full length on the ground -broken into four pieces. The finest and best preserved of all is the -Dol-ar-Marc’hadouiren, the Merchants’ Table. It is hard to see just the -significance of the name given to these three huge stones, but they form -a wonderfully impressive monument of days gone by, nevertheless.</p> - -<p>The most beautiful dolmen known, whatever that description may really -mean (the local renter of boats calls it such: “<i>le plus beau dolmen -connu</i>”), can be visited only by boat.<a name="page_177" id="page_177"></a> It is on an island in the gulf, -and is known as the Gavr’inis.</p> - -<p>La Trinité, “a little village on the very edge of the sea”! This is a -description which exactly fits what the natives and the railway powers -like to think is a watering-place. It is something like one, to be sure, -but the influx of strangers during the summer months has never been so -great as to obliterate or even to deaden the local colour. Its little -harbour is lively with fishing-boats, and occasionally gay, when the -boats are “dressed” for some great festival, but nothing of blatant -bands and riotous crowds mars the quietness and sweetness of La Trinité, -and accordingly it is a place to be remembered.</p> - -<p>Sometimes the sterility of the soil round about causes real distress -among the small farming peasants; “one cannot live on fish alone,” they -say.</p> - -<p>There is a local benefactress who, when crops are poor and meagre, gives -the whole of her own harvest gathered from an unusually ample holding -to her more distressed neighbours. This is a true and practical charity -that does not smack of smugness or pretence as do many acts questionably -classed under that head. It is a singularly expressive exemplification<a name="page_178" id="page_178"></a> -of what the French know as “good socialism,” and one hears much of it at -La Trinité and in its neighbourhood.</p> - -<p>Taking to the road again, on the way to Auray, one passes another of -those curious granitic formations. This time it comes down more near -our own day, and is called the “St. Tiviro’s hat.” It does not look the -least like the saint’s hat, any more than the “devil’s seats” and the -“old men of the mountains,” scattered about the world, look like what -they are called—but let that pass. Legend connects this rock with a -certain St. Tiviro, who one day lost his hat, which ultimately turned to -stone. It does not seem plausible, and it is a pointless story indeed, -but it gives a small child the opportunity to point it out for a penny, -which most folk will not grudge.<a name="page_179" id="page_179"></a></p> - -<h3><a name="CHAPTER_V-2" id="CHAPTER_V-2"></a>CHAPTER V.<br /><br /> -<small>MORBIHAN—LORIENT AND ITS NEIGHBOURHOOD</small></h3> - -<p>T<small>HREE</small> towns of Morbihan little known, still less visited by travellers -in Brittany, lie within a comparatively small area just north of the -coast, and their names are Lorient, Hennebont, and Pont Scorff.</p> - -<p>The very name Lorient will appeal to many. It suggests the great -trade with the East, in full swing in the seventeenth and eighteenth -centuries, when the town grew up as a necessary part of a vast commerce. -Some of the old-time romantic picturesqueness of the shipping has -disappeared, and the Hotels “Royal Sword” and “White Horse” have given -way to the Hotels “Modern” and “of France,” with electric lights and -sheds for motor-cars, but there is still a distinguishing excellence to -be remarked which makes Lorient a place well worth visiting.</p> - -<p>It was in the seventeenth century that an association of Breton -merchants, who were carrying<a name="page_180" id="page_180"></a> on the trade with the East Indies, -first built their warehouses here. The traffic grew to proportions so -considerable that Louis XIV. ultimately gave letters patent for the -foundation of a new and grander East India Company.</p> - -<p>The company erected ship-houses here, and the name Lorient was given to -the settlement, which was fast growing to a prime importance among the -ports of France. An English fleet, under Admiral Lestock, landed some -six or seven thousand men in the bay of Poldu, at twelve kilometres west -of Lorient, and marched upon the town as a revenge for certain attacks -upon British interests in the East.</p> - -<p>The English met with no great triumph here, but Louis XV. was -indifferent enough to allow many of the French settlements in the Indies -to be taken, and this led to the rapid decadence of the great East India -Company and its port. Napoleon resuscitated it, as he did many another -decaying institution in France, and developed the industry of the port -to such an extent that Lorient became one of the principal maritime -towns of France. Its past history sounds romantic enough, but there is -little of romance about the life of its streets and wharves to-day; -instead, there is activity not admitting even the thought of romance. -Jangling<a name="page_181" id="page_181"></a> gongs of tram-cars, the puffing of locomotives, and the -shrieks of the sirens, to say nothing of the accompaniment of belching -chimney-stacks and the sound of the riveting hammers in the great -shipyards, all testify that Lorient is living in the age of progress.</p> - -<p>Local sights, outside this marvellous exposition of modern spirit, are -few. There is a municipal museum, containing some good modern pictures, -many of them of Breton subjects, but there are no ecclesiastical or -architectural monuments worthy of remark. The commercial harbour and the -dockyard are decidedly the most interesting features. Within the walls -of the latter is the parade-ground, which serves as a fine promenade -for the population of Lorient when the military band plays on summer -evenings.</p> - -<p>The roadstead of Lorient is a great deep-water harbour, which can -shelter the largest ships afloat. It is guarded by six great lights, -one of them in the cupola of the Church of St. Louis. This is one of -the very few instances where a great city church is a mariner’s beacon, -besides performing its other functions on behalf of lost souls.</p> - -<p>Opposite Lorient is Port Louis, founded a century before its bigger -sister. Anciently it<a name="page_182" id="page_182"></a> was known as Blavet, but took its present name in -honour of Louis XIII. Its walls were begun in 1652.</p> - -<p>In the immediate neighbourhood of Lorient and Port Louis are many -delightful little seaside places, hardly popular resorts in any sense -of the word, but all the better for that, where one may get such views -of sea and shore and shipping of all ranks as is hardly to be found -elsewhere on the Breton coast.</p> - -<p>Up the little river Blavet, at the head of deep-sea navigation, is -Hennebont, a most delightfully disposed little place, which has been -called the pearl of the Blavet. Like most of the tidal rivers of France, -the Blavet, on its lower reaches, offers about the most paintable of all -landscapes imaginable. This, with the Auray, the Aven, the Scorff, and -the Elle, would prove a sketching-ground quite inexhaustible, in the -variety of its moods, to the artist of an average length of life.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 319px;"> -<a href="images/illpg_182_lg.jpg"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/illpg_182_sml.jpg" width="319" height="518" alt="Hennebont" -title="Hennebont" /></a> -<p class="caption">Hennebont</p> -</div> - -<p>Hennebont, which has eight thousand or more inhabitants and a delightful -inn, electric-lighted though it be, is divided into the new town and the -fortified town. It sits beside the river’s bank, and crosses on a bridge -of three arches. Above, the river dwindles to a mere rivulet, but below -the incoming tides will bring<a name="page_183" id="page_183"></a> craft of a tonnage of three hundred -or more straight to the heart of the town. A tonnage of three hundred -does not mean much to the travellers by twenty-thousand-ton steamships, -but assuredly when one sees one of these little craft, with their three -slender square-rigged masts, by the soft light of the full moon, in the -little Breton port of Hennebont, it looks like the phantom ship, whose -masts and spars “cross the moon like prison bars.”</p> - -<p>Hennebont derives its name from the Breton words for old bridge. The -first lord of the place, Huelin of Hennebont, lived in 1037. The -fortified town was, of course, the earlier foundation, the new town only -coming into existence in the sixteenth century, when the great Church of -Our Lady of Paradise was still in the open country.</p> - -<p>Trade follows the flag, but habitations follow the church, and so, when -this great Gothic edifice was built in 1513-30, it began to draw the -houses of the city dwellers around it, and now the fortified town is -practically non-existent except as a quarter.</p> - -<p>This church is a wonder-work of its kind, considering its great size, -its graceful lines, and its ornamental Gothic spire, rising to a height -which must approximate three hundred feet.<a name="page_184" id="page_184"></a></p> - -<p>The ancient ramparts of the old fortified town appear here and there -along the river-bank, in the well-preserved gateway which one passes -on the left after leaving the river on the way to the church, and in -yet another fragment—a great circular tower—in the courtyard of the -aforesaid excellent Hôtel de France.</p> - -<p>The old castle of Hennebont, of which something more than fragments -still remain, saw the death of Comte Charles of Blois, who, escaping -from his dungeon in one of the towers of the old Louvre at Paris, came -here in 1345. One may read in Froissart of the defence of Hennebont by -Jeanne of Montfort in 1342.</p> - -<p>There are many old gabled houses at Hennebont, most fantastic in form, -one of which, bearing the inscription, “<span class="smcap">Le Levic</span>, 1600,” is -perhaps the most ancient of any built without the walls of the fortified -town.</p> - -<p>The great fortified gateway, which gives access to the old citadel, is -a fine ogival work flanked by two massive machicolated towers. This old -district is quite the most curious and unworldly feature of this little -city by the Blavet.</p> - -<p>It is a veritable town of the middle ages, yet unspoiled and quite as it -was in the olden days, when its sturdy walls gave protection against<a name="page_185" id="page_185"></a> -the invader, and its great gates opened only upon the orders of the -governor.</p> - -<p>In suburban Hennebont, scarce a kilometre away, on the left bank of -the Blavet, are to be seen the remains of the old Abbaye de la Joie, -a famous establishment of the monks of the Cistercian order. It was -founded in the thirteenth century by Blanche of Champagne, wife of John -the Red-haired. One still sees her statue in wood and bronze, but the -conventual buildings themselves have come to base uses, and are now a -horse-breeding establishment.</p> - -<p>Pont Scorff, so far as its situation is concerned, resembles Hennebont. -It spans the tiny river Scorff, and the views along the banks are in -every way equally delightful with those on the Blavet. Pont Scorff, -however, has not the magnitude or the antiquity of Hennebont, and its -two parts are known as the upper town and the lower town.</p> - -<p>The most ancient building here is the Chapel of St. John of the old -commandery of St. John du Faouët; it dates at least from the thirteenth -century. There is a fine Renaissance house in the little public square, -called the House of the Princes. It is richly decorated and has a fine -series of dormer windows and a row of pilasters bearing the symbols of -the Rohan family.<a name="page_186" id="page_186"></a> There is another ancient house, formerly belonging, -it is believed, to the Templars. The parish Church of St. Albin dates -only from 1610, and is in no way a remarkable work.</p> - -<p>The Chapel of Notre Dame de Kergornet, a fifteenth-century edifice near -by, is a place of pilgrimage for the Breton nurses, that great race of -foster-mothers who care for the thousands of Parisian children in the -Bois, or the gardens of the Tuileries, or the Luxembourg.</p> - -<p>From this point, as one journeys westward, he leaves pretty much all -France behind him. The modern Department of Finistère, the “Land’s -End” of the French, is all that lies between him and the vast heaving -Atlantic.<a name="page_187" id="page_187"></a></p> - -<h3><a name="CHAPTER_VI-2" id="CHAPTER_VI-2"></a>CHAPTER VI.<br /><br /> -<small>FINISTÈRE—SOUTH</small></h3> - -<p>A<small>T</small> Quimperlé one makes his first acquaintance with that part of -the Armorican peninsula known to-day on the maps of France as the -Department of Finistère. This charming little town is of itself of great -importance, as marking the dividing-line between the dialect of Vannes -and that of the western peninsula. There is no great difference to be -noted by the casual traveller, since all of the younger population speak -the French tongue,—sometimes exclusively,—but there is an unmistakable -modification of manners and customs toward the more theatrical aspect -which one best sees at Pont Aven, Pont l’Abbé, and the little fishing -villages around the Bay of Douarnenez.</p> - -<p>Of the women of Quimperlé much has been remarked by all who have ever -lingered within its walls. They are “superb in type, elegant and -gracious,” we were told by a French<a name="page_188" id="page_188"></a> artist who had set up his easel on -the quay. But there is no need to tell anybody; even a woman-hater would -remark it. Certainly this is as good an entrance to a new and strange -land as heart could desire.</p> - -<p>Quimperlé lies on both sides of the little river Elle, which, like -the other streams of the South Breton coast, is a special variety of -waterway quite unlike their more pretentious brothers and sisters -elsewhere. The country round about has been called the “Arcadia of -Lower Brittany,” and so it will strike even the least observant of -travellers—after he has recovered from the effects of the glances of -those elegant and gracious females.</p> - -<p>The most ancient part of the little city is that known as the walled -town, grouped around the ancient Abbey of Holy Cross, on that tongue of -land which separates the Isole and the Elle. The escarpment is badly -built up, but withal it is ruggedly picturesque, abounding in old -houses, some of which have stood since the thirteenth century.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 319px;"> -<a href="images/illpg_188_lg.jpg"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/illpg_188_sml.jpg" width="319" height="520" alt="Quimperlé" -title="Quimperlé" /></a> -<p class="caption">Quimperlé</p> -</div> - -<p>The site of the old Abbey of Holy Cross was known in the sixth century -as Anaurot, and became the refuge of one of the Breton Kings of -Cambria, who, abdicating, came here and built a hermitage, which in -time was converted<a name="page_189" id="page_189"></a> into an abbey of Benedictines. This old Abbey -of Holy Cross, as it exists to-day, has a ground-plan which more -nearly follows that of a four-armed cross than any other extant in -Christendom. The same motive doubtless inspired its builders as that -which induced the architects of Charlemagne to erect that famous round -church at Aix-la-Chapelle, which in reality it greatly resembles in -general features; both went back to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at -Jerusalem for their initial idea.</p> - -<p>This church at Quimperlé is one of the three or four in all Brittany -having a crypt, and it is more amply endowed with interior furnishings -and fitments than many a grander edifice. Altogether it is an -ecclesiastical monument of the first importance.</p> - -<p>It has a companion, moreover, of no mean rank, either, in the Church of -St. Michael, which sits high on the hilltop and dominates nearly every -vista of the town.</p> - -<p>After a tempestuous past extending from the monastic foundation of -the sixth century, Anaurot, or Quimperlé as it had become meantime, -surrendered to Duguesclin in 1373. Finally, when a treaty had been -signed with the League as to future neutrality, the city walls were -demolished (in 1680), and Quimperlé settled down<a name="page_190" id="page_190"></a> to a peaceful -existence, which is only broken on the year’s great feast-days, or on -the days of the pardons,—that of the Passion in March, the Pardon of -the Birds on Whit-Monday, the second day of May, or the last Sunday of -July.</p> - -<p>One or the other of these dates should be made to correspond with one’s -itinerary, when one will see the real Lower Breton as he seldom appears -outside a picture. Near Quimperlé is the little coast station of Pouldu, -where figtrees, the hydrangea, and other plants of the Midi bloom -throughout the year.</p> - -<p>Needless to say that it may some day become a really popular and -populous seaside resort, with casinos and alleged Hungarian bands, -but that day may be far distant, and any one looking for an unspoiled -seaside resting-place need not hesitate to go out of his way to give -a glance to this altogether delightful little port of Pouldu. There -is nothing like it, nothing so unaffected and unspoiled, on the whole -Breton coast. On the way to Pouldu one passes the important ruins of the -ancient Abbey of St. Maurice, founded in 1170 by the Duke Conan IV., and -the place where Maurice—a monk of Langonnet since become sainted—was -buried in 1191. In part, this fine ruin dates from the thirteenth -century, to which period<a name="page_191" id="page_191"></a> belong the chapter-room and the chapel, the -principal features still remaining intact.</p> - -<p>Near Quimperlé is St. Fiacre, whom some unknowing person has called the -patron saint of the Paris cabman, an individual who has not much regard -for anything saintly.</p> - -<p>There is a beautiful fifteenth-century chapel at St. Fiacre, though -to-day it is greatly marred by wind, weather, and barbarous customs. -Each year, in June, there is an important fair held at St. Fiacre, at -which the young men from round about offer themselves for employment. -Each of them carries a rod or switch. To engage one who seems a likely -person for your purpose, you, or the young man before your eyes,—after -a parley,—break the rod, and he immediately becomes a member of your -domestic establishment.</p> - -<p>There seems something rather uncertain about all this, but surely the -“matter of form” augurs as well for good and faithful service as the -average written “character” with which one engages a servant in England.</p> - -<p>The hair-cutter appears at St. Fiacre as at all Breton fairs. He is -known as Gerard, and since the age of ten years he has been learned in -the art of hair-cutting. For a long time he was the chief barber of a -regiment of the line,<a name="page_192" id="page_192"></a> and he will tell you (or he may not) that he has -cut many hundreds of thousands of heads in his time, and has garnered -enough of a crop to carpet the whole of the village of St. Fiacre a -metre deep.</p> - -<p>Faouët, not to be confounded with the place of the same name in the -Côtes du Nord, is a small town with a great square, and a still more -important old market-house, which, like that at Auray, strikes the -stranger as being a marvellous construction of wooden beams, and quite -impossible to duplicate to-day, whereas the construction is doubtless -far less complex than the modern market-houses that one sometimes -meets,—mere ugly sheds of brick and iron.</p> - -<p>There is a never ceasing ebb and flow of peasant-folk at the Faouët -market, the busiest of which come the Saturday of Holy Week, the Friday -after Pentecost, the twentieth of June, and the sixth and twenty-sixth -of July.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 516px;"> -<a href="images/illpg_192_lg.jpg"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/illpg_192_sml.jpg" width="516" height="309" alt="Market-house, Faouët" -title="Market-house, Faouët" /></a> -<p class="caption">Market-house, Faouët</p> -</div> - -<p>The scene is too dazzling to describe, and too active to snap-shot, -and one can only feel its real significance by personal participation. -The transactions are not of the stupendous order, and there is much -good-natured chaffing and bartering, and it offers a scene as lively<a name="page_193" id="page_193"></a> -as if the fate of a nation were depending on the outcome.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 252px;"> -<a href="images/illpg_193_lg.jpg"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/illpg_193_sml.jpg" width="252" height="283" alt="Market-day" -title="Market-day" /></a> -<p class="caption">Market-day</p> -</div> - -<p>The Breton peasant is not always the sad and superstitious individual he -has been pictured, though both men and women think nothing of embracing -the opportunity of saying a “Hail Mary” in the Chapel of St. Barbara, or -before the great cross of stone beside the main road, as they go into -town, taking to market a small calf or a brace or two of ducks, led at -the end of a cord by their sides.<a name="page_194" id="page_194"></a></p> - -<p>The Chapel of St. Barbara occupies an extraordinary position three -hundred metres or more above the bed of the Elle, which bathes the lower -walls of the town.</p> - -<p>After tradition, the Sieur de Toulbodon was one day hunting in the -valley of the Elle, when a terrific storm broke overhead, and a rock -falling at his feet barred the way. He made a vow to St. Barbara to -erect a chapel here, because of his merciful preservation from death. -The rock exists to-day, and is shown to the credulous,—at least, a -rock is shown which the credulous believe is the identical one, and -accordingly it is venerated; though why it is not reviled, no one seems -to know.</p> - -<p>Near Faouët is the Abbey of Our Lady of Langonnet, founded in 1136 by -Conan III. of Brittany. Its fortunes have been various; in Revolutionary -times it served as quarters for a stud, but has since been turned over -to religious uses again, and is now occupied by a congregation of the -Fathers of the Holy Ghost.</p> - -<p>The church, the chapter-room, and some other details still remain, -admirably preserved, to illustrate the excellence of the early Gothic -period of the buildings.</p> - -<p>On the way to Rosporden, one passes the principal town of Bannalec, -whose original<a name="page_195" id="page_195"></a> name was Balaneck, meaning the place for planting the -broom. It has not much interest for the stranger, unless perchance -he happens to pass through it on the day of some local feast or -celebration, when he will most likely see the young peasant-folk, men -and women, dancing in the middle of the roadway, as they do in the -operas. Brittany indeed is about the only place where one is likely -to see such a phenomenon, and, if by chance it happen to be a wedding -celebration, the diversion will be doubly interesting.</p> - -<p>On the particular occasion when the builders of this book passed that -way, a wedding dance was actually in progress, and so edifying was the -ceremony that the bride and groom were invited into the tonneau of our -motor-car, and whirled away to Rosporden for a little excursion, which -was unpremeditated and unexpected to all concerned, and was probably -also a unique experience.</p> - -<p>Rosporden, on the shore of the great lake of Rosporden, as it was -described to us, proved a disappointment. Not that so very much was -expected of it, but that so little was found in it. The lake is a -misnomer, though the water-weedy pond near the church serves the -innumerable artists who flock to the region as a<a name="page_196" id="page_196"></a> highly interesting -foreground. The women of Rosporden wear the most immense bonnets and -coifs to be seen in all Brittany, and wimples like those of the Sisters -of Charity.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 241px;"> -<a href="images/illpg_196_lg.jpg"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/illpg_196_sml.jpg" width="241" height="352" alt="Rosporden" -title="Rosporden" /></a> -<p class="caption">Rosporden</p> -</div> - -<p>The church dates from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries, and is in -every way an admirably preserved monument.<a name="page_197" id="page_197"></a></p> - -<p>To Concarneau and the smell of the sea is a dozen or fourteen kilometres -over a gently rising and falling road, with a tendency always to descend -until finally one coasts down the long main street of the celebrated -fishing port and artists’ sketching-ground (it would be hard to tell -in which aspect it is the more famous), until one comes to that famous -Great Travellers’ Hotel, where one eats of oysters, lobster, and fresh -sardines and many other kinds of sea food to such an extent that one -feels decidedly fishy, or at least thirsty.</p> - -<p>This should make little difference, as the coffee-room of that most -excellent hostelry is likewise excellent, and has a charming outlook -upon the wharfs and fishing-boats, thus affording as delightful a method -of accustoming oneself to strange sights as could be imagined.</p> - -<p>The fishing-boats of Concarneau are one and all great brown-winged gulls -that flit slowly over the great bay, going in and out with the rise -and fall of the tide all through the round of the clock, depositing -their cargoes on the wharfs, shifting crews, and starting off again in -a continuous performance of coming and going which never ceases until -their timbers, from some untoward cause, fall apart.</p> - -<p>As the boats lie at the landing, sails come<a name="page_198" id="page_198"></a> down and the delicate brown -and blue nets go up for drying, for not all of the boats have so great -a supply that they can shift to another set. The most curious effect is -given by these blue and brown nets swinging masthead high, as if they -were spider-web sails.</p> - -<p>The picturesqueness of the Concarneau fishing-boats is undeniable. -Nothing like them exists elsewhere, and when the sardine boats set out -for the west, as the sun goes down, there are as wonderful combinations -of golden yellow-browns, reds, and purples as the most imaginative -painter could possibly conjure on his canvas.</p> - -<p>On shore, the nets, spread for drying on the wharfs and on the racks -beside the little fisherman’s chapel and the great stone crucifix -which faces seawards, are of the deepest blues and purple-browns in a -bewitching mixture.</p> - -<p>Not a white-sailed boat is to be seen, unless it is an occasional yacht -drifting in because its owner has tired of making the fashionable -harbours where his guests can spend the night on shore dancing to the -questionable music of a red or blue coated band.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 312px;"> -<a href="images/illpg_198_lg.jpg"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/illpg_198_sml.jpg" width="312" height="511" alt="Stone Crucifix, Concarneau" -title="Stone Crucifix, Concarneau" /></a> -<p class="caption">Stone Crucifix, Concarneau</p> -</div> - -<p>It is a question as to whether Concarneau, were it not the centre of the -sardine fishery, might not be the first seaside resort of the<a name="page_199" id="page_199"></a> world. -As it is, there are not a few who evidently think it far preferable to -those pseudo-society watering-places, whose chief attractions are big -casinos and little horses.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 293px;"> -<a href="images/illpg_199_lg.jpg"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/illpg_199_sml.jpg" width="293" height="176" alt="Concarneau" -title="Concarneau" /></a> -<p class="caption">Concarneau</p> -</div> - -<p>The hotels of the place are in no sense resort hotels, though they -are fitted with a marvellous convenience and comfort, and feed one -most bountifully and excellently on sea food, wherein fresh sardines -and lobsters predominate,—those two great delicacies of the Paris -restaurant which here are the common food of the people, for Concarneau -is one of the few fishing centres of the world which keeps some of its -products for the supply of its own table.</p> - -<p>To-day the town is composed of two quarters, the new town, otherwise the -faubourg Ste. Croix, modern, prosperous, and animated, and<a name="page_200" id="page_200"></a> the walled -town, the island fort of the middle ages.</p> - -<p>In 1373, Concarneau was occupied by an English garrison, who fled before -Duguesclin. In 1488, the Viscount of Rohan reduced it by order of -Charles VIII., but the Marshal de Rieux retook it from the French the -following year, and repaired and strengthened the old fortifications.</p> - -<p>The religious wars played their part here most vividly, until finally it -fell to the hands of Henry IV.</p> - -<p>The walled town to-day is a remarkable example of an isolated fort -or citadel, the islet upon which it is situated being of a confined -area and wholly surrounded by a thick granite rampart, which, however -invulnerable it may have been in a former day, would stand no chance -against modern guns.</p> - -<p>In part, these fortifications date from the fourteenth century, and -at high water are entirely surrounded by the sea. The great bastion -attributed to the former Duchess Anne—after she had become a queen of -France—is a stupendous work of its time. For the most part, the other -parts of the walls have been restored and built up anew in modern times.</p> - -<p>Concarneau is the Ploudenec of Blanche<a name="page_201" id="page_201"></a> Willis Howard’s charming Breton -tale of “Guenn,” and Nevin, where the great pardon dance was held, may -have been Pont Aven or Rosporden.</p> - -<p>There is a wealth of charming colour in this sad tale, and not a little -truth with regard to some of the characters, to which Americans, before -now, have attempted to attach the names of real persons in the world of -art and literature.</p> - -<p>Opposite Concarneau is Beg-Meil, which in more respects than one is an -anomaly. It has some pretence at being a watering-place, but there is -no town there, save such as is built up around a few country-houses and -hotels, catering only to summer folk; besides this, a few scattered -and isolated farms form the sum total of the habitations of this -little jutting point of land running out into the billowy Atlantic. -For four-fifths of the year, the population of this salt meadow is -composed only of sea-birds, which, like their fellows elsewhere, form an -interesting colony of themselves.</p> - -<p>The sea-birds of Brittany, like those of other rock-bound shores, are -ever interesting to the traveller. Like the gulls of London Bridge, -those near the great bay of Concarneau are wonderfully tame and -singularly ravenous, and<a name="page_202" id="page_202"></a> apparently eat all day. That is, when they -are not sleeping or billing and cooing, as is the sea-birds’ way, for -in this they would seem to rival the turtle-dove. When they are not -courting or sleeping, they go a-fishing, and the seaweed-strewn rocks -about Concarneau are their happy hunting-grounds. They will eat, say the -fisherfolk of the sardine fleet, five pounds or more of fish in a day, -which is considerably more than the weight of an individual bird.</p> - -<p>From Concarneau one must perforce follow back along the coast-line to -Pont Aven, for a trip to Brittany without having known the delights of -this colony of artist-folk, in which Americans predominate, would be -like the tragedy without Hamlet, or the circus without the elephant or -the pink lemonade.</p> - -<p>“<i>Pont Aven, the Barbison of Bretagne! chosen home of the painters of -all nations and all schools, with Americans predominating.</i>” This is -a faithful translation of the remark of an appreciative travelling -salesman, one “who loved art,” if the description be credible. You -will hear tales at Pont Aven of the time when artists found their -accommodation at a roadside inn outside the town—now apparently -vanished—for fifty-five francs per<a name="page_203" id="page_203"></a> month, and paid a sou for a litre -of milk, and four sous for a litre of cider.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 321px;"> -<a href="images/illpg_202_lg.jpg"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/illpg_202_sml.jpg" width="321" height="518" alt="Pont Aven" -title="Pont Aven" /></a> -<p class="caption">Pont Aven</p> -</div> - -<p>These days have gone, and at Pont Aven, as elsewhere throughout the -world, the prices of all things are apparently rising. Really, Pont Aven -and its environs are delightful; its little river is busy and chattering -with many mill-wheels, and the Lovers’ Wood—as many know—is well named.</p> - -<p>Because of its many riverside mill-wheels, Pont Aven has been named -Millers’ Town by the natives, and also “The famous town with fourteen -mills and fifteen houses.”</p> - -<p>Unquestionably, the fame of Pont Aven has been made, or, at least, -furthered, by Mlle. Julia, the most capable landlady of the Travellers’ -Hotel. The modest little country-house which formed the original hotel -has now a more magnificent neighbour, built up with a steel frame,—like -a Chicago skyscraper,—and resplendent with modern furniture, with -chairs and sofas of the saddle-bag variety, electric lights, electric -bells which actually do ring, ice-water, afternoon tea, Scotch whiskey, -and all the super-refinements of a twentieth-century civilization.</p> - -<p>It is all very comfortable,—too comfortable the artists will tell -you,—but the eagle eye<a name="page_204" id="page_204"></a> and strong will of Mlle. Julia still hover over -all, and nothing of deterioration is to be noted in the fare, which is -excellent, and served in the charmingly quaint and beautifully decorated -dining-hall of the little old inn, the precursor of the more splendid -addition.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 294px;"> -<a href="images/illpg_204_lg.jpg"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/illpg_204_sml.jpg" width="294" height="225" alt="Map, ENVIRONS OF PONT AVEN" -title="Map, ENVIRONS OF PONT AVEN" /></a> -</div> - -<p>All this is as it should be, of course, but the price has of late gone -up, though it is still thought exceedingly modest by guests who have -spent most of their time in big city or seaside hotels.</p> - -<p>Painters are perhaps fewer here to-day than some years ago, and there -are more of the questionable pleasures of society, such as bridge and -ping-pong, which is a pity.<a name="page_205" id="page_205"></a></p> - -<p>Another appendage to the Hotel Julia is found at the St. Nicolas Beach -on the coast. St. Nicolas is hardly more than a bathing-place, but it -is delightfully empty, and altogether Pont Aven, with its environs, is -a charming centre from which to make a week’s, a month’s, or a summer’s -excursion.</p> - -<p>Of the young girls of Pont Aven, Anatole France has uttered many -truthful phrases. Very gracious they are indeed with their great white -quilled collars, their windmill coifs, and their black skirts plaited -like an accordion.</p> - -<p>Here at Pont Aven—as elsewhere—fashion reigns, and the costume as it -is known to-day is quite different from that of fifty years ago, which -was not so picturesque, one would say, judging from old prints.</p> - -<p>The metropolis of these parts and the ecclesiastical capital, for it is -a cathedral city, is Quimper, twenty odd kilometres west of Concarneau.</p> - -<p>Quimper is a real city, though it owns to a trifle less than twenty -thousand inhabitants, and was the ancient capital of the county of -Cornouaille. From all points the marvellously beautiful spires of its -Cathedral of St. Corentin dominate the place. It is one of the most -characteristically Breton towns in the manners<a name="page_206" id="page_206"></a> and customs of the -people, the general aspect of its wharfs and streets, its shops and its -markets.</p> - -<p>The first establishment of a settlement here was in Roman times, when, -in the eleventh century, it was known as the Civitas Aquilonia. After -the expulsion of the Romans from the land, it became the capital and -the home of the kings or hereditary Counts of Cornouaille, one of whom, -Grollon, has left a legend of great vitality, telling of his emigration -here from Britain across the seas, and the founding of the first -bishopric.</p> - -<p>The cathedral, dedicated to St. Corentin, was built between 1239 and -1515, and shows the marks of the best workmanship of its time. Its fine -spires rival those of St. Pol de Léon and Tréguier in the north. The -ground-plan of this fine church is not truly orientated, a detail which -is supposed to indicate the inclining of the head of Christ on the -cross. It is not unique, but the arrangement is so rarely found as to -warrant remark.</p> - -<p>The town hall encloses a library of some thirty-four thousand volumes, -among them a copy of the first dictionary in the Breton tongue, -published at Tréguier in 1499.</p> - -<p>The museum contains some interesting archæological<a name="page_207" id="page_207"></a> treasures and some -good modern paintings, including examples of the work of Yan d’Argent, -Joubert Lansyer, Dagnan, and Abram Duvau, mostly depicting Breton -subjects. It also has an admirable collection of old Breton costumes, -etc.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 264px;"> -<a href="images/illpg_207_lg.jpg"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/illpg_207_sml.jpg" width="264" height="345" alt="From the Museum at Quimper" -title="From the Museum at Quimper" /></a> -<p class="caption">From the Museum at Quimper</p> -</div> - -<p>The Rue Kéréon is the chief street of the<a name="page_208" id="page_208"></a> town, and, like the -Kalverstraat of Amsterdam, is one of those narrow thoroughfares so -overflowing with life that to observe and study the passing throng is to -master the manners and customs of the people.</p> - -<p>There are many quaint old houses scattered here and there, and like -those old lean-to and tumble-down structures of Rouen and Lisieux, they -continually reappear on the canvases shown in Paris each year at the two -great exhibitions.</p> - -<p>The Allées Locmaria form a series of magnificently shaded promenades; -this is frequently a feature of French towns above a population of ten -thousand, and a feature which might be imitated in America and England -with considerable accruing advantage.</p> - -<p>South from Quimper lie Pont l’Abbé and Penmarc’h, as characteristically -Breton as anything to be seen in the whole province; the former has -something over six thousand inhabitants, and the latter over four, and -each has its own distinct characteristics.</p> - -<p>Pont l’Abbé is a town of embroiderers. Everywhere one finds shops whose -sole business it is to sell those fine braid embroideries—yellow on a -black ground—which have made this part of Brittany famous.<a name="page_209" id="page_209"></a></p> - -<p>The costumes of Pont l’Abbé are famous throughout all Brittany. The -coif recalls those seen in the pictures of the ancient Gauls. It is -virtually a little black velvet hood, and the coif itself is a “<i>pignon -de couleur</i>,” as the hostess of the hotel described it, and then, -man-fashion, the author felt he was wallowing in a strange subject. -Locally this confection, taken entire, it is inferred, is known as a -<i>bigouden</i>,—a picturesque but not precisely instructive word.</p> - -<p>The men wear a hat with three great buckles, and some of them—though -their numbers are few—may yet be seen in the <i>culotte bouffante</i>, that -peculiarly Breton species of breeches known in their own tongue as -“<i>bragou-braz</i>.”</p> - -<p>With such an introduction, one might expect almost any fantastic costume -to step out from a doorway, but, to realize the quaintness of it all to -the full, one should see the inhabitants at the Fêtes de la Tréminou, -held on the twenty-fifth of March, Whit-Monday, the third Sunday in -July, and the fourth Sunday in September.</p> - -<p>The dances of Pont l’Abbé are famous and are indescribable by any one -but a dancing-master. Inasmuch as they invariably take place in the open -air, they may be accepted as the free and spontaneous expression of an<a name="page_210" id="page_210"></a> -emotion, which stuffy ballroom cotillons most decidedly are not.</p> - -<p>The church of Pont l’Abbé dates from a Carmelite foundation of the -fourteenth century, and is a fine work of its era, though surmounted -by a curious and modern bell-tower in wood. Within the church are the -tombs of many of the ancient barons of Pont l’Abbé. The magnificent rose -window is of modern glass, but so admirable that one stands before it -with a certain respectful awe, as before that old thirteenth-century -glass in Chartres cathedral. The ancient cloisters are still preserved -and surround a fine garden.</p> - -<p>Pont l’Abbé is only five kilometres from the coast, and Loctudy, also -the possessor of a fine mediæval church, and Penmarc’h form a trio of -Breton coast towns quite as worthy of one’s attention as many better -known resorts.</p> - -<p>Penmarc’h—which for some inexplicable reason is pronounced <i>Penmar</i>—is -situated in the midst of a great bare peninsula terminating in the -Pointe de Penmarc’h. Instead of a high cliff sheared off at the water’s -edge, as one so frequently sees on the north coast, the point sinks -gently into the blue waters of the Atlantic until it is swallowed up, -with never so much as a line of breakers to indicate its<a name="page_211" id="page_211"></a> presence from -seaward. Penmarc’h in Breton signifies the “head of a horse,” and Benzec -Capcaval, a village not far distant, means the same. An ingenious person -will have no difficulty in following the etymology of the latter word, -but the former is quite incomprehensible except to a Welshman.</p> - -<p>Penmarc’h was for four centuries a city which kept pace with Nantes. Its -early riches came from the traffic in “lenten meat,” which is simply -codfish.</p> - -<p>The Church of St. Nonna is a late Gothic edifice, with a great square -tower which will be remarked by all who come near it. Its interior -has two baptismal fonts, strangely decorated with stone carvings of -fantastic shapes, depicting the history of Penmarc’h.</p> - -<p>Three kilometres away is the town of St. Guénolé, a tiny fishing port -with fine panoramic view of the Bay of Audierne. The chapel of St. -Guénolé occupies the base of a great tower, now ruinous, but looking as -though in a former day it must have belonged to some pretentious church.</p> - -<p>“The Handle of the Torch” is one of the local sights. It is formed of a -series of great rocks at some little distance from the mainland. That -bearing the name of “The Torch<a name="page_212" id="page_212"></a>” is separated from the mainland by the -Monk’s Leap, which, according to legend, was the landing-place of St. -Viaud, when he migrated from Hibernia to Brittany ages ago.</p> - -<p>From Quimper to the Point of Raz is one long up and down hill pull of -fifty kilometres, until one finally reaches Point or Cape Sizun, known -to Ptolemy as the promontory of Gabœum. It is the extreme westerly -point of the peninsula of Cornouaille, and, reckoning from the meridian -of Paris,—for the French do not use the meridian of Greenwich,—is just -on the line of the seventh degree of west longitude. The Léon country -northward of Brest actually extends a trifle farther westward, at Point -St. Mathieu, but most maps do not show it.</p> - -<p>North of the Point of Raz is the great Bay of Douarnenez, with its -sardine fisheries rivalling those of Concarneau, and southward lies the -shallow bay of the Audierne, whose shores, in their own way, are quite -as characteristically wild as those of any part of Northwestern France.</p> - -<p>At the extreme end of the Point of Raz are two unpretentious hotels, -which will please only those of simple tastes and lovers of the<a name="page_213" id="page_213"></a> -solitary; both are connected with more ambitious establishments at -Audierne.</p> - -<p>The Bay of the Dead, the Hell of Plogaff, and the rocky point itself, -form the tourist attractions, but it will be enough for most lovers of -solitude to bask in the sunlight amid the gentle breezes from the Gulf -Stream, and to leave rock-climbing to those agile spirits who affect -that sort of exercise.</p> - -<p>Near Audierne is the Church of St. Tuglan, a fine fifteenth and -sixteenth century edifice, with many a legend clinging to the name of -its patron saint. It is all very vague, but there is hidden superstition -in abundance, if one only had the patience to work it out. All that can -be learned is, that the holy man was the Abbé of Primelin, near by, and -that his feast is celebrated throughout all the Point of Raz. His statue -represents him with a key in the hand, and there is a great iron key -preserved in the church said to have once belonged to him. On the day -of the pardon great quantities of little loaves are stamped with this -key and, according to a popular belief, they will cure a mad dog of his -madness, if he be given a morsel to eat, and possess many other virtues -of a similar nature. In the sacristy of the church are preserved the -teeth of St. Tuglan. The inhabitants<a name="page_214" id="page_214"></a> of Primelin are known as <i>paotret -ar alc’houez</i>, or servants of the key.</p> - -<p>Audierne is a busy little Breton port of perhaps four thousand -inhabitants, and opposite is the fishing village of Poulgoazec, with -sardine factories and all the equipment of the trade. Up to the -sixteenth century, Audierne was even more flourishing than it is to-day, -for the codfish, which were its riches, had not left for other shores.</p> - -<p>The vast Bay of Audierne has a wild and deeply embayed coast-line, -with nothing but a population of sea-birds to add to the gaiety of the -landscape.</p> - -<p>Northward, toward Douarnenez, is Pont Croix, built in the form of an -amphitheatre on the bank of the river Goayen.</p> - -<p>Our Lady of Roscudon is an ancient collegiate church now turned into a -little seminary. The peasant folk round about call it only the Virgin’s -church. It is in many respects a remarkable fifteenth-century work.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 521px;"> -<a href="images/illpg_214_lg.jpg"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/illpg_214_sml.jpg" width="521" height="306" alt="Cape de la Chèvre" -title="Cape de la Chèvre" /></a> -<p class="caption">Cape de la Chèvre</p> -</div> - -<p>From the Point of Raz in the south to Cape de la Chèvre in the north -extends the great gulf known as the Bay of Douarnenez. Along its shores -are innumerable little fishing villages, which seem almost of another -world. Certainly they have not much in common with other sections<a name="page_215" id="page_215"></a> of -Brittany, to say nothing of the rest of Europe.</p> - -<p>Douarnenez disputes with Concarneau the privilege of being considered -the centre of the sardine industry, and, like it, has all the -picturesque attributes of brown-sailed boats and of blue and brown nets -hung masthead high for drying, as the craft lie at the quayside, after -having unloaded their catch.</p> - -<p>The delicate blues and purple-browns of these nets are irresistible -to the artist, but few have caught the real tone; indeed, more than -one painter of repute has given it up as a bad job, saying that it was -impossible to transfer it to canvas.</p> - -<p>The beauty of the Bay of Douarnenez has a fascination for artists and -holds one spellbound under certain aspects of the westering sun, when -lights and shadows intermingle in truly heavenly fashion.</p> - -<p>During the civil wars of the sixteenth centuries, Douarnenez was -taken by Jacques de Guengat, but was retaken by Fontenelle in 1595 -and its houses for the most part demolished, and used to build up the -fortifications of the Ile Tristan.</p> - -<p>Douarnenez signifies, literally, the land of the isle. The Ile Tristan -once contained a priory<a name="page_216" id="page_216"></a> dedicated to St. Tutarn, but now the chief -sights are the lighthouse and a sardine factory. An ancient tradition -recounts that the Ile Tristan received its name from the valiant Tristan -of Léonais, one of the knights of the Round Table.</p> - -<p>Except for the view from the gallery of the great lighthouse, the -trip to the island is hardly worth the making. The view from this -vantage-point is, however, remarkable; indeed, it is unique, the writer -is inclined to think, in all the world. Suffice to say of it that it is -unworldly, and yet gay with the workaday coming and going of the sardine -fleets, as such a paradoxical description will permit one to imagine. -All is peaceful, and yet there is a steady inflow of industry that is in -no wise detrimental to its unspoiled tranquillity. Perhaps if an artist -lived by the shores of the deep blue and purple waters of this bay for a -matter of two score of years, he might do it justice; until then—never.</p> - -<p>Concarneau as a port is more interesting than Douarnenez, but the bay of -Concarneau, delightful as it is, has not a tithe of the variations that -are played upon the gently flowing waters of the bay of Douarnenez by -the setting sun.<a name="page_217" id="page_217"></a></p> - -<p>The peninsula of Crozon shelters the bay of Douarnenez on the north. At -one pronged extremity is Roscanvel, jutting out into the roads of Brest, -and at the other is Cape de la Chèvre. Between the two is a wonderful -country of rock-strewn coast-line and poppy-covered inland fields.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 265px;"> -<a href="images/illpg_217_lg.jpg"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/illpg_217_sml.jpg" width="265" height="331" alt="Woman of Chateaulin" -title="Woman of Chateaulin" /></a> -<p class="caption">Woman of Chateaulin</p> -</div> - -<p>Chateaulin, situated on the river Aulne, a<a name="page_218" id="page_218"></a> little beyond the head of -the peninsula, is the metropolis of these parts. It owes its name to -an ancient hermitage of St. Idunet. Its present name grew from Nin or -Castel Nin, then Castelin, and finally Chateaulin. The hermitage, in -time, was succeeded by the priory of Locquidunet, and that in its turn -became the parish church of the present town.</p> - -<p>Hoël, Count of Cornouaille, who became Duke of Brittany, incorporated -the town with the ducal domain, from which time on its history was one -of partisan strife.</p> - -<p>The Revolution elevated it to the rank of a market-town, and changed -its name to “Cité sur Aulne” in an attempt to suppress the supposedly -aristocratic prefix of Château. Ultimately, it reverted to its former -name.</p> - -<p>Near by are the Black Mountains, of which Mené Hom is the chief -eminence, its summit rising to a height of 330 metres, with other peaks -at the height of 299, 272, and 248 metres. The heights are not so very -considerable, but their proximity to the sea exaggerates them, and -travellers by road—bicycle riders and travellers in motor-cars—will -think the process of crossing the Black Mountains, on the way from North -to South Finistère, as formidable as the task of Hannibal.<a name="page_219" id="page_219"></a></p> - -<p>Crozon is a much larger place than Chateaulin, isolated though it is -from all direct communication with other parts. It is situated some -250 feet above the sea, on what the French call a wild table-land, and -dominates the Bay of Douarnenez from the north. All around Crozon are -innumerable grottoes and rock-cut caves and excavations, which always -have a certain fascination for some folk, but will hardly interest the -devotee to the beauties of landscape.</p> - -<p>Camaret, at the very tip of the peninsula, is another safe port for -artists. Here are fishing-boats and all the accessories, like those -seen at Douarnenez and Concarneau, and with a landscape background and -a foreground of blue water that many whose names are great in the world -of art have painted and many more will paint. Cottets’s “Fishing-boats -at Camaret,” in the Luxembourg Gallery, is perhaps the best known of -these pictures, but the composition is always the same. The background -never changes,—the tiny chapel with its dwindling spire, the beacon, -and the tall, gaunt stone house on the little mole running seaward and -protecting the port, group themselves willingly enough into the most -charming view in all the town.<a name="page_220" id="page_220"></a></p> - -<p>The fishing-boats of the foreground change their positions, but -kaleidoscopically only, and one may return year after year and see -practically the same groupings, with only trifling differences.</p> - -<p>One makes his way from Camaret to the great military port and trading -town of Brest—if one need to go there at all, which is doubtful—either -by boat across the Goulet and the roads of Brest, some sixteen -kilometres by a puffy little excursion-boat, which, on a Sunday or a -feast-day, is anything but comfortable, or by road by way of Faou, which -is a great fruit and vegetable market for Brest, and not much more.</p> - -<p>There is a considerable display of costume here on market-days,—which -appear to be every day,—and the town is picturesque enough of itself, -though, strange to say, it smacks of suburbia,—a place where one gets -his news second-hand from some neighbouring city.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 509px;"> -<a href="images/illpg_220_lg.jpg"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/illpg_220_sml.jpg" width="509" height="310" alt="Camaret" -title="Camaret" /></a> -<p class="caption">Camaret</p> -</div> - -<p><a name="page_221" id="page_221"></a></p> - -<h3><a name="CHAPTER_VII-2" id="CHAPTER_VII-2"></a>CHAPTER VII.<br /><br /> -<small>FINISTÈRE—NORTH</small></h3> - -<p>T<small>HE</small> northernmost part of the peninsula of Finistère has not the -abounding or varied interests of the south. Its monuments of other days -are not so many or so remarkable, and the sterner conditions of life -seem to have had a sobering effect upon manners and customs.</p> - -<p>Brest and its wonderfully ample harbour has by no means the attractions -of Vannes or of Nantes for the bird of passage, though its commercial -and strategic value is great, and its history vivid and eventful. In -spite of all this, there is little that is interesting to-day in its -straight streets and rectangular blocks.</p> - -<p>This fortified and exceedingly animated town owns to eighty odd thousand -inhabitants, and is so pervaded by military and naval organization that -there is very little local colour, very little atmosphere of the past -hanging about it to-day. To find this, one has to go back to Faou, to -Plougastel or Landerneau or Landivisiau,<a name="page_222" id="page_222"></a> all within a radius of twenty -kilometres or so.</p> - -<p>The great bay of Brest is a swarming waterway, upon which the little -excursion steamers, tugboats, great cruisers and battle-ships, -torpedo-boats and torpedo-boat destroyers, and yet other craft built to -catch torpedo-boat destroyers, are all apparently entangled inexplicably -each in the wakes of all the others.</p> - -<p>The entrance to this harbour is known as the Goulet, and is lighted -by five lighthouses, which at night send out their twinkling rays of -red, green, and white in most kaleidoscopic fashion,—all Greek to a -landsman, but as clear as day to the Breton pilots who bring the great -ships in and out of this narrow waterway. In the ninth century, Brest -was already in existence, in spite of its modern aspect to-day, and -belonged to the Counts of Léon. Its future was as varied as the history -of Brittany.</p> - -<p>It opened its ports to the army of Charles VIII. in 1489, in spite of -the efforts of Duchess Anne to prevent such a proceeding. How far she -succumbed will be recalled when one realizes that two years later her -marriage with this prince was the first step which united the province -of Brittany for ever with France. Brest from this time took on a new -importance,<a name="page_223" id="page_223"></a> until Cardinal Richelieu came to designate it as one of the -principal arsenals of France, and then, in 1631, came the creation of -the great dockyards.</p> - -<p>Of architectural monuments, Brest still has the Church of St. Louis -(1688-1778) and the twelfth and thirteenth century castle. As an -ecclesiastical monument, the church is quite unworthy of attention, -though it has some interesting tombs and monuments.</p> - -<p>The castle is an admirable example of mediæval fortification, with some -remarkable accessory details in its construction. The isolated donjon -tower was in other days a sort of independent citadel, and formed a -last refuge for the besieged occupants of the castle, should its outer -walls give way to the invaders. The Tower of Azenor and the Tower of -Anne of Brittany, so named for the respective princesses, are admirably -preserved parts.</p> - -<p>The local museum and library have fine collections. There are fifty-six -thousand volumes in the library, and the collection of paintings -contains many Breton subjects by modern masters.</p> - -<p>The dockyard—navy-yard in the language of the United States, <i>port -militaire</i> in French—is closed to the general public, but a marvellous<a name="page_224" id="page_224"></a> -detailed bird’s-eye view of the city, the docks, and the roads is -obtained from the platform of the Pont Tournant.</p> - -<p>Nineteen kilometres from Brest is Landerneau, and the junction of the -railway lines to Kerlouan and Folgoët in the north, and to Quimper -and Concarneau in the south. Landerneau from the twelfth to sixteenth -centuries had a distinct feudal administration.</p> - -<p>The folk of Landerneau have opinions of their own, as witness the -remark, made at Versailles under the regency by a Breton noble hailing -from this place: “The Landerneau moon is larger than that at Versailles.”</p> - -<p>Again there is a Breton proverb which runs thus: “There will always be -something to talk about in Landerneau.” Mostly this is used when a widow -marries again, which may be taken to mean much or little, as one chooses.</p> - -<p>Landerneau has a fine little tidal harbour, and its streets and wharfs -are busy with the hum of coastwise traffic and river life, and, with its -Church of St. Thomas of Canterbury and its “best and cleanest inn in the -bishopric” (Hôtel de l’Univers), as a traveller of a century or more ago -once wrote, it has no lack of interest for travellers.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 511px;"> -<a href="images/illpg_224_lg.jpg"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/illpg_224_sml.jpg" width="511" height="316" alt="Landerneau" -title="Landerneau" /></a> -<p class="caption">Landerneau</p> -</div> - -<p>One is not likely to be met with a statement<a name="page_225" id="page_225"></a> by his host, as was the -century-old traveller, that a respectable man begs to know if he may eat -at the same table, and accordingly one will not have to reply, “With all -my heart,” for most likely there will be twenty at the common table, and -all will sit down to a meal of all the good things of life, “sea food” -and golden cider and apple sweetmeats predominating.</p> - -<p>It is all excellent, however, and the abundance of deliciously cooked -fish will make one think it were no hardship to make a lenten sojourn -here. A great church and a good hotel are indeed all-sufficient -attractions for a market-town of perhaps eight thousand souls.</p> - -<p>The town borders upon a picturesque little river, the Elorn, which -finally flows into the harbour of Brest. From the fifth century until -the sixteenth, it was far and away a more important place than its now -more opulent neighbour at the river’s mouth. Then it was the chief town -of Léon, the domain of the De Rohans, one of the ancient Breton baronies.</p> - -<p>At the entrance of one of the principal streets—Rue Plouedern—are -two curious ancient pieces of sculpture,—a lion and a man armed with -a sword, bearing the inscription “Tire Tve.” They came from an old -house which existed here in the sixteen hundreds, and are<a name="page_226" id="page_226"></a> fitting -examples of that curious mediæval symbolism which so often crops out in -domestic and religious architecture. Although the chief of Landerneau’s -ecclesiastical monuments is the sixteenth-century edifice dedicated to -St. Thomas of Canterbury, the Church of St. Houardon is a contemporary -work of some pretension; its base Renaissance portico was added at a -later time. The arms and emblems of the De Rohans are conspicuous in -both edifices.</p> - -<p>July fifteenth is the great fête-day hereabout, when the horse-races, -boat-races, and illuminations attract the peasantry from the inland -country and the workmen from the dockyards at Brest.</p> - -<p>Five kilometres away is the Chapel of St. Eloi of the sixteenth century. -This sainted personage is represented throughout Finistère with the -attributes of a bishop and of a horseshoer. Horses are placed under his -protection, and the Pardon of St. Eloi is celebrated in various parts -with much merrymaking, and always with much firing of guns. A motor-car -is not beloved here, and if one incidentally or accidentally come upon -a festival of St. Eloi, he had best forthwith make tracks in retreat. -The actual religious ceremony consists of a mounted cavalier riding -up to the chapel door<a name="page_227" id="page_227"></a> and making a sort of salute or obeisance three -times from the saddle without putting foot to the ground, after which -he deposits on the altar a packet of horse-hair, or even the tail of a -horse.</p> - -<p>In the Forest of Landerneau, six kilometres southwest, is the Château of -“La Joyeuse Garde,” celebrated in the romance of the chivalry of King -Arthur’s time, wherein King Arthur, Lancelot of the Lake, and Tristan of -Lyonnesse played so great a part.</p> - -<p>Landivisiau, on the main railway line from Paris to Brest, has a -remarkable church under the protection of St. Turiaff,—which in Breton -is Tivisian,—who was Archbishop of Dol in the eighth century.</p> - -<p>This fine church is a sixteenth-century work, and exhibits all the notes -of the early period of the Renaissance, but, in spite of this, the -richness of its portal, its bell-tower, its fine spire, and its nave -and choir rebuilt in the best of late Gothic, make it a building to be -remarked among the churches of Brittany, which, as a rule, have not the -ornateness and luxuriance of ornament of those of Normandy and other -parts of France.</p> - -<p>The cemetery of Landivisiau has a remarkable ossuary, supported by most -fantastic<a name="page_228" id="page_228"></a> shapes, among them a skeleton armed with two arrows, a woman -in an unmistakably Spanish costume, and a most diabolical Satan.</p> - -<p>The fair-day at Landivisiau is the great celebration of these parts. It -is not so ambitious as many of those held elsewhere, but it will give -the visitor the opportunity of making an intimate acquaintance with the -Bas Bretons in a manner not possible in the larger towns.</p> - -<p>The dress of the people is peculiar, with the great baggy trousers of -the men, the coifs of the women, and the general display and love of the -finery of bright colours which seem inherent with a people living upon -the seacoast.</p> - -<p>In general, their features are heavy and their expression more or less -sullen, although this does not often indicate bad temper. Unquestionably -their carriage indicates hard labour, and the furrows and ridges of -their countenances come only from continuous contact with the open air. -Still, their bodies are stout and broad, and men and women alike have -none of the softness and languor of the southern provinces, albeit the -Armorican climate is mild throughout the year.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 323px;"> -<a href="images/illpg_228_lg.jpg"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/illpg_228_sml.jpg" width="323" height="515" alt="Calvary, Plougastel" -title="Calvary, Plougastel" /></a> -<p class="caption">Calvary, Plougastel</p> -</div> - -<p>Opposite Brest, just across the estuary of the Elorn, is Plougastel, -famous for its melons<a name="page_229" id="page_229"></a> and its green peas, and, above all, for its -picturesque calvary.</p> - -<p>The whole peninsula of Plougastel-Daoulas is a vast market-garden for -Brest, and, for that matter, for the hotels at Paris. The verdure and -vegetable growth is in striking contrast to the barren fringe of rocky -coast-line, and therein lies one of the charms of the whole aspect of -nature as it is seen here.</p> - -<p>Nothing in Brittany is more picturesque than the little villages of -Kerérault, Roc’hquérezen, Roc’huivlen, and Roc’hquillion. This is a -commonplace perhaps to those who know the region well, but it will not -be to strangers, and so it is reiterated here.</p> - -<p>The Chapel St. John of Plougastel is perhaps two kilometres away. It is -here, on the twenty-fourth of June of each year, that its pardon brings -so great a throng of visitors that they really have to bring their -eatables with them or starve, thus making a fast-day of a feast.</p> - -<p>In the cemetery is that great calvary which has so often been pictured, -the most considerable work of its kind in existence.</p> - -<p>It was erected 1602-04, in memory of a plague which fell upon the land -in 1598.</p> - -<p>In recent times it has been restored. On the front is an altar -ornamented with statues of<a name="page_230" id="page_230"></a> St. Sebastien, St. Pierre, and St. Roch. The -frieze shows a multitude of bas-reliefs, illustrating the life of Jesus, -and the risers of the steps are a series of quaintly carved little -people, over two hundred in number. On the plinth is a risen Christ and -a tablet bearing the date of erection of the work. It is a marvellous -expression of religious devotion, and far surpasses other wayside -shrines in Brittany, and indeed in all the world.</p> - -<p>The inhabitants of Plougastel have preserved their ancient costumes with -little or no modern interpolation. Particularly is this to be noted -among the young girls, on a Sunday, as they come from the mass, and also -on the fifteenth of August, when there is a great religious procession. -The “Pardon of Plougastel” is known also as the “Birds’ Pardon,” for a -great bird fair is opened St. John’s Day.</p> - -<p>On the same side of the Goulet of Brest, that narrow inlet which is the -entrance from the sea to the bay, is Le Conquet. It sits at the very tip -of Finistère, just above the Pte. St. Mathieu, and its great lighthouse, -which, with a thirty-second eclipse, sends its rays some twenty miles -out to sea.</p> - -<p>Le Conquet has but fifteen hundred inhabitants, and its isolated -population apparently<a name="page_231" id="page_231"></a> has not many friends, else the place would -be filled to overflowing in the summer months, which it is not. Its -two hotels, St. Barbara and Hôtel de Bretagne, are all that could be -expected, and more, hence the paucity of visitors to this charming bit -of “land’s end” is the more remarkable.</p> - -<p>Anciently Le Conquet was a strong fortified place, and it underwent a -great number of sieges, and was burned by the English in 1558. Eight -houses alone of the present habitations of the town survived the flames.</p> - -<p>The port is frequented only by the fishing-smacks, which land vast -quantities of lobsters and shrimps.</p> - -<p>There is also an ancient pottery here, the most ancient in all -Finistère. Its pots and pans are found in all the homesteads hereabouts, -and such tourists from all parts as actually do come here carry -numberless specimens away with them.</p> - -<p>The modern church, after the ogival manner, is far more satisfactory -than most modern ecclesiastical monuments. There is a fifteenth-century -portal, however, and some contemporary statues, which save it from being -wholly a modern work.</p> - -<p>The coast-line round about is the rough,<a name="page_232" id="page_232"></a> abrupt ending of the Léon -plateau, jagged and deeply serrated like the jaws of a shark, as the -native tells one with respect to about all of the Breton coast-line. -Fine beaches do exist here and there, but in the main it is a stern and -rock-bound shore that buffets the Atlantic’s waves in Finistère.</p> - -<p>Three times a week one can make the journey by steamboat to Ouessant, -which English sailor-folk—those who go down to the sea in great -liners—know as Ushant. The Île Molène and the Île Ouessant are the -principal members of the group, and are even more stern and rock-bound -than the mainland.</p> - -<p>“Very little comfort on the boat,” you will be told at the port-office, -where you make inquiry as to the hour of departure. Any but good sailors -and true vagabond travellers had best leave the journey out of their -itinerary, although it has unique interest.</p> - -<p>There are numerous isles and islets to pass on the way, and the Chaussée -des Pierres Noires is a roughly strewn ledge which breathes danger in -the very spray continually flying over it. Molène is a kilometre long -and rather more than half as wide. If ever the population of a sea-girt -isle had to take in one another’s washing in order to make a living, -this is the<a name="page_233" id="page_233"></a> place, for nearly six hundred men, women, and children make -their habitation upon the isle.</p> - -<p>Needless to say there are some things of the twentieth-century -civilization of which they know not, such as automobiles, tram-cars, or -locomotives. There is not even a donkey engine on the island, and there -are no bicycles or perambulators, hence there is something for which to -be thankful. Considerable quantities of vegetables are exported, the -population living apparently on fish, and the “farms” are divided into -plots so small as to be almost infinitesimal.</p> - -<p>The island is sadly remembered for the part it played in the wreck of -the great South African liner, the <i>Drummond Castle</i>, in recent years. -The inhabitants of the isle, poor in this world’s goods though they -were, did much to succour the survivors, an act which is writ large in -the history of life-saving.</p> - -<p>The isle of Ouessant itself has nearly three thousand population, and -boasts a market and a hotel, besides numerous hamlets or suburbs. The -isle is eight kilometres long, and perhaps three and a half wide, and is -known to the government authorities both as a canton and as a commune.</p> - -<p>Pliny knew of this rock-bound isle, the foremost<a name="page_234" id="page_234"></a> outpost of France, -and called it Uxantos, though it was known to the ancient Bretons as -Enez Heussa. Practically, the island is a table-land with an abundance -of pure water, and the soil very productive so far as new potatoes and -an early crop of barley go. The cultivation is mostly in the hands of -the women, the men being nearly all engaged in the fisheries, or as -sailors. Ouessant is a little land of windmills, though in no way does -it resemble Holland. For the most part, they are sturdy stone buildings, -and work but lazily, many of them being dismantled, as if there were -not enough for them to do. Some years ago a fort was erected here, and -a garrison of colonial troops billeted upon the island. It is a sad job -at best to be a soldier in a colonial outpost such as this, and whether -the observation is just or not, it is made, nevertheless, that the -appearance of the garrison of Ouessant is as though it were made up, -literally, of the scum of the earth.</p> - -<p>As for history, the Île d’Ouessant is by no means entirely lacking. It -was evangelized in the sixth century by St. Pol Aurelian, who built a -chapel here at a spot known as Portz Pol.</p> - -<p>In 1388, the English ravaged the island, and the former seigniory was -made a marquisate in 1597, in favour of Réné de Rieux, the governor<a name="page_235" id="page_235"></a> of -Brest, whose descendants sold their birthright to the king in 1764.</p> - -<p>The glorious battle of Ouessant—at least, the French call it “<i>la -glorieuse bataille</i>,” and so it really was—took place in 1778 in the -neighbouring waters between a French fleet under the Comte d’Orvilliers -and the English Admiral Keppel.</p> - -<p>As may be supposed, these far-jutting, rocky islands have been the scene -of many shipwrecks. There is a proverb known to mariners which classes -these Breton isles as follows:</p> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“Who sights Belle Île sights his refuge,<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Who sights Île Groix sights joy,<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Who sights Ouessant sights blood.”<br /></span> -</div></div> - -<p>When a sailorman of Ouessant is lost at sea, his parents or friends -bring to his former dwelling a little cross of wood, which serves the -purpose of a corpse, and the clergy officiate over it, and his friends -weep over it as if it were his true body.</p> - -<p>Finally a procession forms, and, with much solemnity, this little cross -of wood, after having been placed in a casket, is deposited at the foot -of a statue of St. Pol, a sad and glorious symbol of grief and also of -hope.</p> - -<p>The women of Ouessant, whether in mourning or not—and they mostly are -in mourning<a name="page_236" id="page_236"></a>—wear a costume of black cloth, cut their hair short and -wear a square sort of cap. For the most part, the inhabitants—all -those, in fact, who are natives, and there are but few mainlanders -here—speak only Breton.</p> - -<p>The Lighthouse de Créac’h, a white and black painted tower, with a -magnificent light flashing its rays twenty-four miles out at sea, is a -monument to the parental French government, which neglects nothing in -the way of guarding its coasts by modern search-lights, quite the best -of their kind in all the known world. There is another light here known -as the Stiff Lighthouse, which carries eighteen miles.</p> - -<p>Near the lighthouse is the tiny chapel of Our Lady of Farewells, a place -of pilgrimage on the day of the local pardon (1st September).</p> - -<p>On the mainland, just north of Brest and Le Conquet, on the way to the -Channel, is St. Rénan, the site of an ancient hermitage founded by an -anchorite who came from Ireland some time in the eighth century. There -are many quaint sixteenth-century houses here, and a large market-house -of the spectacular order.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 325px;"> -<a href="images/illpg_236_lg.jpg"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/illpg_236_sml.jpg" width="325" height="469" alt="Lighthouse of Créac’h, Ouessant" -title="Lighthouse of Créac’h, Ouessant" /></a> -<p class="caption">Lighthouse of Créac’h, Ouessant</p> -</div> - -<p>Ploudalmézeau is an important town of Lower Léon with a Hôtel -Bretagne—as might be expected—also most excellent—also as might be -expected—except for its sanitary<a name="page_237" id="page_237"></a> conveniences, which, to say nothing -of not being up to date, are practically non-existent. It is very -disconcerting of a rainy autumn morning to have to go down to the back -yard <i>puits</i>—as a pump or well is variously known—in order to perform -one’s ablutions.</p> - -<p>The comparatively modern church is far more magnificent than one would -expect to find in so small a town. It contains a curious statue of -the Virgin with a Breton coif, and also a fine modern fresco by Yan -d’Argent. A thirteenth-century sculptured cross is to be seen in the -churchyard.</p> - -<p>Folgoët has an important local fair, and is celebrated throughout all -Brittany for the pilgrimage to its magnificent shrine of Our Lady of -Folgoët, one of the most beautiful ecclesiastical monuments of the -province.</p> - -<p>Toward the middle of the fourteenth century there lived in the -neighbouring forest a poor idiot named Salaun, better known as the -forest fool; in Breton, Folgoët. After his death, there appeared written -on the leaves of a great white lily, in letters of gold, the admonition -to the people to build a great church here to the glory of Our Lady, and -this was begun in 1409, and consecrated in 1419; it became a collegiate -church in 1423. It has neither transepts<a name="page_238" id="page_238"></a> nor apse, but is in every -other particular a remarkably beautiful work. There are many interior -furnishings of great value.</p> - -<p>Folgoët is at its best on the great day of the pardon, on the eighth of -September.</p> - -<p>St. Pol de Léon, Roscoff, and Morlaix call the hurried tourist off to -the northward, though why a tourist ever should be hurried is something -the true vagabond never can understand.</p> - -<p>Roscoff has much to endear it to any one. It has not the loneliness or -even the quaintness of some of the daintily set seacoast towns of the -South, but its unique attractions are so many and varied that one loves -it for itself alone, quite as much as if it were a celebrated artists’ -sketching-ground, and far more than one would were it a really “popular” -resort.</p> - -<p>First of all, it is celebrated for its early vegetables, due principally -to the excellence of its soil, and secondly to the mildness of its -climate.</p> - -<p>Because of its temperate climate, Roscoff might be called the Mentone -of the North, though it is not yet overrun by invalids and bath-chairs. -Summer and winter, it is a watering-place, with fir-trees replacing the -palms of the South. The visitor should remark the enormous fig-tree in -the Capuchins’ enclosure, the grounds of an ancient convent (1621), -which is<a name="page_239" id="page_239"></a> now private property, and costs the sum of twenty-five -centimes to see.</p> - -<p>The Church of Our Lady of Croaz-Baz, with its fine domed tower dating -from 1550, is one of the chief ecclesiastical monuments of Brittany.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 242px;"> -<a href="images/illpg_239_lg.jpg"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/illpg_239_sml.jpg" width="242" height="329" alt="Roscoff" -title="Roscoff" /></a> -<p class="caption">Roscoff</p> -</div> - -<p>Among the many quaint and curious houses of the town is one known as the -house of Mary<a name="page_240" id="page_240"></a> Stuart. In its interior court are seven arcades supported -by columns, quite like a convent cloister, a disposition of parts which -must be purely local, as other examples are to be seen elsewhere in the -town. Another memory of the Scottish queen, whose last, long, sad adieu -to France is one of the links that never breaks, is the Chapel of St. -Ninian, built in 1548 as a souvenir of her landing when she first came -to France as the betrothed of the Dauphin. It is a most romantically -disposed structure, though with no architectural details of worth except -a small turret at an angle jutting over the lapping waves.</p> - -<p>Roscoff has a Chapel des Adieux, where the wives and mothers of the -fishermen go to pray as the men embark for the fishing.</p> - -<p>Offshore, a quarter-hour distant by boat, is the Isle of Batz, separated -from Roscoff only by a narrow strait, with a current so swift that the -passage is only possible in the best of weather. It does not look so -very perilous an undertaking at other times, but the Roscoff sailorman -certainly does know how to handle a boat, and when he says “No,” it’s -best not to attempt to persuade him to the contrary. He will not mind a -wetting himself,—if you pay him a fair price for the undertaking,—<a name="page_241" id="page_241"></a>but -he will probably want, and be entitled to, a good, fat fee for rescuing -his passenger from drowning.</p> - -<p>The Isle of Batz, like most places in Brittany, has its own legend. -It is to the effect that St. Pol, coming in 530 from Britain to this -low, gray, melancholy islet, met a dragon, which, having ravaged the -neighbouring mainland country, had fled hither in order to escape the -fury of the peasant-folk.</p> - -<p>St. Pol, as became one who had the interests of his fellow men at heart, -forthwith killed the monster, and conveyed the news to the people -awaiting his return by rapping on the ground with his baton (<i>batz</i>).</p> - -<p>The rise and fall of the tide at the Isle of Batz shows remarkable -fluctuations, ten metres, something more than thirty feet, being noted -between high and low water.</p> - -<p>Its coast-line has great banks of sand, a delight to the bather in -salt water, but the rock formations are by no means so remarkable as -those on most of the Breton isles. The soil is arid and there is not -much luxuriant vegetation. There is a population of over twelve hundred -souls, but few apparently have any ambition to migrate to the mainland, -scarce a rifle-shot distant. In the island church is preserved<a name="page_242" id="page_242"></a> the -stole of St. Pol, of Byzantine silk. If genuine, it has attained a -greater age than most confections of its class. An ancient Roman chapel -or temple existed here in former times, and was succeeded by a monastery -founded by St. Pol, now in ruins and mostly buried in the sands.</p> - -<p>St. Pol’s renown became such that a Breton king made him Archbishop -of Léon, giving him special care and control of the city bearing his -name. These rights came down to the holy man’s successors, and the -place became more religious than politic, as one reads in the old-time -chronicles. The riches which had been acquired attracted the Normans, -who devastated the cathedral church in 875. In the fourteenth century, -Duguesclin occupied the town in the name of Charles V. The religious -wars of the sixteenth century diminished the prosperity of the town, and -a bloody submission was forced upon the Revolutionary rebels here in -1793.</p> - -<p>St. Pol is somewhat doubtfully claimed as the native place of the -celebrated sixteenth-century sculptor, Michel Colomb (1512).</p> - -<p>The Chapel of Creizker or Creis-ker, with its astonishing bell-tower -piercing the sky at a height of nearly 250 feet, owes its origin to<a name="page_243" id="page_243"></a> -a young girl of Léon, whom St. Kirec, Archdeacon of Léon in the sixth -century, had cured of paralysis. The present structure is, of course, -more modern. Albert le Grand fixes the date in the fourteenth century, -and this is probably correct. There are innumerable evidences of the -best of Gothic workmen, and there is much decorative embellishment -which, though not according to the accepted Gothic forms, is certainly -not Renaissance.</p> - -<p>The ancient cathedral merits rank with the Chapel of Creizker, and is -perhaps even a more consistent piece of work, though it represents three -distinct epochs. The two towers are considerably less in height than -that of the Creizker, but they are beautifully spired. The interior -contains innumerable decorative accessories, making it rank with those -cathedrals of France making up that third series, of which Nantes, -Coutances, Narbonne, and Angers are the best examples.</p> - -<p>In the choir is the tomb of St. Pol, and his skull, an arm bone, and a -finger are encased in a little coffer for the veneration of the devout.</p> - -<p>There is a series of sixty-nine delicately sculptured choir-stalls -dating from 1512, and, although not rivalling such great works of<a name="page_244" id="page_244"></a> their -kind as one sees at their best at Amiens, Albi, or Rodez, they are -sufficiently elaborate to deserve attention.</p> - -<p>Innumerable tombs are set about the choir, many of them curiously and -characteristically sculptured.</p> - -<p>There is also a tiny bell which passes for having belonged to St. Pol. -On the days of pardon the notes of this ancient bell still ring out over -the heads of the faithful, who believe that they will cure any malady of -the head or hearing.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 141px;"> -<a href="images/illpg_244_lg.jpg"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/illpg_244_sml.jpg" width="141" height="129" alt="MA DOUEZ" -title="MA DOUEZ" /></a> -</div> - -<p>In one of the chapels of the Cathedral of St. Pol de Léon is an ancient -painting. It depicts a head with three visages, with the legend in -Gothic-Breton characters, “<i>Ma Douez</i>” (<i>Mon Dieu</i>). It represents, of -course, the Trinity, but, like many religious symbols, is more grotesque -than devout.</p> - -<p>Morlaix, the ancient Mons Relaxus of Roman<a name="page_245" id="page_245"></a> times, is the metropolis of -the northwestern Breton coast. It achieved no great importance, until -it came under the sway of the Breton dukes, and became one of their -principal residences. The inhabitants of Morlaix declared for the League -in the period of the religious wars, and the castle was besieged and -carried by the troops of the king under Marshal d’Aumont, in 1594.</p> - -<p>Being at the head of the great bay of Morlaix, or, rather, just above -it, at the juncture of the rivers Jarlot and Quefflent, the city enjoys -a novel situation, and contains many curious contrasting effects of the -old and new order of things.</p> - -<p>The Viaduct of Morlaix, by which the railway traverses the town, is -really an imposing sight, and is reckoned as the chief of its class -in all France. The natives show an astonishing vagueness or ignorance -with regard thereto. You will be told that it was the work of the -Romans,—“very ancient, look you,”—and again that it was one of the -works of the indefatigable Vauban, who must really have worked in his -sleep, or through understudies, if all the works attributed to him -throughout France be genuine. Vauban must have been to France what -Michelangelo was to the universe,<a name="page_246" id="page_246"></a>—according to the genial, though -skeptical, Mark Twain.</p> - -<p>The Church of St. Martin in the Fields is the chief ecclesiastical -monument of Morlaix, in point of antiquity at least, as it dates from -the ancient priory foundation of 1128, by Hervé, Count of Léon.</p> - -<p>The Church of St. Melaine originated also in the fifteenth-century -priory of the same name, founded by Guyormarc’h de Léon.</p> - -<p>The local museum, which is an unusually splendid establishment for a -town the size of Morlaix, possesses a collection of modern paintings, -including a great number of Breton scenes, forming a wonderfully -interesting exposition of Breton manners and customs.</p> - -<p>There are innumerable old houses in wood and stone here, and they put -Morlaix in the rank with Lisieux, in Normandy, for its picturesque and -tumble-down effects of the domestic architecture of other days.</p> - -<p>One of the finest examples of a great house of its time is that called -Pouliguen, which has a fine carved wood staircase that no one can afford -to miss seeing.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 304px;"> -<a href="images/illpg_246_lg.jpg"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/illpg_246_sml.jpg" width="304" height="501" alt="Carved Wood Staircase, Morlaix" -title="Carved Wood Staircase, Morlaix" /></a> -<p class="caption">Carved Wood Staircase, Morlaix</p> -</div> - -<p>The harbour of Morlaix opens out widely into the channel, and is -commanded by the Château du Taureau, in reality a granite fortress,<a name="page_247" id="page_247"></a> -one of the military defences of the north coast. St. Jean du Doigt -and the Point of Primel lie some twenty kilometres north of Morlaix, -directly on the coast. The former is the scene of one of the most -picturesque of pardons and is celebrated throughout Brittany.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 297px;"> -<a href="images/illpg_247_lg.jpg"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/illpg_247_sml.jpg" width="297" height="116" alt="Procession of Sailors, St. Jean du Doigt" -title="Procession of Sailors, St. Jean du Doigt" /></a> -<p class="caption">Procession of Sailors, St. Jean du Doigt</p> -</div> - -<p>Its name comes from its church (1440-1513), in which the index finger -of the right hand of St. John the Baptist is kept. The churchyard has -a fine Gothic entrance gateway and a funeral chapel of the sixteenth -century. Within the same enclosure is also an elaborate fountain -surrounded by a Renaissance construction of much beauty. It was planned -by Anne of Brittany, who brought an artist from Italy to design the -work. The Pardon of St. Jean du Doigt takes place on the twenty-fourth -of June of each year. Decidedly it is not to be omitted from one’s -itinerary, if it be possible to include it.<a name="page_248" id="page_248"></a></p> - -<p>It is one of the strangest survivals of the belief in an ancient holy -relique yet existing in France, and annually attracts great hordes of -the devout from all parts of Brittany and France, to say nothing of -strangers from oversea.</p> - -<p>A good motor-car is indispensable to enable one to flee from the throng -after it is all over, for the railway lies at least a dozen miles away, -and local conveyances are scarce, poor, and expensive.<a name="page_249" id="page_249"></a></p> - -<h3><a name="CHAPTER_VIII-2" id="CHAPTER_VIII-2"></a>CHAPTER VIII.<br /><br /> -<small>THE CÔTES DU NORD</small></h3> - -<p>T<small>HE</small> north coast of Brittany, the present-day Department of the Côtes -du Nord, is the great stretch of coast-line between Morlaix on the -west to the Bay of Mont St. Michel at Dol. Its large towns are few in -number, but the whole region is unusually prolific in the memory of -deeds of a historic past, and accordingly it has become the favourite -touring-ground of a great number of French and English summer visitors -who, it is regretfully stated, have become responsible for a good deal -of the claptrap and many of the catchpenny devices.</p> - -<p>It is possible to avoid casinos, tea-rooms, and golf-links, but they are -more abundant here in the neighbourhood of Dinan, St. Malo, and Dinard -than in most other parts of Continental Europe. This is a pity, for the -region is one of the most delightfully picturesque anywhere, although -there is little of the grandeur of desolation about it.<a name="page_250" id="page_250"></a></p> - -<p>A great national road runs northwesterly from Guingamp to Lannion and -Tréguier, two outposts of the Côtes du Nord so far off the beaten track -that they are not as yet overrun with the conventional tourists. There -is little at either place to amuse one, except the local manners and -customs, but they are quaint and interesting beyond belief, and the -wonderful combinations of sea and sky, which will make the artist’s -heart leap for joy.</p> - -<p>Lannion boasts of six thousand inhabitants, most of whom play at bowls -on Sunday or a feast-day, and other days engage in the sundry humble -pursuits of the usual Breton large town.</p> - -<p>The name Lannion first appeared in the twelfth century, when the -seigniory of Lannion formed a part of the domain of the house of -Penthièvre, which was united with that of Brittany in 1199.</p> - -<p>There are three quaint and charming hotels at Lannion, at any of which -you will get the best of local fare at prices ranging from 120 to 220 -francs per month—all found. One will not go wrong at any of them, and -one does not differ greatly from another, in spite of the difference in -price. There is an abundance of what is commonly known as good cheer, -by which is really meant good fare, and<a name="page_251" id="page_251"></a> there are comfortable beds, a -sound roof over one’s head, and genial hosts, of course.</p> - -<p>This estimable person is literally everywhere at once, showing the -guests to their rooms, presiding at the table, or, at least, at the -serving of it, and generally overseeing everything that goes on.</p> - -<p>“<i>Allons, messieurs, à table</i>,” is called, in a melodious voice, -instead of the ringing of the usual brain-racking bell, and one by -one travelling salesmen, the permanent guests, and the mere tourists -seat themselves at the long table, which literally groans—like those -in the historical novels—with the best of country cookery. There is -nothing Parisian about it; there are no ices, no forced fruit, and no -savoury messes with mushrooms and truffles, but there is the abundant -and excellent local fare of sea food, hung mutton, new potatoes and -asparagus, and little wood strawberries in heaps, and that delightful -golden cider, which, if it be not an improvement on the Norman variety, -is just as good, and a delightful summer drink.</p> - -<p>The fine location of Lannion, on the right bank of the estuary of the -little river Leguer, accounts for much of the local charm, and the habit -that the population has of grouping itself picturesquely about the -quay-side—without<a name="page_252" id="page_252"></a> the least provocation—accounts for a good deal more.</p> - -<p>There are many old houses in the town, and other more pretentious -architectural monuments, offering enough variety to the artist or lover -of architecture to occupy him a long time.</p> - -<p>The port is a harbour of refuge, of which there are not many on the -north coast of Brittany, and the traffic in salmon and sardines is -considerable, though not rivalling in bulk that of the greater ports in -the southwest.</p> - -<p>Tréguier has much the same attractions as Lannion, though its population -is but half as large. Its origin was some huts which anciently grouped -themselves around the monastery of Trecar, founded by St. Tugdal in the -sixth century. It has an imposing cathedral, a really great religious -edifice, and one which for the beauty of its parts is scarcely excelled -by that of Quimper itself.</p> - -<p>The history of Tréguier was very lively, from the time of the Norman -invasion of Brittany down through the troublous days of the Revolution.</p> - -<p>The men of Tréguier, one learns from history, accepted the law of -the “rights of man” but coldly, and indeed M. le Mintier, Bishop of<a name="page_253" id="page_253"></a> -Tréguier, was one of those churchmen barred from the National Assembly -by the manifesto. He fled to Jersey.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 270px;"> -<a href="images/illpg_253_lg.jpg"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/illpg_253_sml.jpg" width="270" height="302" alt="OLD HOUSE TRÉGUIER" -title="OLD HOUSE TRÉGUIER" /></a> -</div> - -<p>Tréguier is the native place of Ernest Renan (1823-92), and his quaint, -timbered house may well be considered a literary shrine of the very -first rank.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 285px;"> -<a href="images/illpg_254_lg.jpg"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/illpg_254_sml.jpg" width="285" height="396" alt="House of Ernest Renan, Tréguier" -title="House of Ernest Renan, Tréguier" /></a> -<p class="caption">House of Ernest Renan, Tréguier</p> -</div> - -<p>Convents, where women may find a quiet refuge away from the world, are -not so numerous as they once were in France. “Boarding-houses kept for -unprotected women by nuns,<a name="page_254" id="page_254"></a> with a supposed Christian devotion and a -profound appreciation of ready money,” was the way in which an English -writer once spoke of them, and it was most unfair. Certainly, the<a name="page_255" id="page_255"></a> -writer of those lines never knew—and she professed to know France—the -Convent of the Cross at Tréguier, where women can live in quiet -seclusion, “all found,” for a matter of seventy-five francs a month. To -those interested, the above may be worth investigation.</p> - -<p>Not far off is the Manor of Kermartin, where, in 1255, St. Yves, the -patron saint of advocates, was born.</p> - -<p>On the nineteenth of May a procession sets out from the Tréguier -cathedral for this shrine, to render homage to the patron of the men -of law. On the eve of the nineteenth all mendicants and vagabonds -presenting themselves at the manor are fed and lodged, which makes the -perpetuation of the ceremony one of real benefit to humanity, though its -endurance is brief.</p> - -<p>St. Yves is the only canonized Breton saint. He was born on the seventh -of October, 1253, and accompanied Peter of Dreux, reigning duke, to the -seventh crusade.</p> - -<p>In the Breton tongue his praises are sung as follows:</p> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“N’hen eus ket en Breiz, n’hen eus ket unan,<br /></span> -<span class="i1">N’hen eus ket eur Zant evel Sant Erwan.”<br /></span> -</div></div> - -<p class="nind">This in French comes to the following:</p> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“Il n’y a pas en Bretagne, il n’y en a pas un,<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Il n’y a pas un Saint comme St. Yves.”<br /></span> -</div></div> - -<p><a name="page_256" id="page_256"></a></p> - -<p>The last will and testament of St. Yves is preserved in the sacristy -of the Church de Minihy, and also his breviary. His tomb is in the -cemetery, surmounted by an arcade through which the faithful pass, -crawling upon their knees when they seek his aid.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 262px;"> -<a href="images/illpg_256_lg.jpg"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/illpg_256_sml.jpg" width="262" height="282" alt="Shrine of St. Yves, Tréguier" -title="Shrine of St. Yves, Tréguier" /></a> -<p class="caption">Shrine of St. Yves, Tréguier</p> -</div> - -<p>Not many travellers in France have ever even heard of Seven Isles, -situated five kilometres or more off the coast near Tréguier. The -corsairs of Jersey and Guernsey took refuge<a name="page_257" id="page_257"></a> upon this little -archipelago in the olden time, and long maintained a form of government -quite of their own making, and even erected fortifications, of which -that on the Île aux Moines has still some suggestion of strength.</p> - -<p>Usually quite deserted, there are two seasons of the year when the -isles take on a population of residents from the mainland entirely -out of keeping with their size and number: in February for seaweed -gathering, and from June to September for the gathering of sea-mosses, -or <i>jargot</i>, as the natives call it. One who would experience something -out of the ordinary could not do better than make this little excursion. -The passage from the mainland does not look so very terrible to the -stranger, but not even the hardy fishermen will attempt it if the sky -is the least threatening. He says simply, “Only go out in very fine -weather,” and sits tight and prays and whistles for that same fine -weather, though he evidently does not expect it to come very soon, for -with every bit of fleecy cloud that crosses his vision, he exclaims: -“Big storm soon!”</p> - -<p>Paimpol is situated at the head of a well-sheltered bay on the banks -of an infinitesimal little river known as Quinic. There is nothing<a name="page_258" id="page_258"></a> to -mark Paimpol as a tourist resort, and accordingly it is almost an ideal -resting-place for one wearied with the onrush of the world. It is not -even a bathing-place, as it well might be. Its long Rue de l’Église is -its principal thoroughfare, and through it all the small traffic of the -town circulates at a most sedate pace.</p> - -<p>The church dates from the thirteenth century, and is a lovely old -structure with admirable Gothic pillars and arches in its nave, and a -fine fourteenth-century rose window.</p> - -<p>The port of Paimpol has a most interesting rise and fall of life, -particularly at the season of the setting out and the return of the -Iceland fishermen. In the trade in codfish caught off the Icelandic -coasts, this place occupies the first rank, being the home port of -those who fish in Icelandic waters, and all along the quays of the -sad little town of Paimpol (sad, because there are so many widows -there,—the lone partners of those who have lost their lives at sea) -are to be seen the Iceland schooners. Everything in the town smacks of -the memory of Iceland: the schooners, the <i>ex-votos</i> in the churches, -the widows, the sturdy but gloomy fisherfolk themselves, and the stones -in the churchyard. “The Iceland fog enshrouds everything,” the native -tells you, but still the<a name="page_259" id="page_259"></a> work goes on, and each year, with the coming -of the spring days, the exodus begins, after a winter’s hard work at -refurbishing and refitting of the little two-masters and three-masters -of the fishers. It is here that one may hear that Breton sailor’s -prayer, which is so devout and full of faith: “<i>Mon Dieu protège nous, -car la mer est si grand et nos bateaux si petits.</i>”</p> - -<p>Cod, whale, mackerel, and herring are all marketable products to the -nets of the Paimpolans.</p> - -<p>The Isle of Bréhat is near Paimpol, lying just off the coast. If one -seek to arrange a passage, thereto, he goes by public carriage, and -not by boat, until he gets to the tip of the Pointe Arcouest, when he -transfers himself and his luggage to a sailboat, and travels as one did -before the age of steam.</p> - -<p>The Isle of Bréhat is another of those rocky islets which dot the coast -of Brittany, and look not only as if they were barren and uncultivated, -but as if they were also uninhabited. All the same, their appearance -from a distance is misleading. There are close upon a thousand -inhabitants on the parent isle and the attendant flock of little islets -sheltered under its wing. In the olden time, the island was a strong -place of war, with batteries and fortifications<a name="page_260" id="page_260"></a> against which the -English, the Leaguers, and the Royalists tried their strength in turn.</p> - -<p>The isle is what the sailor-folk roundabout call “a good port of -refuge,” for there are divers little sheltered harbours to which ships -of all classes can run from the storms of the open sea.</p> - -<p>The principal town is known as Bréhat, and possesses a church dating -from 1700, a tiny hotel, and an inn or two, mostly catering to local -customers. If one would leave the mainland, and its questionable -attractions of civilization behind, and live the simple life to the -full, he can do it here to the most exquisite degree,—if he does not -mind the sea-fogs of the winter.</p> - -<p>Guingamp, lying inland in the rich valley of the Trieux, is the -market-town of the arrondissement of the same name. It is of feudal -origin, and was the ancient capital of the countship, later the duchy, -of Penthièvre, and of the ancient Goëllo land.</p> - -<p>Guingamp Castle is a great square building, flanked by four massive -towers, of which one has been practically destroyed.</p> - -<p>The Church of Our Lady of Good Help, of the fourteenth to sixteenth -centuries, is a magnificent<a name="page_261" id="page_261"></a> work of its era, with an elaborately -furnished interior.</p> - -<div class="figright" style="width: 128px;"> -<a href="images/illpg_261_lg.jpg"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/illpg_261_sml.jpg" width="128" height="241" alt="A BINOU PLAYER" -title="A BINOU PLAYER" /></a> -</div> - -<p>The Pardon of Bon Secours is Guingamp’s gayest event of all the year. -In numbers, it is one of the largest in Brittany, and is held on the -Saturday before the first Sunday in July. On this occasion the statue -of Our Lady, within the porch of the church, is clad in a silken robe, -and receives the pilgrims, who refresh themselves with water previously -consecrated at its source. With the fall of the sun commences a -continual round of national dances, inspired by the lonesome, sharp, -shrill wail of the <i>binious</i>, played in much the same way as are the -Scotch bagpipes, except that their music is even more shrill and -heartrending—if possible. At nine o’clock the statue of the Virgin -is brought to the public square, solemnly conveyed by an immense -procession, and three great bonfires are lighted. At midnight a high -mass terminates the celebration, and some of the pilgrims depart, and -others remain for the banquet which invariably follows.<a name="page_262" id="page_262"></a></p> - -<p>On the eighth of September, 1857, the Madonna of Guingamp received the -crown of gold from the chapter of St. Peter’s at Rome, on behalf of the -Pope, a distinction offered to images of the Virgin uniting the three -traits of antiquity, popularity, and miracle-working.</p> - -<p>“La Pompe,” or the Fontaine, in hammered lead, is one of the chief -artistic curiosities of Guingamp. It is a remarkable work in every way, -and dates from 1588, since which time it has only been repaired—not -reconstructed. Its preservation is wonderful, and it is an embellishment -of which even a greater town might well be proud.</p> - -<p>Aside from the fragment of the castle, there are no mediæval gateways or -walls to remind one of the military importance of the place in former -days. A century and a quarter ago, a traveller wrote: “Enter Guingamp by -gateways, towers, and battlements of the oldest military architecture, -every part denoting antiquity, and in the best preservation.” All this, -unhappily, has disappeared, and one has to go to Vitré and Fougères to -see military architecture in Brittany.</p> - -<p>Eastward from Guingamp toward St. Brieuc, one passes—the traveller by -road or rail seldom stops—Chatelaudren. It is a conventional<a name="page_263" id="page_263"></a> Breton -small town, but it is a market-town, nevertheless. It has not much -of interest for any one unless he be a keen observer of manners and -customs, hence it is but a way station between the two larger towns.</p> - -<p>St. Brieuc is a city, although it has no tram-cars to dodge and no -restaurants or Hôtels Étrangers, which is a good thing for the native -and the tourist alike.</p> - -<p>In reality its half-dozen hotels rise to the distinction of being known -as “establishments,” yet they have lost none of their local flavour. St. -Brieuc is the metropolis where the summer visitors—Parisians all—of -the beaches come to buy the little necessaries and luxuries which a -mere watering-place fails to supply. Then, too, one who is rusticating, -even in a delightful spot like Val André, lacks notably the inspiration -coming from a more or less frequent contact with a large centre, and -so he hies himself to a market-town, gets the fare of the country at a -hotel for travelling salesmen, and has a bit of the transmitted gossip -of the capital over a bock at the principal café; after this—<i>voilà!</i> -the seaside again for a time.</p> - -<p>This may not be the Anglo-Saxon way of<a name="page_264" id="page_264"></a> treating a similar situation, -but it is exactly after the French method.</p> - -<p>St. Brieuc is the seat of a bishopric, suffragan of the metropolitan -see of Brittany at Rennes. Its origin is due to a missionary who came -with eight disciples at the end of the fifth century to evangelize -Armorica. As a place of pilgrimage,—the tomb of St. Brieuc having -become a shrine,—it soon began to draw throngs from all parts, and the -importance of the city which grew up around the memory of the missionary -was soon assured.</p> - -<p>The cathedral of St. Brieuc was begun by St. William Pinchon before the -middle of the thirteenth century, and was soon finished.</p> - -<p>Its exterior presents the severe and austere, though beautiful, -Gothic of its time, but the accessories of its interior arrangements -show plainly the debasement of the later interpolations, although -there are some really excellent details hidden away amid a profusion -of mediocrities, notably the tomb of St. William, a fine Way of the -Cross by a local sculptor, and a low, hanging gallery at the base of -the choir, which is a remarkably beautiful and effective adjunct to a -great church. The exterior is more impressive, though its two principal -doorways have been badly restored or rebuilt at<a name="page_265" id="page_265"></a> some time since the -completion of the edifice. The great, gaunt, donjon-like towers are the -chief features of beauty and distinction, and tell the story of the -whole fabric in quite an unassailable manner.</p> - -<p>At the town hall is a museum which has some good modern art works, -including a fragment of Rodin’s Portes de l’Enfer and some notable -paintings of Breton subjects.</p> - -<p>In the Rue St. Jacques and the Rue Fardel are many old houses, one of -the most notable being the hotel of the Dukes of Brittany, begun in 1572 -by Yvon Collou. James II. of England lodged here when he came to St. -Brieuc in 1689.</p> - -<p>The carved and decorated fronts of these old wooden houses lend a -quaintness and charm to the streets of St. Brieuc, in strong contrast to -the modernity of its hotels and cafés. There is considerable and varied -local industry at St. Brieuc, and this gives the city some importance as -a manufacturing centre, but the chief events of its commercial life are -the great fairs held in July and September, the latter founded in the -fifteenth century by Marguerite of Clisson.</p> - -<p>The environs of St. Brieuc are charmingly diversified, from the wide -open stretches of farming country at the south to the wastes of<a name="page_266" id="page_266"></a> rock -and sand flanking the great Bay of St. Brieuc.</p> - -<p>Le Légué is the port of St. Brieuc, and the coastwise traffic is -considerable. The quays and docks, ship-houses and careening wharfs -lend a novel and interesting aspect to a background of thickly wooded -river-banks. The seaward entrance of the channel is protected by a -fifth-class light. The port is the first in rank in the Côtes du Nord -for the fitting out of the Newfoundland and Iceland fishing-boats.</p> - -<p>The Tower of Cesson, three kilometres or more from St. Brieuc, is a -simple circular tower, surrounded by a double protecting fosse cut -perpendicularly into the rock. The walls are quite twelve feet in -thickness on the lower of its four floors. It was built by Duke Jean -IV. in 1395, and, after much strife and bloodshed, extending over two -centuries, was laid in ruins by Henry IV. in 1598.</p> - -<p>On the shores of the Bay of St. Brieuc are innumerable little beaches -which are healthful breathing-spots for large numbers of Parisian folk, -who come thither between June and September of each year.</p> - -<p>These are not exactly riotous resorts of fashion, but still there are -some evidences of the<a name="page_267" id="page_267"></a> distractions of the world that make most of them -appear as little parochial Parises. There are two spots on the western -shore of the bay to which this does not apply, however, Etables and -Binic.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 296px;"> -<a href="images/illpg_267_lg.jpg"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/illpg_267_sml.jpg" width="296" height="168" alt="Binic" -title="Binic" /></a> -<p class="caption">Binic</p> -</div> - -<p>Binic, a small fishing port of Brittany, has all the attractions of -an unworldly seaside village, for it is not much more even to-day. -After Binic, Etables, and after Etables, Binic. Each is much the same -as the other. Binic has been a great-little port for the fitting out -of ships for the Newfoundland fisheries ever since the beginning of -the seventeenth century, and things go on in much the same way as of -old, except that the master of the craft now has a megaphone and a -patent log in his equipment, whereas formerly he went without these<a name="page_268" id="page_268"></a> -refinements of navigation. To the Newfoundland fishermen of Binic is due -a special preparation of the codfish known as <i>bénicasser</i>, of which the -dictionaries will tell one nothing, but which is simply a species of -cured codfish.</p> - -<p>The high altar of Binic church was bought with funds contributed as -a result of the Sunday fishing on the Newfoundland banks. It can, -therefore, be said to have a real reason for being, and, as it is an -unusually ornate affair, one infers that the Sunday haul must be of -goodly proportions.</p> - -<p>From St. Brieuc eastward, until one actually comes within the confines -of that delectable land known as the Emerald Coast,—the summer rival -of that winter paradise, the Blue Coast,—is a verdant land of crops -and cultures which would quite change the opinions of any who thought -Brittany a sterile, rock-bound land, where nothing could grow but onions -and new potatoes.</p> - -<p>Lamballe is a sort of a faint shadow of St. Brieuc. It was founded in -feudal times, and from 1134 to 1420 was the capital of the county of -Penthièvre. As late as the eighteenth century, the oldest son of the Duc -de Penthièvre bore the title of Prince of Lamballe.</p> - -<p>The town is divided into the upper and lower<a name="page_269" id="page_269"></a> towns. In the latter are -found those old settlers of ducal times, the houses of wood and stone -still standing to delight the eye of the artist and to arouse the wonder -of the general tourist.</p> - -<p>There is a fine Gothic Church of Our Lady, its foundations cut in the -very rock itself, and bearing, from more than one point of view, the -aspect of a fortified edifice, which has a battlemented roof that is -nothing if not an indication that the church of Dol was a truly militant -edifice. As the chapel of the old château, this church grew up from a -foundation of St. William Pinchon, Bishop of St. Brieuc in 1220.</p> - -<p>St. Martin’s is the church of an ancient priory belonging to the parent -house of Marmoutier. It was founded in 1083 by Geoffrey I., Count of -Lamballe. Its primitive nave shows a remarkable series of horseshoe -arches, and in every way, not excepting the great sixteenth-century -towers, St. Martin’s is quite the most interesting architectural -monument of Lamballe.</p> - -<p>North of Lamballe lies Val André. A charming watering-place much -frequented by families, is the way the all-powerful Western Railway -advertises this little seaside beach and its attractions, with the added -few lines to the<a name="page_270" id="page_270"></a> effect that there is a large hotel with a casino, -regattas, nautical celebrations, concerts, etc., which are supposed to -amuse the fastidious summer visitors.</p> - -<p>It is all very delightful, particularly as the coast-line near by is -charming of itself, but Val André, with all its attractions, has not -half the charm of the little fishing port of Binic on the opposite shore -of the Bay of St. Brieuc.<a name="page_271" id="page_271"></a></p> - -<h3><a name="CHAPTER_IX-2" id="CHAPTER_IX-2"></a>CHAPTER IX.<br /><br /> -<small>THE EMERALD COAST</small></h3> - -<p>T<small>HE</small> Emerald Coast is the passion chiefly of those who come to live -during the three summer months of rustication, but the sister cities -of St. Servan, Paramé and St. Malo, Dinard and Dinan, are lovely spots -and attractive of themselves, were one forced to camp out on one of the -barren, jagged rocks with which the coast hereabouts is strewn, instead -of living at the Hotel of France and Chateaubriand, which encloses the -ancient maison of Chateaubriand, at St. Malo. Starting thence, one -explores the wonderful country round about, and nourishes himself and -makes himself comfortable with all the modern refinements. This hotel -is about the only modern thing in St. Malo, however, for, while highly -interesting to the antiquary or to the student of architecture or of -art, it is commonly thought to be a vile, dirty hole, with a few shops -convenient<a name="page_272" id="page_272"></a> for the inhabitants of the more aristocratic suburbs of -Paramé and St. Servan.</p> - -<p>St. Malo is a curious little city, with its ever apparent past not in -the least disturbed by the steamboats and electric trams, which bring -visitors to the base of its ancient fortifications and gateways. Among -its chief reminders of the past are its proud château, redolent of the -memory of the beautiful Duchess Anne, its fine cathedral, its quaint old -houses and narrow streets, and its wonderful encircling ramparts.</p> - -<p>Not only is St. Malo a city of the past, but it is above all, to-day, -a <i>resort</i>, as that elastic term is known which covers any place where -tourists congregate for pleasure.</p> - -<p>Kiosks, coffee-rooms, and bathing-cabins have taken the place of -whatever may have gone before, and to-day, truly, one may be as -comfortably up to date—if there is any real comfort in being up to -date—as if he were in Budapest, Paris, or San Francisco. St. Malo is -considerably more than this; it is the actual, if not the geographical, -centre of the whole Emerald Coast.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 489px;"> -<a href="images/illpg_272_lg.jpg"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/illpg_272_sml.jpg" width="489" height="312" alt="Ramparts of St. Malo" -title="Ramparts of St. Malo" /></a> -<p class="caption">Ramparts of St. Malo</p> -</div> - -<p>The praises of the Emerald Coast have been sung by many poets, and -pictured by many painters. Jean Richepin, that rare vagabond, comes -frequently for his inspiration to St.<a name="page_273" id="page_273"></a> Jacut-de-la-Mer, and in -his “Honest Folk” there are superb descriptions of this entrancing -combination of sea and shore, which in all France is not elsewhere -equalled, unless it be on the Riviera.</p> - -<p>The Emerald Coast must indeed be the paradise for jaded literary -workers, when work makes its inroads on their holiday, for it may enable -them to accomplish as much as Ferdinand Brunetière admitted during a -recent stay at Dinard-St. Énogat:</p> - -<p>“What do I read?” said he. “These:</p> - -<p>“1. The 240 pages which make up the <i>Revue des deux Mondes</i> every -fortnight.</p> - -<p>“2. The manuscripts which may become future pages of the <i>Review</i>, and -even some which may not.</p> - -<p>“3. Works which have not appeared in the <i>Review</i>, whose authors I may -find it worth while to know and cultivate.</p> - -<p>“4. Journals in which the <i>Review</i> is interested.</p> - -<p>“5. The <i>Official Journal</i>, from which one may always pick up something.</p> - -<p>“6. The other papers.</p> - -<p>“7. Works submitted for the approval of the French Academy.</p> - -<p>“8. Proof-sheets of my own works.<a name="page_274" id="page_274"></a></p> - -<p>“9. The books necessary for the preparation of my discourses, lectures, -and articles.”</p> - -<p>The puzzle is what a man like M. Brunetière will find to do in the -next world. Probably he will go about to all the celebrated writers to -see what they thought of his criticisms in his dearly loved <i>Review</i>; -and then perhaps he will regret, as Herbert Spencer is said to have -regretted, that he had not gone fishing oftener.</p> - -<p>The charms of St. Malo’s suburban social colony of Paramé, such as -they are, though they differ greatly from the mere attractions of -nature,—for which society folk really care for only as an accessory -to their more futile pleasures,—are best set forth in the following -stanzas of Jehan Valter:</p> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i3">“PARAMÉ<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i3">“<small>IDYLLE</small><br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“Quel est de Biarritz à Calais<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Le seul bain de mer, qui jamais,<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Faute de baigneurs, n’a chômé?<br /></span> -<span class="i3">C’est Paramé!<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“Où le soleil à l’horizon<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Montre-t-il en chaque saison<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Son disque toujours enflammé?<br /></span> -<span class="i3">A Paramé!<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“Où le froid est-il inconnu,<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Où peut-on se promener nu<a name="page_275" id="page_275"></a><br /></span> -<span class="i1">Sans avoir peur d’être enrhumé?<br /></span> -<span class="i3">A Paramé!<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“Le soir, on danse au Casino,<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Non aux sons d’un mauvais piano,<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Mais d’un orchestre renommé<br /></span> -<span class="i3">A Paramé!<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“Sur la plage on rêve d’amour,<br /></span> -<span class="i1">La nuit aussi bien que le jour<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Que de baigneuses ont aimé!<br /></span> -<span class="i3">A Paramé!<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“Est-ce l’air qui porte à la peau;<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Est-ce le soleil, est-ce l’eau?<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Chacun sort du bain ranimé<br /></span> -<span class="i3">A Paramé!<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“Et c’est un miracle constant,<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Le plus chétif, en un instant,<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Est en athlète transformé<br /></span> -<span class="i3">A Paramé!<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“Du reste, miracle plus fort,<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Jamais personne ici n’est mort,<br /></span> -<span class="i1">On ne connaît pas d’inhumé<br /></span> -<span class="i3">A Paramé!<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“A vous tous, gandins rabougris<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Qui dépérissez à Paris,<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Venez humer l’air embaumé<br /></span> -<span class="i3">De Paramé!<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“Vous ne le regretterez pas:<br /></span> -<span class="i1">On y fait d’excellents repas,<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Et le cidre est fort estimé<br /></span> -<span class="i3">A Paramé!<a name="page_276" id="page_276"></a><br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“Donc, sur l’honneur, je vous le dis,<br /></span> -<span class="i1">A défaut du vrai paradis,<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Il n’est sur terre, en résumé,<br /></span> -<span class="i3">Que Paramé!”<br /></span> -</div></div> - -<p>That is about the sort of round that one gets at Paramé, with -motor-cars, golf, and bridge parties thrown in, but a wonderful aspect -of nature to be seen at every turn, and it is perhaps small wonder that -the little summer colony has now grown to huge proportions.</p> - -<p>Americans should have a special interest in, and a fondness for, St. -Malo, “the city of the corsairs.”</p> - -<p>St. Malo is the chief town of the province of Jacques Cartier, the -discoverer of Canada. “<i>It is a city of great men and the chief place of -the Breton middle class</i>,” said the Abbé Jalobert in his curious work on -St. Malo and St. Servan.</p> - -<p>There is some truth in calling St. Malo the “corsair stronghold,” for it -was the cradle of Mahé de la Bourdonnais, Duguay-Trouin, Surcouf, and -their followers, all “sea-rovers” if they were not something more.</p> - -<p>To-day St. Malo’s “sea-rovers” are the sailors of the Newfoundland -fishing-fleet, the humble <i>“terre-neuvas</i>,” as they are known,<a name="page_277" id="page_277"></a> who go -in large numbers to fish for cod on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland.</p> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“I’s sont partis de Saint-Malo,<br /></span> -<span class="i1">I’s sont partis de Saint-Malo,<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Tous ben portants, vaillants et biaux.<br /></span> -<span class="i1">In’ troun’ dérin tra lonlaire!<br /></span> -<span class="i1">In’ troun’ dérin’ tra lonla!”<br /></span> -</div></div> - -<p class="nind">sings Yann Nibor in his “Sea Songs and Stories.”</p> - -<p>The city’s older reputation as the city of the corsairs gave quite a -different interpretation, however:</p> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i2">“<small>LA CITÉ DES CORSAIRES</small><br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“Si dans son aire, aujourd’hui tombe,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Elle ouit de rudes chansons!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Dont le souvenir donne au monde<br /></span> -<span class="i3">Des frissons.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“La gothique flêche de pierre<br /></span> -<span class="i0">De son clocher audacieux<br /></span> -<span class="i0">S’élance comme un rapière<br /></span> -<span class="i3">Vers les cieux.”<br /></span> -<span class="i8">—<i>Dabouchet.</i><br /></span> -</div></div> - -<p>Duguay-Trouin is an almost mythical character, but many of his -legendary exploits sound plausible. He took an English ship mounting -forty guns when he owned to but sixteen years, and in a following -campaign—practically on his own account it would seem—he captured<a name="page_278" id="page_278"></a> -two vessels of war and twelve merchant-ships from under the guns of -a British squadron. This, at least, is the French version, and since -all of us, in our agile days, love a daring hero,—even if he be a -bloodthirsty one,—it seems a pity to probe the assertion too deeply.</p> - -<p>Such a man as Duguay-Trouin was, of course, popular, and his sailors -sang his praises in the street in lines which came to be taken up by -the “stay-at-homes” and incorporated into a kind of folk-lore. Indeed, -gentle mothers sang their infants to sleep with them, much as did old -Mother Goose of the nursery rhymes:</p> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“Monsieur Duguay t’envoyé<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Un tambour de l’Achille<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Pour demander à ces braves guerriers<br /></span> -<span class="i1">S’ils veulent capituler.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“Les dames du château<br /></span> -<span class="i1">S’sont mis à la fenêtre,<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Monsieur Duguay apaisez vos canons,<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Avec vous je composerez.”<br /></span> -</div></div> - -<p>Not always does the stranger to St. Malo hear exactly this offhand, but -invariably he is met with a singsong of sailors’ chanteys which at once -call up memories of seafarers of other days.</p> - -<p>One enters St. Malo, whether by boat or train, through the city walls. -The boat lands<a name="page_279" id="page_279"></a> you directly under the frowning ramparts, and a worthy -porter will take your portmanteau and carry it twenty steps to the door -of your hotel, just within the gateway of the city—and charge you -twenty sous for the job. “A franc, really,” the man with the brass badge -tied on his right arm will reply to your query as to whether you have -heard aright.</p> - -<p>“Twenty cents for twenty steps is a little high,” says the hostess of -your hotel, but it is the tariff from outside.</p> - -<p>St. Malo is still a walled city, much as it was in the days when Francis -I., in 1518, and Charles IX., in 1570, held court here.</p> - -<p>Charles IX., his mother Catharine, and his sister Margaret spent a part -of the month of May here in this city by the sea. The Malouins gave the -court a spectacle of an imitation naval combat, in which a galleon was -sunk; too realistically, one thinks, for its occupants were drowned.</p> - -<p>At one time, it is said by the chronicles, St. Malo was guarded by -fierce mastiffs, the descendants, it is to be presumed, of the Gallic -dogs of war. These municipal watch-dogs were suppressed in 1770, because -of their having bitten the “calves of gentlemen.” Presumably there was a -complaint of some sort, but<a name="page_280" id="page_280"></a> the only record of the incident is one in -verse sung by Désaugiers as follows:</p> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i3">“Bon voyage,<br /></span> -<span class="i3"> Cher du Mollet,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">A Saint-Malo débarquez sans naufrage,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Et revenez si ce pays vous plait.”<br /></span> -</div></div> - -<p>The disappearance of the watch-dogs in 1770 made necessary the adoption -of a new coat of arms for the town, when the blazoning of argent, a dog -gules, gave way to a “portcullis surmounted by an ermine passant.”</p> - -<p>One has heard before now the phrase, “I like St. Malo in spite of its -smell,” and, in spite of the truth of it,—and there is a very apparent -justification of the word,—the old city is one of the most lovable in -all Brittany.</p> - -<p>The House of Duguay-Trouin at St. Malo is one of its chief romantic -shrines before which strangers are wont to linger. It is simply an old -wooden-fronted house, sombre and austere in its upper stories, but -resplendent in white paint below. A shoe-shop and a coffee-room occupy -the lower floor, and if one would conjure up the days of the past, when -pirates bold discussed their venturesome plans in the very same room, -let him enter and drink his after-dinner coffee by the pale light of -a guttering<a name="page_281" id="page_281"></a> candle in this old abode of romance. There is nothing of -luxury about it; in fact, most worshippers are content to bow before the -shrine from without; but to awaken the liveliest<a name="page_282" id="page_282"></a> emotions, one must -really enter and see it from the inside.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 261px;"> -<a href="images/illpg_281_lg.jpg"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/illpg_281_sml.jpg" width="261" height="386" alt="House of Duguay-Trouin, St. Malo" -title="House of Duguay-Trouin, St. Malo" /></a> -<p class="caption">House of Duguay-Trouin, St. Malo</p> -</div> - -<p>St. Malo, besides its stock sights of romance and history situated -within the city itself, has a literary shrine of the first rank in the -island of Grand Bé just offshore. Here is the tomb of Chateaubriand, -ambassador, minister, journalist, and author. One need not inscribe the -dates and titles of his works here; it is enough to mention his name. -Suffice to recall that, as a conclusion to his labours, he wrote the -“Mémoires d’Outre-Tomb,” which, like the simple, rough-hewn cross which -crowns the summit of Grand Bé, is a fitting monument to the genius of -the man whose theories, it is to be feared, have now become somewhat out -of date.</p> - -<p>Chateaubriand’s verses on his native land give an ample proof of his -love for her, and, moreover, so well express the regard which nearly -every one has for the Emerald Coast, that it is certainly pardonable to -quote them here:</p> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i3"><small>“MON PAYS</small><br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“Combien j’ai douce souvenance<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Du joli lieu de ma naissance!<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Ma sœur, qu’ils étaient beaux, les jours<br /></span> -<span class="i3">De France!<br /></span> -<span class="i1">O mon pays, sois mes amours,<br /></span> -<span class="i3">Toujours!<a name="page_283" id="page_283"></a><br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“Te souvient-il que notre mère,<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Au foyer de notre chaumière,<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Nous pressait sur son cœur joyeux,<br /></span> -<span class="i3">Ma chère,<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Et nous baisions ses blancs cheveux<br /></span> -<span class="i3">Tous deux?<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“Ma sœur, te souvient-il encore<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Du château que baignait la Dore?<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Et de cette tant vieille tour<br /></span> -<span class="i3">Du Maure,<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Ou l’airain sonnait le retour<br /></span> -<span class="i3">Du jour?<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“Te souvient-il du lac tranquille<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Qu’effleurait l’hirondelle agile,<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Du vent qui courbait le roseau<br /></span> -<span class="i3">Mobile,<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Et du soleil couchant sur l’eau,<br /></span> -<span class="i3">Si beau?<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“Oh! qui me rendra mon Hélène,<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Et ma montagne et le grand chêne?<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Leur souvenir fait tous les jours<br /></span> -<span class="i3">Ma peine:<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Mon pays sera mes amours<br /></span> -<span class="i3">Toujours!”<br /></span> -</div></div> - -<p>St. Servan, like St. Malo, is steeped in antiquity; practically they -form one town, although separated by the narrow strait which forms an -entrance to the outer harbour of St. Malo. St. Servan registers over a -hundred St. Malo craft engaged in fishing and in the coast trade. As the -ancient Gallo-Roman town<a name="page_284" id="page_284"></a> of Alethum, St. Servan, from very early times -an archbishopric, was ravaged by barbarians and by floods and had a -varied career, but at last the steady growth of the comparatively modern -St. Servan made it a prosperous town of perhaps twelve thousand souls.</p> - -<p>The chief of St. Servan’s architectural monuments is the great Tower -of Solidor, built far out upon the rocks at the mouth of the Rance. It -was built in 1384 by Duke John IV., at the epoch when he was combating -the pretensions of Josselin of Rohan, Bishop of St. Malo, for the -sovereignty of the town.</p> - -<p>It is a great triangular hold with a cylindrical tower at each corner. -Within is a stone staircase winding spirally upward and giving access to -various vaulted chambers. It could oppose no great strength to modern -artillery, and even in the olden time could not have been very secure, -could the besiegers but get to the base of its walls. At the same time, -from its isolated position, it served admirably as an outpost which at -least offered a superior vantage against an attacking force, and it is -unlikely that it could have been taken except by siege or by the fall of -the supporting city at its back.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 310px;"> -<a href="images/illpg_284_lg.jpg"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/illpg_284_sml.jpg" width="310" height="502" alt="Tower of Solidor, St. Servan" -title="Tower of Solidor, St. Servan" /></a> -<p class="caption">Tower of Solidor, St. Servan</p> -</div> - -<p>The Chapel St. Peter of Aleth has built into its fabric some fragments -of the ancient ninth<a name="page_285" id="page_285"></a> and tenth century cathedral of the same name.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 294px;"> -<a href="images/illpg_285_lg.jpg"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/illpg_285_sml.jpg" width="294" height="356" alt="Plans of the Tower of Solidor" -title="Plans of the Tower of Solidor" /></a> -<p class="caption">Plans of the Tower of Solidor</p> -</div> - -<p>There are many remains of the old city walls, and St. Servan ranks with -St. Malo as a vivid reminder of other days.</p> - -<p>There is one popular sight of Brittany near St. Malo, which cannot be -ignored,—the rock-carved<a name="page_286" id="page_286"></a> tomb of St. Budoc. This holy man lived in the -days when Celtic was a living tongue, and Irish, Scots, Welshmen, and -Bretons, one and all, used the same speech.</p> - -<p>Many a year has passed, and St. Budoc has been all but forgotten. -Besides his religious fervour, the memory of which exists but vaguely, -there is left as a reminder of his existence his tomb and a prophecy -which has come down by word of mouth through the natives.</p> - -<p>To-day there is a modern hermit who lives near the tomb of the saint, -and carves a sort of symbolical prophecy in stone for his own amusement -and the marvel of tourists.</p> - -<p>It is rather a cheap sort of a shrine, and one that is wholly visionary -so far as its real significance goes, but it is a very satisfying one -to most who view it, like the “Blarney Stone” and St. Patrick’s grave, -which are frauds of the first water.</p> - -<p>One comes to Rothéneuf—a little Breton coast village—by road, tramway, -or carriage from Paramé, if he comes at all. Here just beyond the -village itself the cliffs are curiously carved into all manner of human -shapes,—the work of the aforesaid hermit, who, although he be not a -young man, certainly is not so old as to have carved all the stones -which<a name="page_287" id="page_287"></a> here exist; at least they look much older, though the stress of -weather may account for that.</p> - -<p>Evidently there is a devotion for St. Budoc, and belief in his prophecy -of the downfall of France is one day or another to become true. The old -monk or priest—for in reality this hermit of to-day is a churchman—is -evidently the chief disciple of the cult, for he perpetuates his version -of this long-lost legend in his modern carvings.</p> - -<p>The text of this old prophecy was vague and visionary, but enough has -come down to place definitely the fact that a Napoleon was to rise and -fall in the beginning of the nineteenth century, and that the Church was -to be parted from its children,—referring presumably to the Concordat -of 1802.</p> - -<p>No version of the prophecy exists in Celtic literature, but the monk -Olivarius published, in Luxembourg in 1544, a version which was supposed -to have been handed down from the old Celtic monk himself. Since that -time contemporary literature has had various references thereto, the -last apparently in 1904, when one appeared in Gaston Medy’s “Echo of the -Marvellous.”</p> - -<p>This last version, or promulgation, of the<a name="page_288" id="page_288"></a> Celt’s prophecy carries -us even into the future, 432 moons from the foundation of the present -French republic, <i>i. e.</i> thirty-six years, which would be in 1906. “Woe -to thee, great city,” is a phrase which is supposed to refer to the fall -of Paris; whether as Rome fell, from an excess of glory, or into the -hands of the invader, is not stated. At any rate, the event is to come -to pass in the year of our Lord 1906, 432 moons from the beginning of -the great Republique Française. Let all who will be mindful.</p> - -<p>On the opposite bank of the Rance from St. Malo is Dinard-St. Énogat, -occupying a magnificent site known in part as the Bec de la Valle. The -country-houses of Dinard are famous, though they are built in that -vague architectural style accepted the world over as being something -appropriate to a species of residence less sumptuous than a palace or a -château.</p> - -<p>It is a pity that the word is not better understood by the people, -and a pity, too, that most villas in France—and in England, for that -matter—are abominable, queer chicken-coops, with names like Villa -Napoli, Villa Saint Germain, Villa la Belle-Issue, Villa Belle-Rive, and -Villa Bric-à-Brac. All these are found at Dinard, and more, and, as may -be imagined, the summer life of this town of country-houses<a name="page_289" id="page_289"></a> is in many -respects as gay and bizarre as the architecture and names of the villas -themselves.</p> - -<p>The aspect of the waterside of the charming little place—for Dinard is -charming, in spite of it all—belies these strictures somewhat, with -the warm glow of the sinking sun gilding the roof-tops, as the emerald -waters of the great bay ebb and flow beneath their feet.</p> - -<p>Dinard has another and more interesting side in an admirable -architectural monument,—the ruins of an ancient priory, founded in -1324 by Olivier and Geoffroy de Montfort. The fine Gothic chapel is now -ruined and moss-grown, but there are still to be seen the tombs of the -Chevaliers de Montfort, who were mighty chieftains in their day. Within -the grounds also is a curious statue of the Virgin placed beneath the -enormous fig-tree.</p> - -<p>The beach is of course the great attraction of the summer resident, -when he is not drinking cool drinks at the casino or eating at the café -restaurant on the terrace.</p> - -<p>St. Énogat, which is usually linked with the mention of Dinard by a -hyphen, has much the same aspect as its partner,—villas, Swiss châlets, -and cottages. St. Énogat bears the name of one of the first bishops of -Aleth, and its proximity to the great cliffs fringing the<a name="page_290" id="page_290"></a> coast, and -the high rocks just offshore, make its location even more beautiful than -that of Dinard itself. Westward of St. Énogat are St. Jacut, St. Cast, -and Cap Fréhel, and nearer St. Lunaire and St. Briac.</p> - -<p>All are very popular resorts during the summer months, and are -attractive spots—or would be but that accommodation in all is limited, -and what there is is sadly overcrowded for the three fine months of the -year.</p> - -<p>St. Lunaire has an ancient eleventh-century church, placing it somewhat -on the plane of an artistic shrine. Practically, the edifice is -abandoned to-day, but it contains the tomb of St. Lunaire, a work of the -thirteenth or fourteenth century, made up of some fragmentary sculptures -thought to have come from the primitive church.</p> - -<p>St. Briac has much the same characteristics, though of itself it counts -an all-the-year-round population of two thousand or more souls.</p> - -<p>It owes its name to a Celtic hermit-saint, who came from Ireland in -the early days of the evangelizing missions of the Irish monks, and -has the ruined Château of Pontbriant for an attraction. It has not the -misfortune to have become as fashionable as Dinard-St. Énogat, and is -therefore the more enjoyable. Truly<a name="page_291" id="page_291"></a> is it a delightful little corner -of the world, where those who are town-weary may take their ease and -ruminate on the futility of attempting to put order into the universe.</p> - -<p>This whole region is a wonderful galaxy of natural beauties, to be -discovered and appreciated only by oneself. They shall be nameless here -that that pleasure may not be curtailed.</p> - -<p>The route to Dinan from St. Malo by the tidal river Rance is one of -those enjoyable journeys which impress the mind in an indelible fashion. -It is a matter of twenty-four kilometres as the crow flies, and about -the same by the water route of the fishes.</p> - -<p>Dinan is a real mediæval town, with a wall or rampart something over a -mile in length. It is a most interesting centre for the charming country -round about, and is in itself a typical feudal relic of the days when -cities were enclosed by walls and only entered through fortified gates.</p> - -<p>Originally the thirteenth-century ramparts were defended by twenty-four -towers, of which a dozen, perhaps, still remain. Three great gateways, -the gates of Jerzual, of St. Malo, and St. Louis, still remain in all -their fortified splendour; the fourth, the Porte de Brest, has been -demolished.<a name="page_292" id="page_292"></a></p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 286px;"> -<a href="images/illpg_292_lg.jpg"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/illpg_292_sml.jpg" width="286" height="490" alt="The Valley of the Rance" -title="The Valley of the Rance" /></a> -<p class="caption">The Valley of the Rance</p> -</div> - -<p><a name="page_293" id="page_293"></a></p> - -<p>The old streets of the mediæval city still exist, too, much in the same -state as they were in mediæval times.</p> - -<p>The porches or covered passages are a feature of many of the old-time -houses, and are most quaint and artistic.</p> - -<p>The church of St. Malo dates from 1490, and that of St. Sauveur from -the twelfth to the fifteenth century. The chief historical figure of -Dinan’s past was Bertrand Duguesclin, the young Breton noble who so -distinguished himself in the fourteenth century on the side of France -against the English.</p> - -<div class="figright" style="width: 96px;"> -<a href="images/illpg_293_lg.jpg"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/illpg_293_sml.jpg" width="96" height="239" alt="Duguesclin, from his statue in the Abbey of St. Denis." -title="Duguesclin, from his statue in the Abbey of St. Denis." /></a> -<p class="caption">Duguesclin, from his statue in the Abbey of St. Denis.</p> -</div> - -<p>He was born at Motte-Broons, near Dinan, toward 1320. “He had a -sunburned face, with a snub nose, and green eyes, an awkward gait, and -a rough and untractable nature,” one reads in the words of Simeon Luce; -and from the existing portraits of him, all this is true.</p> - -<p>He was a warrior, from his earliest days, of the most thoroughgoing -type. He was the sort<a name="page_294" id="page_294"></a> of small boy whom mothers find looking for -trouble. He would lead on the village lads to fight, and, when victory -had all but appeared, on one side or the other, he would throw himself -into the breach to start the fight again, just like a wolf, after which -he would lead both sides to a tavern to drink, and heal old sores.</p> - -<p>On the ninth of July, 1812, the heart of the redoubtable Duguesclin was -brought to Dinan and placed in the north transept of the Church of St. -Sauveur amid an imposing assemblage.</p> - -<p>The sarcophagus bears the following inscription, which shows that the -warrior who really was responsible for the banishment of the English -from France “ranked in company with kings,” as his French admirers put -it.</p> - -<p class="c"><small> -GY : GIST : LE CUEUR : DE<br /> -MESSIRE : BERTRAN : DU GUEAQUI<br /> -EN : SON VIVAT CONETITABLE DE<br /> -FRACE : QUI : TRESPASSA : LE XIII<sup>e</sup><br /> -JOUR : DE : JULLET : L’AN : MIL III<sup>e</sup><br /> -IIII<sup>xx</sup> : DONT : SON : CORPS : REPOS<br /> -AVECQUES : CEULX : DES : ROIS<br /> -A SAINCT : DENIS EN FRANCE.</small><br /> -</p> - -<p>The great clock-tower, a fine fifteenth-century building with a massive -spire, is found in the Rue de l’Horloge. It was given to the town by -Anne of Brittany in 1507.<a name="page_295" id="page_295"></a></p> - -<p>The Château of Dinan was built by the Breton dukes (1382-87). Its -history was varied and vivid, as one reads in the pages of M. Gaultier -de Mottay.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 201px;"> -<a href="images/illpg_295_lg.jpg"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/illpg_295_sml.jpg" width="201" height="313" alt="Rez-de-Chausée of Donjon—DINAN" -title="Rez-de-Chausée of Donjon—DINAN" /></a> -</div> - -<p>Oliver Clisson, Gilles of Brittany, Viscount Rohan, Duchess Anne, -Laurent Hamon, and many others whose names are famous in the history of -Brittany have walked through these halls, of which only the hold to-day -remains as a tourist “sight.<a name="page_296" id="page_296"></a>”</p> - -<p>The Tower of Coëtquen, one of the ancient towers of the city wall, -forms practically a part of the old castle, but the keep, or the Queen -Anne’s Tower, a hundred or more feet in height and of four stories,—the -topmost reached by a spiral stairway of 148 steps,—is the most distinct -feature still standing.</p> - -<p>In the interior are a number of obscure cells which were, and indeed are -still, terrible dungeons. The guard-room is on the second floor, with -also a little room, which served as an oratory for the Duchess Anne. The -third floor is occupied by the Constable’s Hall, and the fourth by a -Hall of Arms, a fine vaulted apartment.</p> - -<p>To-day the castle is a prison, and the rank and file of visitors may -not enter this fine mediæval monument, but, if one have a proper -appreciation of the architectural delights of a mediæval fortress, and -be diplomatic in his request, very likely his wish to enter will be -gratified.</p> - -<p>One of the principal industries of Dinan is the fabrication of -sail-cloth. It is an admirably placed industry, with its market close -at hand, and most of the Breton and Norman fishing-boats of these parts -sport a full suit of Dinan manufacture.<a name="page_297" id="page_297"></a></p> - -<p>In the environs of Dinan are innumerable charming excursions mostly -neglected. One such must surely be included in one’s itinerary,—a visit -to the old Priory of Lehon, a dependency of the Abbey of Marmoutier.</p> - -<p>It was founded in 850 by Nominoë, in honour of St. Magloire, whose -relics were brought from the Isle of Jersey to Dinan. The ruins, -as seen to-day, are most ample and beautiful, showing the best of -thirteenth-century Gothic.</p> - -<p>Besides this, Lehon has the picturesque ruins of a twelfth and -thirteenth century castle perched high upon the summit of an eminence -overlooking the headwaters of the Rance. The castle came to the hands -of the Dukes of Brittany; Charles of Blois stayed there in 1356 after -his return from England, and Raoul Coëtquen was made captain in 1402, -since which time its history has been lost or hidden in the pages of the -untranslated chroniclers.</p> - -<p>In 1624 the priory monks robbed the castle for material with which to -construct their beautiful cloister, but enough remains to-day, hidden -away among a mass of ivy and lichen-grown ruins, to indicate its former -prominence.</p> - -<p>Altogether Lehon and its two romantic memories of other days is a -“sight” not to be missed.<a name="page_298" id="page_298"></a></p> - -<p>An old custom formerly prevailed here at Pentecost, when the newly -married were supposed to present themselves before the prior of the -monastery for a sort of last blessing, as it would seem.</p> - -<p>They sang the following refrain, and went back to their home, or to the -festival in the neighbouring village, with never a care beyond to-day:</p> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“Si je suis mariée vous le savez bien;<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Si je suis mal à l’aise vous n’en savez rien.<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Ma chanson est dite, je ne vous dois plus rien.”<br /></span> -</div></div> - -<p>This seems a philosophical way of looking at things, and shows an easy -conscience and open mind on the part of all concerned.</p> - -<p>Seated upon the western shore of the great Bay of Mont St. Michel is -Cancale, whence come the oysters. The six thousand inhabitants of this -quaintly rock-environed place have a physiognomy so distinctly their own -as to mark them for a type. Feyen-Perrin and his brother have painted -the Cancale people in a manner never to be forgotten by those who are -familiar with their work.</p> - -<p>Anciently Cancale was known as Cancaven, and is a survival among -neighbouring settlements which have succumbed to the encroachments of -the ocean.<a name="page_299" id="page_299"></a></p> - -<p>In 1032, it became a dependency of the Abbey of Mont St. Michel. In -1758, it was pillaged by the English under the Duke of Marlborough, and -the English fleet again bombarded it in 1779.</p> - -<p>La Houle is the real port of Cancale, and the centre for the oyster -industry. At low tide the boats of the fishers are drawn up on the -yellow sands, there to remain until the return of the tide. At low -tide all the village comes from the town above and repairs to the -oyster-beds. The general outgoing, which seems to the stranger the -emigration of the whole population, has been described by a Frenchman -as: “<i>Un défile, interminable, bruyant, cadencé, le bruit des pas coupé -de paroles et de rires.</i>”</p> - -<p>This great outpouring continues until quite all the available help of -the female persuasion has departed, leaving practically only the old and -infirm to guard the houses and shops until the return of the tide.</p> - -<p>Cancale is one of the most celebrated oyster-rearing districts of -the world, but, if the tourist arrive there during the summer months -which lack the “R,” he will eat not of them; the natives look upon it -as downright crime even to think of serving them to you; the mussel -will have to be your substitute. It is always<a name="page_300" id="page_300"></a> in season, though it -looks about as perishable in hot weather as the oyster, and probably -is so. Tradition and superstition account for the upholding of many -institutions in this world, and the oyster season appears to be one of -them.</p> - -<p>The celebrated Rocks of Cancale lie just below the town,—a black mass -of rocks, about which the waves of the ocean fawn and growl like a -parcel of wolves.</p> - -<p>The Point of Grouin is simply an exaggeration of the same rocky -formation as that of Cancale, and the same which unrolls itself all -around the coast up to Cape Fréhel. To the west is the Bay of St. Malo, -and to the east the Bay of Mont St. Michel.</p> - -<p>Michelet wrote of this famous mount off the Breton coast as follows:</p> - -<p>“The gigantic rock is an abbey, a cloister, a fortress, and a prison, -with exquisite sublimity and true dignity. It rises like a titanic -tower, rock upon rock, keep upon keep, and century upon century. Below -the monks; higher the iron cage of Louis XI. (who, it seems, left these -details rather numerously about his domain); higher yet the cell of -Louis XIV.; higher yet the prison of to-day. All is in a<a name="page_301" id="page_301"></a> whirlwind; -Mont St. Michel is a very sepulchre of peace.”</p> - -<p>Michelet’s was not wholly a cheerful view. He was rather a gloomy man, -it would seem, but it is perhaps proper enough to record his views -here, as most of us will praise this wonderful work to the limit of our -imagination.</p> - -<p>Really Mont St. Michel is not of Brittany. To-day the changing of the -boundary westward to the little river Couesnon brings it just over the -line into Normandy, though both ramblers in Normandy and ramblers in -Brittany may properly enough include it in their itineraries, and should -do so.</p> - -<p>To such spirits as like that sort of thing, there is a way open to the -landing, high up in the tower of the abbey, whence there is a wonderful -view. Michelet wrote of it, on the occasion of a visit, that it was -a place for fools; that he knew no spot more suitable to bring on an -attack of vertigo.</p> - -<p>Michelet’s description of the quicksands which surround the mount is -distinctly good. The native will tell you that you must not venture upon -them, but he himself does so, and nothing happens. In spite of this, -let the visitor so much as leave the causeway a dozen yards—to focus -his camera—and a half-dozen<a name="page_302" id="page_302"></a> burly fellows will hurl themselves upon -him and drag him back, declaring they have saved his life, which means -that one ultimately pays them something; a franc each is about the price -that they apparently consider a life worth. Sometimes some poor soul is -engulfed, but it is a first-class scare in most instances. Michelet says -of these quicksands (“<i>cendre blanche</i>”), “It is not land; it is not -sea; I myself only just escaped being engulfed.”</p> - -<p>As a sort of side-show to the wonderful Abbey of Mont St. Michel is the -stern and barren Isle of Tombelaine.</p> - -<p>It lies, also amid its own desert of sand or water, according to the -state of the tide, about a mile, or perhaps a little more, to the -north-east of the mount.</p> - -<p>It is a simple islet of granite, uncultivated, and as wild as it always -has been. It rises perhaps 125 feet above the sea-level, like a giant -stepping-stone, between the mount and the neighbouring coast before -Avranches in Normandy.</p> - -<p>Its history is intimately bound with that of the mount itself, but -to-day it has few, if any, visitors. It played a certain minor part in -the war of the Hundred Years, when it served as a sturdy buttress for -the English fleet.<a name="page_303" id="page_303"></a></p> - -<p>From the tenth to the seventeenth century it was occupied by a religious -colony from the abbey of the mount, and held a diminutive priory -bearing the vocable of Our Lady la Gisant; “a gentle Madonna,” says an -imaginative Frenchman, “standing beside the archangel with the sword.”</p> - -<p>In the midst of the Marsh of Dol—the great Bay of Mont St. Michel—is -a granite eminence some two hundred feet above the surrounding plain, -at the summit of which is built the little village of Mont Dol. It is -supposed to be the site of an ancient shrine consecrated to the druids.</p> - -<p>Two kilometres from Mont Dol is the great menhir of Champ Dolent, a -relic of the stone age which was pagan, but is to-day surmounted by a -Christian cross, which seems paradoxical. It has no pretence to beauty -or architectural grandeur, and is to be regarded only as a mysterious -curiosity.</p> - -<p>When one first comes to Dol in Brittany he is in a quandary. Which is -it, city or village? The writer does not know even yet. It has all the -quaintness and rustic picturesqueness of a mere hamlet, and again, -in its station, its hotels, and its tree-lined boulevard, it takes -on the aspect of a city. At any rate, if it belongs<a name="page_304" id="page_304"></a> to the latter -classification, it is somnolent, and accordingly delightful.</p> - -<p>“Here, my good fellow, can you direct me to the Hôtel de la Poste,” one -says to the first native he meets after leaving the station. “Certainly, -my good man,” he replies in an equally patronizing tone, “I will take -you there.” He declines all remuneration, of course, and will not be -patronized in any way. Decidedly he is a most independent individual, -but polite withal.</p> - -<p>Stendhal, in his “Traveller’s Memories,” said of the great frowning -cathedral of the episcopal city of Dol: “It is the most beautiful -example of a Gothic edifice which I have seen.” It is not difficult to -follow his reasoning, for the grim walls of its façade, in the simplest -and severest style, are indeed magnificent examples of the undecorated -Gothic of a very early period. Most folk, however, will not call it -beautiful when Chartres, Rheims, Beauvais, or even Sées are in mind.</p> - -<p>Dol, at any rate, forming the gateway to Brittany, from Normandy through -the Cotentin, was a most important centre of Christianity in the sixth -century.</p> - -<p>The foundation of Dol dates from 548, when a colony of Britons coming -from Ireland settled<a name="page_305" id="page_305"></a> here under the leadership of St. Samson, from -whom the present cathedral is named. This is but another of those links -which bind the history of Brittany with that of the Celts from overseas. -Legend continues the story thus: “Thou goest by the sea” (St. Samson was -told), “and where thou wilt disembark, thou shalt find a well. Over this -thou wilt build a church, and around it will group the houses forming -the city, of which thou wilt be bishop.”</p> - -<p>All this came to pass, and for long ages the town has been known as the -episcopal city of Dol. William the Conqueror besieged Dol in 1075, but -retired after forty days, having failed to sustain his attack. Henry II. -of England invaded the city, and Jean Lackland fortified himself here in -1203, but it was retaken by Guy de Thouars in the year following.</p> - -<p>Up to Revolutionary times the career of Dol was unceasingly riotous -and bloody, but little evidences of a part so played remain visible -to-day. All that reminds one of its antiquity is the charmingly severe -and simply outlined Cathedral of St. Samson, and the numerous timbered -houses with their street-front galleries, always a most interesting -feature of a mediæval town.</p> - -<p>Sixteen kilometres south of Dol is Combourg,<a name="page_306" id="page_306"></a> not an important town in -many ways, and yet very important, if one demands a sixteenth-century or -earlier label on all he admires.</p> - -<p>As a French visitor to Combourg has said, “La gare de Combourg is -not Combourg; you have yet fifteen hundred metres to go.” This is -not a great distance, but, as the town is so completely hidden from -the railway, the sensation is that of alighting far from a centre of -civilization.</p> - -<p>The Château of Combourg is one of those indescribable picturesque -fourteenth and fifteenth century structures which owe much to situation -and environment. It has a picturesquely disposed market clustered about -it, so that the cries of porkers and their venders mingle with the -stately pealing of the bell of the great clock, which rings out not only -the hour, but the “quarters” in a most sonorous note.</p> - -<p>The costumes of both the men and women of the region around Combourg -are exceedingly picturesque and novel; the men with blouse and jacket, -and the women in black and the coifs of Becherel, Hédé, Tentêniac, and -Miniac; all somewhat resembling one another, and that of Miniac looking -more like a great white-winged bishop’s mitre than anything else.<a name="page_307" id="page_307"></a></p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 214px;"> -<a href="images/illpg_307_lg.jpg"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/illpg_307_sml.jpg" width="214" height="349" alt="Coif of Miniac" -title="Coif of Miniac" /></a> -<p class="caption">Coif of Miniac</p> -</div> - -<p>More anciently Combourg Château was a feudal fortress, in an old -building of which, now swallowed up in the surrounding structures, the -infancy of René Chateaubriand was spent. There is also an old tower -dating from 1016, built by Gingoneus, a bishop of Dol. The present -château belongs to the Countess of Chateaubriand,<a name="page_308" id="page_308"></a> and is visible to the -curious public on Wednesday afternoons.</p> - -<p>The hall, the library, which contains the writing-table of the author of -the “Genius of Christianity,” and his bedroom, where is the little iron -bed on which he died in Paris,—all go to make of this a literary shrine -of prime importance.</p> - -<p>The Château of Combourg has a legend, too, but since it concerns -only the skeleton of a cat, which in life was supposed to be the -reincarnation of a former Count of Combourg, it seems unworthy of -repetition here.<a name="page_309" id="page_309"></a></p> - -<h3><a name="CHAPTER_X-2" id="CHAPTER_X-2"></a>CHAPTER X.<br /><br /> -<small>ON THE ROAD IN BRITTANY—MAYENNE, FOUGÈRES, LAVAL, AND VITRÉ</small></h3> - -<p>I<small>N</small> general aspect a Breton country-side differs widely from those of -Normandy. Here one comes upon hedgerows and an occasional bit of stone -wall, quite as one sees them in England.</p> - -<p>The towns and communities of Brittany are less numerous and less -populous, too, than those of Normandy, and paving is uncommon in the -towns, and were it not for the steep ascents and descents, by which one -leaves such places as Mayenne, Fougères, Josselin, Auray, or Quimperlé, -this would prove quite a blessing to the automobilist. As it is, while -they give variety to one’s journey by road, they do not by any means -permit of “plain sailing” at all times.</p> - -<p>The great national road from Paris to Brest crosses mid-Brittany, after -leaving Normandy, at Pré-en-Pail just beyond Alençon. It passes<a name="page_310" id="page_310"></a> through -the great towns of Mayenne, Fougères, and Rennes, where it joins the -highway from Paris by way of Chartres, Le Mans, Laval, and Vitré.</p> - -<p>From Rennes this road, No. 24, runs straight, almost as the crow -flies, to the tip of Finistère, by Montfort-sur-Meu, Loudéac, Carhaix, -Huelgoat, and Landerneau to Brest.</p> - -<p>This takes one through the very heart of Brittany, though by no means -is it the most interesting or the most prosperous. Mayenne, Fougères, -Vitré, and Laval form a quartette of Breton towns which, taken as a -whole, have characteristics quite similar, and yet different from those -in other parts. Virtually, they are all hill-towns, and therein lies -their resemblance, though their careers have been varied indeed.</p> - -<p>The run down into the valley of the river Mayenne, as one comes into the -town of the same name, is a wonderfully delightful and gentle descent -of perhaps a dozen kilometres. There is nothing very terrific about -it, nor is it of the frankly mountainous order, still the eminence to -the eastward is sufficiently elevated to give a singularly spacious -appearance to the landscape above the river valley itself; indeed, next -to that magnificent run down into Rouen<a name="page_311" id="page_311"></a>—from the height of Bon -Secours—it is one of the most splendidly scenic roads in all North -France.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 519px;"> -<a href="images/illpg_310_lg.jpg"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/illpg_310_sml.jpg" width="519" height="307" alt="Mayenne" -title="Mayenne" /></a> -<p class="caption">Mayenne</p> -</div> - -<p>At the bottom flows the Mayenne, joining the Loire at Angers, and on -its banks is nestled snugly the town of Mayenne itself, with a truly -delightful riverside hotel and church.</p> - -<p>Just below it is the ancient castle built on a rocky escarpment -overhanging the river. There are five great towers on the riverside, and -three others on the north, of which one alone has preserved its conical -roof. To-day it serves as a prison, but there are yet to be seen in its -interior some fragments of the ornamentation of the thirteenth century. -The terrace of the château forms a delightful promenade overlooking the -river.</p> - -<p>William the Conqueror besieged Geoffrey III. here in 1064, but the most -celebrated siege which the château underwent was that by the Count of -Salisbury in 1424.</p> - -<p>The Hôtel de Ville is an admirable relic of other days, though by no -means pretentious. It is a small, rectangular structure, its front -ornamented with two enormous solar devices, and the whole surmounted -by a graceful bell-tower. Behind the Hôtel de Ville stands a bronze -statue of Cardinal Cheverus, first Bishop<a name="page_312" id="page_312"></a> of Boston. The Church of -Notre Dame is really a grand structure, with its fine showing of splayed -buttresses. Its foundation dates from 1110, and it admirably exhibits -the best traditions of its time.</p> - -<p>Five kilometres away are the remains of the old Cistercian Abbey of -Fontaine-Daniel, founded in 1204 by Juhel III. There are some remarkable -fragments of its old foundation still remaining, but a large part of the -present edifice is of the seventeenth century. From Mayenne to Fougères, -still on the highroad to the west, one passes Ernée, whose name is not -known to many travellers and which is not marked on every map, though it -is a bustling town of five thousand inhabitants.</p> - -<p>The origin of this place is due to the foundation of a château—on the -site of the present quaint church—by the Lords of Mayenne, who were, in -the sixteenth century, of the house of Lorraine.</p> - -<p>Henri of Lorraine was killed by a musket-shot at the siege of Montaubon, -and was brought here to die in 1654.</p> - -<p>Some years later the Seigneury of Mayenne and Ernée passed to the hands -of Cardinal Mazarin, who transmitted it to his niece, and<a name="page_313" id="page_313"></a> gave the old -château for transformation into the present church.</p> - -<p>Javron, also on the way to Fougères, is a small town of two thousand -inhabitants, and the former site of a monastery, founded by Clotaire for -an anchorite named Constantin. The present church is built over the tomb -of this saint.</p> - -<p>The situation of Fougères is truly remarkable. It is, moreover, a -remarkable place in itself, and is to be reckoned as one of these -delightful spots to visit, which, if not exactly popular tourist -resorts, are at least as satisfying to the curiously inclined.</p> - -<p>Fougères in all ways is this, and more. It is almost the best example -of a walled and fortified town of the middle ages existing in all North -France. Its situation, on a great hill, with its tower-flanked walls and -gates, is one of surpassing impressiveness, although to-day the general -aspect of the little city of twenty thousand inhabitants is modern -enough.</p> - -<p>Fougères was one of the original nine baronies of Brittany, and owes -its origin to a château which Méen, the son of Juhel Béranger, Count of -Rennes, constructed at the beginning of the ninth century.</p> - -<p>To-day the city walls, the remains of the château,<a name="page_314" id="page_314"></a> and the gates and -watch-towers are admirably preserved. The castle itself is nothing more -than a vast ruin, whose entrance, formed by three towers, plainly shows -it to date from the twelfth century.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 294px;"> -<a href="images/illpg_314_lg.jpg"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/illpg_314_sml.jpg" width="294" height="318" alt="Plan of the Ancient Walls and Towers of Fougères" -title="Plan of the Ancient Walls and Towers of Fougères" /></a> -<p class="caption">Plan of the Ancient Walls and Towers of Fougères</p> -</div> - -<p>There is a great tower yet remaining—one of a twin pair—known as the -Tower of Coigny, from a former governor, and within this tower is an -ancient chapel.<a name="page_315" id="page_315"></a></p> - -<p>There are three other celebrated towers, well-nigh as perfect as they -were in the middle ages as far as their general outlines are concerned. -The keep was razed in 1630, but the inner wall which surrounded it, with -its three angular towers, is still to be seen. The Tower of Melusine -encloses a museum in which are many relics and curiosities of a period -contemporary with the castle itself. The ramparts of the town are -more or less ruinous, but are still to be seen throughout its whole -circumference. No part of this feature, however, dates from before the -fifteenth century.</p> - -<p>There are two admirable churches,—relics of the middle ages,—St. -Sulpice and St. Leonard, also the ancient convent of the Urbanists, -dating from 1689, now barracks.</p> - -<p>There are many fine old houses in wood and stone scattered about the -city, and an octagonal tower, in which is a great clock whose bell was -cast in 1304 by Rolland Chaussière.</p> - -<p>North of the town is the Forest of Fougères, composed principally of -great beeches. Within the forest are the ruins of an ancient convent of -the Franciscans, and near the little hamlet of Landeau are the famous -“Caverns of Landeau,” constructed, it is said, in 1173 by Raoul II. of -Fougères, to hide his riches and<a name="page_316" id="page_316"></a> those of his vassals from the rapacity -of the troops of Henry II. of England.</p> - -<p>Dropping down again to the main route from Paris, which joins with that -by the way of Mayenne and Fougères at Rennes, one enters Laval, the -first Breton town of any magnitude on this route, as one comes westward.</p> - -<p>It is a veritable local metropolis, and, like Mayenne, farther up the -river, it spreads itself amply on both sides of the stream which flows -southward to join the Loire at Angers, just below the country.</p> - -<p>The first Château of Laval was built by the Count Guidon or Guy to -protect the Bretons from the invasion of Charlemagne or his successors. -The second Guy received a charter from the Bishop of Mans, dated in the -fifth year of the reign of King Robert (1002), and this designates him -as the real founder of the Château of Laval. The town became the seat of -a barony, afterward a county, of which the possessors were ever famous -for their personal valour and their high lineage. Among them were the -Montmorencys, the Montforts, and the Colignys.</p> - -<p>When, in the fifteenth century, the English had become virtual masters -of Maine, Laval<a name="page_317" id="page_317"></a> alone resisted their efforts, thanks to the energy of a -certain Anne of Laval.</p> - -<p>The historical records of the town and the château are ample and -eventful, even down to as late a day as 1871, when, after the battle of -Mans, General Chanzy retreated upon Laval.</p> - -<p>It was in the environs of Laval that the four ancient smugglers, the -brothers Jean, François, Pierre, and René Cottereau, known as the -Chouans (because of their owl signal, as the French give it), first -rallied and organized the bands of partisans which gradually adopted the -name.</p> - -<p>The keep of the château is a great cylindrical tower of the twelfth -century, remarkable for its height, its size, and the wonderful -carpentry of its roof. The great interior court is bordered on two sides -with a magnificent Renaissance structure attributed to Guy XVI., Count -of Laval and Governor of Brittany in 1525. The chapel has now been given -up to the prisoners sheltered within the castle. It is the masterpiece -of the whole work, and dates from the eleventh century.</p> - -<p>The Church of the Trinity, made a cathedral in 1855, was in 1790 the -seat of the Assemblée, but in its most ancient parts dates from the -episcopate of Hildebert of Lavardin (1110).</p> - -<p>There are some remains of the town’s ancient<a name="page_318" id="page_318"></a> fortifications yet to -be seen, such as the Renaise Tower and the Spur Tower, which are in -every way as suggestive of former importance as the remains of the -castle itself. The Beucheresse Gate is another fragment of these same -fortifications.</p> - -<p>In Laval are ten thousand workmen engaged in the production of tent -and awning cloth. Laval is a great wheat market for the prolific -wheat-growing region round about, so its commercial importance of to-day -is quite as firmly established as is its historic past.</p> - -<p>Laval was the birthplace of Ambroise Paré, the founder of French -surgery. It was he who drew the spear-head from the cheek of Balafré, -and he who declared the malady of Francis I. to be incurable.</p> - -<p>His statue bears the following inscription, “I dressed the wound, and -God healed it.”</p> - -<p>One cannot say too much in praise of Vitré, though it does smack of -the popular tourist resort, with hotels whose runners tout for your -patronage, and picture post-card sellers, who seem to think that you -prefer their wares to viewing the sights themselves; but the hotels are -amply endowed with those creature comforts that most of us value highly, -and, if you wish, you will be put to sleep in a hygienic bed<a name="page_319" id="page_319"></a><a name="page_320" id="page_320"></a>room, -which is something like a prison-cell, but which must truly be hygienic, -judging from its get-up.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 312px;"> -<a href="images/illpg_319_lg.jpg"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/illpg_319_sml.jpg" width="312" height="492" alt="Beucheresse Gate, Laval" -title="Beucheresse Gate, Laval" /></a> -<p class="caption">Beucheresse Gate, Laval</p> -</div> - -<p>These rooms, installed by the “Touring Club of France,” are now to -be found sprinkled here and there throughout the land, and, if white -lacquered walls and ceilings and iron beds, and simple draperies and no -carpets,—but highly waxed floors instead,—can ensure a superlative -cleanliness and airiness, why, so much the more welcome they are; -and surely the weary tourist ought not to mind whether he sleeps -in a cubicle or not. Again, the fare of this particular hotel (the -Travellers’) is so excellent that he ought to be willing to sleep on the -proverbial plank.</p> - -<p>Vitré, in spite of all novelty, is a true city of the past, and one -literally walks the by-paths of history when he traverses its streets. -All at once one comes to the ancient and theatrical-looking Château of -the Tremoilles, Vitré’s most noble family of other days.</p> - -<p>The town has undergone many sieges. Charles VIII. captured it, and in -1488 sojourned in it for some days. During the wars of the League, the -Rieux and the Colignys led the revolt, and it served for some years as a -strong place of resort for the Huguenots.<a name="page_321" id="page_321"></a> Within the two hundred years -following, the Breton Parliament, alternately presided over by the Dukes -of Vitré and of Rohan, met here many times, always amid a great and -joyous festival given by the town.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 261px;"> -<a href="images/illpg_321_lg.png"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/illpg_321_sml.png" width="261" height="185" alt="Plan of Vitré in 1811 Showing City Walls" -title="Plan of Vitré in 1811 Showing City Walls" /></a> -<p class="caption">Plan of Vitré in 1811 Showing City Walls</p> -</div> - -<div class="captionn"> -<ul><li> A—Château</li> -<li> B—Place du Château</li> -<li> C—Fosses</li> -<li> D—Dependencies of Château (non-existent to-day)</li> -<li> F—Porte d’Enhayt</li> -<li> G—Porte de Gastesel</li> -<li> H—Eglise Notre Dame</li></ul> -</div> - -<p>All the activity in the past has worked for the preservation of many -ancient memorials.</p> - -<p>The aspect of the town is not so ruinously picturesque as Fougères, nor -again so trim and<a name="page_322" id="page_322"></a> neat as Mayenne or Laval, but more than either of -these it preserves to-day its ancient outlook at every turn.</p> - -<p>“<i>II n’est plus que Vitré en Bretagne, Avignon dans le Midi, qui -conservent au milieu de notre époque leur intacte configuration du -moyen-âge</i>” (Victor Hugo).</p> - -<p>The château itself has been recently restored, and ranks as one of the -most perfectly preserved specimens of military architecture in all -Brittany. One may visit the interior of this old fortress-château in the -care of a painstaking porter.</p> - -<p>The principal mass, known as the châtelet, is the best preserved, -and, flanking it on both sides, are series of crenelated towers and -machicolated walls. In the courtyard is the eleventh-century château, -now incorporated in the later work.</p> - -<p>On the same side is a charming Renaissance tower, built by Guy XVI., and -known as the “Tribune of Tremoille.” The five sides of this admirable -architectural detail are charmingly decorated in sculptured stone, and -on one is the inscription taken from the Book of Job: “<span class="smcap">Post Tenebras -Spero Lucem</span>,” the Tremoille motto.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 310px;"> -<a href="images/illpg_322_lg.jpg"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/illpg_322_sml.jpg" width="310" height="510" alt="Château de Vitré" -title="Château de Vitré" /></a> -<p class="caption">Château de Vitré</p> -</div> - -<p><a name="page_323" id="page_323"></a></p> - -<p>Within is a museum with divers collections <a name="page_324" id="page_324"></a>of many things of an era -contemporary with the structure itself.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 259px;"> -<a href="images/illpg_323_lg.jpg"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/illpg_323_sml.jpg" width="259" height="451" alt="Tower of St. Martin, Vitré" -title="Tower of St. Martin, Vitré" /></a> -<p class="caption">Tower of St. Martin, Vitré</p> -</div> - -<p>Opposite the great entrance gateway to the castle is a modest little -house, once the residence (or temporary abode) of Madame de Sévigné, and -now occupied by the “Cercle Militaire.”</p> - -<p>In the environs—five kilometres to the south—is the Château of -Rochers, better known as the domicile of Madame de Sévigné, and one of -the stock “sights.” It was from the Château of Rochers that she dated so -large a number of her letters in 1670-71.</p> - -<p>In a letter bearing date of the twenty-second of July, 1671, she writes -thus to Madame de Grignan:</p> - -<p>“Madame de Chaulnes arrived on Sunday, but in what manner think you? On -her beautiful feet, between eleven and twelve at night. One might think -that Vitré was in Bohemia.</p> - -<p>“She made no ceremony of her coming.... She had come from Nantes by La -Guerche, and her carriage stuck fast between two rocks half a league -from Vitré.”</p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 488px;"> -<a href="images/illpg_325_lg.jpg"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/illpg_325_sml.jpg" width="488" height="300" alt="CHATEAU de ROCHERS" -title="CHATEAU de ROCHERS" /></a> -</div> - -<p><a name="page_325" id="page_325"></a></p> - -<p>It was from the Château of Rochers that Madame de Sévigné wrote to her -daughter: “On Sunday last, just as I had sealed my former letter, I saw -enter our courtyard four <a name="page_326" id="page_326"></a>chariots with six horses, with fifty mounted -guards, many led horses, and many mounted pages.”</p> - -<p>These were gallant days at Madame de Sévigné’s Breton home, and to read -all of her letters from Rochers—mainly to her daughter—is to get a -wonderful epitome of the seventeenth-century social life in this part of -France.</p> - -<p>On the above occasion the company included M. de Chaulnes, M. de Rohan, -M. de Lavardin, M. de Coëtlegon, and M. de Locmaria, the Baron de Guais, -the Bishops of Rennes and St. Malo, “and eight or ten I knew not,” she -continued.</p> - -<p>Throughout the château and its dependencies, the illusion of Madame de -Sévigné’s time has been well kept up unto to-day. One learns that the -château became the property of the Sévignés upon the marriage of Anne of -Mathefelon, “Lady of Rochers,” with William of Sévigné, chamberlain to -the Duke of Brittany.</p> - -<p>The kindly and well-meaning concierge, or cicerone, or whatever one -chooses to call him or her who conducts him over the château and its -grounds, is somewhat of a bore, though one has not the courage to cut -off the prattle for fear he may lose something which may not have been -offered to others.<a name="page_327" id="page_327"></a></p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 242px;"> -<a href="images/illpg_327_lg.jpg"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/illpg_327_sml.jpg" width="242" height="304" alt="Arms of Madame de Sévigné" -title="Arms of Madame de Sévigné" /></a> -<p class="caption">Arms of Madame de Sévigné</p> -</div> - -<p>It is somewhat disconcerting and even annoying to be told, -however,—when about to stroll down a tree-alleyed path,—that “the -marchioness never went there.” Of course it’s pure conjecture on the -part of this twentieth-century guide, since the noble marchioness -has been dead some two hundred years or more, but, as aforesaid, the -interruption fascinates one with its coolness.<a name="page_328" id="page_328"></a></p> - -<p>At the right of the château are the gardens traced by the famous -Lenôtre. In the “Letters” one reads frequent references to these great -gardens with their vast and ancient forests of tall timber.<a name="page_329" id="page_329"></a></p> - -<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XI-2" id="CHAPTER_XI-2"></a>CHAPTER XI.<br /><br /> -<small>RENNES AND BEYOND</small></h3> - -<p>R<small>ENNES</small> was once a great provincial capital, as great politically, -perhaps, as Rouen, but it has not a tithe of the fascination or wealth -of attraction of the Norman metropolis, and never had. Its Cathedral of -St. Pierre is a cold, unfeeling thing, and its eighteenth-century town -hall, its great military barracks, and its palace of a university are in -no way great or lovable architectural monuments. As an offset against -the mediocrity, is the somewhat bare exterior of the court-house, built -in 1618 for the Breton Parliament, and furnished now, as then, in most -luxurious fashion.</p> - -<p>The Salle des Pas-Perdus is a vast apartment, most delightfully planned -and decorated, and of the Grand Parliamentary Chamber the same may be -said. Above the floor of this chamber are still to be seen the tribunes -where the dames of other days, of the days of Madame de Sévigné, -assisted at the sessions.<a name="page_330" id="page_330"></a></p> - -<p>The town hall contains a library of eighty thousand volumes, of which -one hundred or more are first editions, and six hundred manuscripts.</p> - -<p>The museums of the university palace are exceedingly rich in treasure, -and are in every way worthy of a great provincial capital.</p> - -<p>For the rest, Rennes is a most ordinary, uninteresting town, though it -does possess two mediæval monuments of remark: the Porte Mordelaise, -a historic souvenir of the military architecture of the middle -ages, and Church of Our Lady, the ancient chapel and cloister of an -eleventh-century monastery founded by the Bishop St. Mélaine.</p> - -<p>There are many fine old Renaissance houses scattered here and there -about the town, but the general aspect is modern, and mediocre at that. -Rennes would have been called by century-ago travellers “a well-built -town,” and such it certainly is, as becomes the ancient capital of the -duchy of Brittany.</p> - -<p>In later days it is mostly known to the general reader as the scene -of the famous Dreyfus trial, and its only liveliness comes from the -officers of the tenth army corps, who, of a summer’s night, frequent the -coffee-rooms opposite the court-house or the theatre, or promenade<a name="page_331" id="page_331"></a><a name="page_332" id="page_332"></a> in -the Thabor and the flower-garden, the old gardens of the Benedictine -convent.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 486px;"> -<a href="images/illpg_331_lg.jpg"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/illpg_331_sml.jpg" width="486" height="290" alt="Monastery of St. Melaine, Rennes" -title="Monastery of St. Melaine, Rennes" /></a> -<p class="caption">Monastery of St. Melaine, Rennes</p> -</div> - -<p>Just previous to the Revolution, there were stirring times in Rennes, -when a marshal of France commanded the troops camped within the city. -The discontent of the people had arisen from two distinct causes, the -price of bread and the abolition of its ancient parliament. The former -seems a good enough excuse, but the latter is inexplicable, except, -perhaps, as the snuffing out of an ancient source of local pride. It was -to Rennes that Père Caussin, the father confessor of Louis XIII., was -sent by Richelieu, when he proved himself incapable of becoming the tool -of the cardinal. The prison of state at Rennes was a terrible place in -those days, but the true churchman preferred it to exile as a missionary -in the wilds.</p> - -<p>All this and much more of political history made Rennes a famous centre -in times past, but to-day it is so much like a bad imitation of Paris, -that in desperation the stranger within the gates finally takes his -departure for more idyllic parts, with the vow that never again will he -seek to learn of present-day Brittany from the cafés and boulevards of -Rennes.</p> - -<p>One other comment may be made on the unloveliness<a name="page_333" id="page_333"></a> of Rennes as a place -of temporary sojourn; and that is on its cab-drivers. The driver of a -fiacre in the average Breton large town is like his fellows of Paris. -He drives with a loose rein, and rushes helter-skelter down narrow -streets with never a care for other traffic, or for foot-passengers, -save a shouted, “<i>He, la-bas!</i>” which is so sudden and unforeseen that -it is quite useless as a warning. There have been those who have said -that the hoot of an automobile’s horn would drive even the “<i>sense of -traffic</i>”—a new sense recently discovered by the Parisian medical -journals—from out of the brain of even the most careful of persons! -This is as naught compared to the Breton cab-driver’s stentorian “<i>He, -la-bas!</i>”</p> - -<p>As one comes to the open country again, he leaves all these distractions -behind, and revels in nature, and if he be travelling by road, in the -stubbornness of cows and sheep and the aggressiveness of geese and -ducks, all road-users like himself.</p> - -<p>Westward of Rennes, twenty kilometres by road, is Montfort-sur-Meu, -a charming small town, situated upon the banks of two tiny rivers. -Its origin dates back to an ancient eleventh-century fortress, which -remains to-day<a name="page_334" id="page_334"></a> in the form of a great cylindrical machicolated tower. -The Seigneury of Montfort, since the fifteenth century, has passed -successively, by marriage or by heritage, through the houses of Laval, -Rieux, Coligny, and La Trémouille.</p> - -<p>Next is Montauban, with a fine, moss-grown ruin of a château, dating -from the fifteenth century; the town itself numbers three thousand -inhabitants, but it does not look it.</p> - -<p>St. Méen, a dozen kilometres farther on, was born of a monastery founded -in the tenth century by a holy man of its name. It was destroyed and -rebuilt many times in the years to follow, but its old abbatial church -still exists, one tower coifed by a dome, and another smaller and flat. -But no one comes here to see this fine old monkish relic but the farming -folk from round about, though St. Méen is a town of three thousand souls -and an idyllic artists’ sketching-ground. No colony of painters has yet -settled here, leaving it a wholly new field to exploit by any painter -looking for new worlds to conquer.</p> - -<p>Loudéac and Pontivy, the one in the Côtes du Nord, and the other in -the Morbihan, are two characteristically Breton towns bearing no -relation whatever to the outside world. It<a name="page_335" id="page_335"></a> seems doubtful indeed if the -inhabitants of these two centres are aware that there is any outside -world, so taken up are they with their own little affairs.</p> - -<p>Loudéac has some six thousand inhabitants, but it has no apparent -industries to hold all these people together, and it seems as if they -had simply grouped themselves at the crossing of five great routes and -built a town. Its foundation does not go very far back into antiquity; -its parish church is only 150 years old, but the Chapel of Notre Dame -Vertus dates from the thirteenth century.</p> - -<p>In October, November, and December are held great cider-apple markets, -which, from their magnitude, would seem to be the chief source of income -of the population.</p> - -<p>The ancient slogan of Pontivy, born of Revolutionary times, was “Freedom -or Death,” which is not far different from the battle-cry of socialists -the world over to-day. The condition of the inhabitants of Pontivy, -however, does not differ from most folk elsewhere, and the frowning -walls of its old castle ironically point to the fact that the time has -not yet come when a successful social revolution can be steered through -the breakers ahead—not even in France, where indeed there are even -more<a name="page_336" id="page_336"></a> advanced ideas on the subject than in Germany itself.</p> - -<p>The memory of this event, though the “Treaty of Pontivy” was sent -broadcast through all the communes of France, has quite died out, and -the serenity of a little Breton market-town long ago settled upon -Pontivy, with nothing but a dim memory existing to neutralize the -admiration one is bound to have for the town’s wonderfully picturesque -castle. It is a grand ruin with crumbled roof and walls, but its -outlines are as clear as ever they were, and if it has not the magnitude -or magnificence of many others of its class, it looks far more imposing, -and forms an exquisite stage setting for any mediæval romance one is -able to conjure up. The history of Pontivy and its castle is this:</p> - -<p>The town owes its origin to a monastery built here in the seventh -century by St. Ivy, an English monk. The castle, however, was a -foundation of seven hundred years later, by John of Rohan, in 1485. At -the creation of the duchy of Rohan, in 1663, Pontivy became the first -seat of this jurisdiction.</p> - -<p>At the Revolution the famous Pontivy treaty mentioned came into -being, with the result that in 1802 a consuls’ decree prescribed the -construction<a name="page_337" id="page_337"></a> of a vast barrack at Pontivy, and the canalization of the -river Blavet, upon which it sits, down to the sea.</p> - -<p>Napoleon, however, by a decree given at Milan, sought to create a new -town south of the present city, whose name should be Napoleonville. -All this because Pontivy had declared for the rights of man. When the -Revolutionists sought power Pontivy had every chance, but with Napoleon -his desire was to efface it.</p> - -<p>Pontivy is distinctly Breton in every aspect; its manners, customs, and -above all its costumes. Decidedly one’s itinerary in Brittany should be -made to include it.</p> - -<p>Rostrenen is a delightful old town banked high upon a hillside some -six hundred feet above the valley. The old-time collegiate church is a -thirteenth-century foundation, which, though restored in our day, has -all the loveliness of the era of its foundation well preserved.</p> - -<p>Like the church at Josselin it is called Our Lady of the -Blackberry-bush, from a miraculous Virgin found beneath a -blackberry-bush. The great day of pilgrimage to this shrine is the -fifteenth of August.</p> - -<p>Carhaix is a little Breton town now all but<a name="page_338" id="page_338"></a> shorn of its former -importance, though its breed of cattle is prized above all others in -Brittany,—as if that were enough to keep its memory alive. Anciently -Carhaix was the capital of the Vorganium, whose peoples took an active -part in the wars against Cæsar. Seven Roman ways centred here, and there -are yet to be seen the remains of an ancient Roman aqueduct.</p> - -<p>Vorganium ultimately lost its rank, and was made a part of the realm -of Cornouaille founded by King Grollo, who gave Carhaix its present -name—then Ker-Ahès.</p> - -<p>Carhaix is the birthplace of La Tour d’Auvergne, “the first Grenadier of -France.” His career was almost legendary, and after his famous infernal -column which went up against the Spaniards in the Pyrenees, he retired -to the city of his birth, and took up the study of the Celtic tongue. In -1796, when the Terror broke out, at the age of fifty-two, he took the -haversack and cartridge-box of a simple soldier, to replace the son of -an old friend who had been drawn by conscription. He would never advance -a single grade, but remained in the ranks from this time forward, -and was killed at the battle of Oberhausen in Bavaria. His heart is -enshrined in the Hôtel des Invalides at Paris,<a name="page_339" id="page_339"></a> having been brought -there and buried with great pomp in 1904.</p> - -<p>Carhaix has a real novelty in its horse-market, held before the Church -of St. Trémeur. There is nothing actually profane or sacrilegious -about this perhaps; but yet again, perhaps there is. Certainly it is -incongruous to see a long string of horses tethered to the very church -door-knob itself, with the breeders seated back against the church wall -smoking tobacco and eating and drinking.</p> - -<p>Huelgoat is in the very heart of Finistère. It is as typical in the -manners and customs of these parts as is Pont l’Abbé in Cornouaille or -Auray in Morbihan. It has one of the finest sites given to a town in all -Brittany, and abounds in quaintness and beauty.</p> - -<p>There are various ecclesiastical monuments and religious shrines in and -near the town, of which the guide-books tell, and all are well worth -visiting.</p> - -<p>The market-place of Huelgoat does not differ greatly from other -market-places in Brittany. The costumes are brilliant in magpie -colours,—if white coifs flashing in the sunlight can be said to make -colour,—and the little life and the little affairs of the peasant -people scintillate and fluctuate from day to day as if<a name="page_340" id="page_340"></a> they were the -most serious and momentous things in all the world.</p> - -<p>Above, on the right, rises the quaint bell-tower of the -sixteenth-century church, not beautiful of itself, perhaps, but grouping -wonderfully with the moving foreground.</p> - -<p>Huelgoat is a great place for ducks, evidently, for ducks big, little, -and of all colours of the rainbow are apparently the chief and staple -article of trade. What the value may be to-day, as compared with what it -was last market-day, no one can prognosticate. Two francs is certainly -not much for a nice fat duck, just waiting to be plucked and garnished -with green peas, but two francs for a brace is cheaper still, and two -francs for a whole flock or bevy, or whatever formation ducks group -themselves in, is a still better bargain, and on occasions you may -buy a whole duck and drake family—father and mother and two or three -youngsters—for a matter of <i>une pièce</i>, which is the Breton’s way of -counting a hundred sous or five francs.</p> - -<p>From Huelgoat the highroad branches to Morlaix in the northwest, and -Landerneau, directly to the west, when one comes once more on the -national road, running westward from Alençon by way of Fougères and the -north to Brest.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 299px;"> -<a href="images/illpg_340_lg.jpg"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/illpg_340_sml.jpg" width="299" height="492" alt="Huelgoat" -title="Huelgoat" /></a> -<p class="caption">Huelgoat</p> -</div> - -<p><a name="page_341" id="page_341"></a></p> - -<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XII-2" id="CHAPTER_XII-2"></a>CHAPTER XII.<br /><br /> -<small>RELIGIOUS FESTIVALS AND PARDONS</small></h3> - -<p>B<small>RITTANY</small> has been called “the Land of Calvaries and Pardons.” This does -not mean much to one who has never come under the spell of these strange -sights and survivals, but it means a great deal to those who realize to -the full the real significance of the devoutness and religious motives -which inspire the Breton folk to worship God in a manner which, in the -present age of disregard for the Christian religion of our forefathers, -seems to be playing less and less a foremost part.</p> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“Venez donc un tour au Pays de St. Yves.<br /></span> -<span style="margin-left: 4em;">. . . . . . . . . .</span><br /> -<span class="i1">Au pays du Creizker finement dentelé.<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Venez donc faire un tour au Pays de Calvaires,<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Au Pays des Pardons mystiques et joyeux.”<br /></span> -</div></div> - -<p class="nind">So sang Theodore Botrèl in a charming series of verses written as an -invitation to his fellow Frenchmen to know more of the ancient province<a name="page_342" id="page_342"></a> -of Brittany. Since Brittany is so very religious, the most devout of -all the provinces of the France of to-day, the following account of -the disposition of certain observances under the care of the state is -apropos.</p> - -<p>France is said to be Catholic, because the majority of the people -profess Catholicism, which apparently answers their wants better than -any other. As a matter of fact, however, there is the coëstablishment -of four religions, all of which are recognized by the state and their -ministers paid by the state. So, virtually, there are four state -religions, if they can be so called. In truth, there is no religious -head in France; neither the chief of state, the Archbishop of Paris -(there are three other heads of religions, so manifestly one could not -be chosen), nor the minister of public worship can be called upon to -fill the office, hence there is no national religion, though the Roman -Catholic faith predominates to-day as in the past.</p> - -<p>Since we are concerned herein with Brittany alone, and since the Breton -is accounted the most devoutly Catholic of all Frenchmen, it is enough -to define the organization of the Roman Catholic religion alone, leaving -the question of the Calvinists, the Lutherans, and the Israelites<a name="page_343" id="page_343"></a> quite -apart, as they exist not at all in Brittany as a factor of the local -conditions of life.</p> - -<p>The parish is the unit in the Catholic Church organization in France, -as the <i>commune</i> is the unit in civil administration; the parishes are -divided into <i>curés</i> and <i>succursales</i>.</p> - -<p>The first class, which number forty-five hundred throughout France, have -for their pastor a priest who is immovable, nominated by the bishop with -the approval of the government. The second class have a pastor who is -nominated by the bishop, but who can be removed or replaced. The parish -priest may have one or more assistants. Above the parish priest in rank -is the bishop.</p> - -<p>In general the bishoprics correspond with the departments, though there -are eighty-four dioceses and but sixty-seven bishops, the archbishops of -the “ecclesiastical provinces”—which often include several departments -and dioceses—making up the number.</p> - -<p>In Brittany the Departments of Ille-et-Vilaine, Côtes du Nord, -Finistère, Morbihan, and Loire-Inférieure have a bishopric, with an -archbishopric at Rennes.</p> - -<p>The bishops are nominated by the chief of the state, but are invested -canonically by the Pope. They are assisted by vicars-general,<a name="page_344" id="page_344"></a> who -undertake the administrative functions of the diocese. The canonical -chapter of the cathedral, the diocesan seminary, and all other -seminaries are under the authority of the vicar-general.</p> - -<p>Above the bishops are the archbishops, who administer to the wants of -their diocese in the same way as the bishops, and, in addition, preside -at all provincial councils, ordain the bishops, and in general have a -certain jurisdiction over the bishoprics of their sees.</p> - -<p>The ecclesiastical provinces, as the great administrative districts of -the Church are known, correspond to-day, in a great part, to the ancient -provinces of the Roman epoch in Gaul, as the bishoprics themselves -correspond with the ancient cities and towns.</p> - -<p>Higher up even than the archbishops are the cardinals, nominated by the -Pope with the concurrence of the head of the French nation. To-day there -are five cardinals in France, all being titularies of one of the Roman -churches and members of the Sacred College which elects the Pope.</p> - -<p>Those who know Brittany will recognize as the foremost trait and -characteristic of the people their devotion to religious forms and -ceremonies.<a name="page_345" id="page_345"></a></p> - -<p>It has been said that by nature the Bretons are conservative. This is -indeed true enough, but they are something more, they are superstitious, -not only with regard to certain phases of their religion, but also -with respect to many of their local customs, which have naught to do -with religion. It is said that belief in witchcraft still endures, and -certain it is that folk-lore and fairy-lore are, in some parts, quite as -much of the life of the people as is the case in the bogs of Ireland. -The Celtic imagination, which is the same in both instances, doubtless -accounts for this. What the Bretons really are, or have been, though -they have not often been accused of it, is pagan,—at least some of them -are. It was only in the seventeenth century that the pagan cult—as a -body of magnitude—was suppressed. This again was a survival, of course, -from the barbarous rites and practices of the druids, which indeed were -the same elsewhere, so it need not be laid up against the Bretons alone.</p> - -<p>Probably those vast colonies of megalithic monuments at Carnac, and -their orphaned brothers and sisters scattered elsewhere throughout -Brittany, did much to keep the flames aglow on pagan altars, and -even to-day it is easy to perceive with what awe and veneration<a name="page_346" id="page_346"></a> the -simple-minded Breton peasant regards these weird survivals of other -days. At any rate, Breton religion to-day is a devotion to many forms -and ceremonies.</p> - -<p>Brittany has been called the land of pardons (<i>pays des pardons</i>). Every -one knows of these great Breton festivals and of their significance. If -one travel between May and October, scarcely a week will pass without -his falling unawares upon one or another of these great sacred fêtes.</p> - -<p>All Bretons do not give to these rites the sacred regard with which -they were originally intended to be endowed. Decidedly they have been -profaned only too often, and at times there is a little too much -license. The Breton pardon is by no means to be thought of in the same -manner as the kermess of Flanders, which is a merrymaking pure and -simple, with not even a side-light of religion thrown upon it.</p> - -<p>The five great pardons of Brittany are held each year as follows:</p> - -<p>“The Pardon of the Poor,” at St. Yves; “The Pardon of the Singers,” at -Rumengol; “The Pardon of the Fire,” at St. Jean du Doigt; “The Pardon -of the Mountain,” at Troménie de St. Ronan; “The Pardon of the Sea,” at -Ste. Anne de la Palude.<a name="page_347" id="page_347"></a></p> - -<p>It is a moot question as to just how much of romance is in the make-up -of the Breton character. Emotional the people are, but the emotion -that leads them into the enthusiasm which they exhibit at their great -religious festivals and pardons is more superstitious than romantic.</p> - -<p>The druidism, or paganism, or whatever the religion (<i>sic</i>) of the -ancient peoples of the Armorican peninsula may have been, bears not the -least traditional resemblance to the fervour of the devotees of the -pardons of to-day, but one can readily believe that the same spirit, if -with a different motive, does exist even now.</p> - -<p>The blessing of the boats, the birds, the cows, and what not, which -takes place periodically at different points along the Breton -coast,—for it is mostly along the coast that these observances take -place,—smacks not a little of something that is of more psychological -purport than mere religious devotion.</p> - -<p>From whatever tradition these great religious observances have -descended, there is no question of the sincerity of the participants, -though there is a wide difference between the “sacred” and “profane” -elements which meet on these occasions.</p> - -<p>Brittany, perhaps as much as any other of the<a name="page_348" id="page_348"></a> ancient provinces of -France, has preserved its local customs and traditions, unblushingly -indifferent to the changing conditions round about them. Of course there -is no reason why religion and its observances should change with the -march of time, but they do, nevertheless, in France as much as in any -other land. Only in Brittany, apparently, do the congregations of men -and women—for elsewhere the congregations are mostly women—of great -churches approach to anything like the numbers that the churches were -built to contain.</p> - -<p>Throughout this land of calvaries, too, there will be found at all times -of the day, and often at night, a tiny congregation of one, two, or -perhaps a half a dozen, peasant or fisher folk kneeling before one of -these wayside crosses, and invoking their God after the manner they have -been taught, in a truly devout and sincere fashion, which is more than -can be said of some parts, where the peasant, when on a visit to town on -the market-day, rushes in and out of a church with hardly time enough -devoted to the whole process even to have used the holy water.</p> - -<p>Brittany may be a poor and impoverished province, and in many respects -it has not the abundance of the good things of life which one<a name="page_349" id="page_349"></a> finds -in Touraine, Burgundy, or the Midi, but there is a general air of -prosperity in the gay accoutrements of the men and women who shine forth -on the occasions of the great pardons, showing a snug wardrobe stowed -away somewhere.</p> - -<p>As one leaves Normandy, at Pontorson, he enters Brittany—the land of -calvaries. These fine monuments are not the calvaries which have made -the old province famous,—the great stone crosses of Finistère,—but are -for the most part unpretentious pieces of wood put together in the form -of a cross, or a like symbol, rudely hammered out of a piece of iron by -the local blacksmith.</p> - -<p>One notes many of these simple crosses throughout Brittany; simple as -compared with the more elaborate calvaries, though they may have one, -two, or even more sculptured figures in the arms or branches of the -cross. One of the most ancient of these, dating from the fourteenth or -fifteenth century, is at Scaër in Finistère.</p> - -<p>It is a question as to whether any of the great monumental calvaries of -Brittany can be considered really artistic. They are imposing,—some of -them even terrifying in their strange grandeur,—but all of them seem -theatrical,<a name="page_350" id="page_350"></a> however sincere and devout the motive for their erection -may have been. The chief and most elaborate examples are those at -Plougastel, near Brest, and St. Thégonnec in Finistère (dating from -1610).</p> - -<p>Besides these really great and celebrated functions are many others -of minor purport, such as the “Benediction of the Boats” and the -“Benediction of the Fields.” The latter occurs when the caterpillars and -earthworms fall upon and ravage the land. The local <i>curé</i>, with the -permission of the bishop, then blesses the fields. In the midst of the -fields the <i>curé</i> takes up his position on some slight eminence, clad -in a white surplice, with a violet stole, and begs God to exterminate -the noxious insects, the prayers meanwhile being accompanied with the -sprinkling of holy water and burning of incense.</p> - -<p>The Pardon of St. Jean du Doigt, on the twenty-second of June, is -perhaps the most solemn of all its species, and for that reason is -described here.</p> - -<p>The Pardon of St. Yves, in the Tregarris, of Rumengol and Ste. Anne de -la Palude, in Finistère, are especially religious and severe, while that -of Notre Dame de la Clarté, in the Morbihan,<a name="page_351" id="page_351"></a> has the double purpose of -homage to Our Lady and the facilitating of marriage.</p> - -<p>Here the young peasants in search of a spouse promenade around the -church, and when they have made their choice they address the young lady -and ask her if she will accept the gift; the boy having meanwhile bought -a large round cake. “Will mademoiselle break the cake with me?” says he. -If she accept, they consider themselves as engaged, after which their -families meet together and discuss the conditions of the marriage.</p> - -<p>At Creac’higuel, near Rosporden, the pardon endures for three days, and -here one sees the wonderful ’broidered waistcoats and collarettes and -beribboned hats of the young men of Pont Aven, Quimperlé, and Scaër, -unique in all Brittany.</p> - -<p>In July, at Guingamp, is the procession to Our Lady of Good Help, with -the inevitable salute of firearms, and a torchlight procession of ten -or twelve thousand pilgrims—and some others who are merely profane -lookers-on.</p> - -<p>The “Benediction of the Sea” at Concarneau, Douarnenez, Trébone, -and many other seacoast villages and hamlets, is another religious -manifestation which is always attractive to the curious.<a name="page_352" id="page_352"></a></p> - -<p>At the pardon of St. Jean du Doigt the precious relic of the saint is -guarded before the high altar of the church by an abbé clad in his -surplice and holding in his hand the precious finger enveloped in fine -linen. One by one the faithful pass before the abbé and touch, for an -instant, the sainted relic.</p> - -<p>Near the choir, another cleric holds aloft the skull of St. Mériadec, -before which the pilgrims bow their heads as they pass. Before leaving -the church, in response to the call, “<i>Dour ar bis! Dour ar bis!</i>” sung -in a strident Celtic voice, the pilgrims repair to a fountain attached -to the side wall, in which the finger has previously been bathed at the -end of a gold chain. Immediately this operation is over, the devout -plunge their palms deep into the sanctified water and vehemently rub -their eyes. Then the pardon is finished, and the profane festivity -begins.</p> - -<p>“Whence come you?” was asked of a happy family of three at St. Jean du -Doigt. “From St. Jean-Brevelay,” they replied, mentioning a village -a hundred kilometres away, in Morbihan. “We have walked three suns -and three moons,”—which sounds like the American Indian’s method of -reckoning by moons, but which in this case meant merely that<a name="page_353" id="page_353"></a> they had -been on the road three days and three nights.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 312px;"> -<a href="images/illpg_352_lg.jpg"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/illpg_352_sml.jpg" width="312" height="522" alt="Pardon of St. Jean du Doigt" -title="Pardon of St. Jean du Doigt" /></a> -<p class="caption">Pardon of St. Jean du Doigt</p> -</div> - -<p>The little Church of St. Jean du Doigt offers complete and perfect -example of what a village church should be. The building itself is -surrounded by the churchyard, with its monumental portal, or triumphal -arch, as it is always called hereabouts, its sacred fountain, its -calvary, its ossuary, and its open-air oratory for the celebration of -the mass for the pilgrims.</p> - -<p>The triumphal arch is a great fifteenth-century gateway surmounted by -two niches containing two ancient Gothic statues, one of St. John the -Baptist, and the other of St. Roch.</p> - -<p>With the coming of twilight, when the mists roll in from the sea, the -silhouetted couples (lovers), following the ancient custom, promenade -arm in arm, or rather hand in hand, each holding the other by the little -finger, in deference to the finger of St. John.</p> - -<p>When the darkness has actually fallen, the bonfires flame out on the -far-away sands, the light reflected in the waves in truly eerie fashion, -and so the great day of pardon and festival departs into the past.</p> - -<p>Chant and song play a great part in all these religious festivals, not -only the officiating priests, but the public singing. These religious<a name="page_354" id="page_354"></a> -chants seem to give rise to others less devout, of which the two -following are typical.</p> - -<p>If one is in South Finistère on the occasion of the celebration of -the “Pardon of the Singers,” he will hear the following lines sung -tumultuously by the local swains:</p> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“Entre Brest et Lorient<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Leste, leste,<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Entre Brest et Lorient<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Lestement.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“Les gabiers de la misaine<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Sont des filles de quinze ans.<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Entre Brest et Lorient<br /></span> -<span class="i3">Leste, leste.”<br /></span> -</div></div> - -<p>At the “Pardon of the Sea,” in the Paimpol country, one hears these -sombre words:</p> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“Tais-toi! tais-toi! maîtresse exquise!<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Je vois ma mort dans l’eau.”<br /></span> -</div></div> - -<p>The great extent to which the Breton people carry their respect and -devotion to religious ceremony of all sorts is no better exemplified -than in the observance of the Miz-dus (the black months, or the mourning -months) by those who have banded themselves together and formed a sort -of “cult of the dead.” In reality, however, it is merely a mourning for -the departed,<a name="page_355" id="page_355"></a> by the widows or mothers of the fishermen and sailors.</p> - -<p>In November, when the Miz-dus begin, widows in most picturesque, though -sombre, costumes are continually met with in the Morbihan, and such -seacoast towns as Ploubazlanec, Portz—even (where there is a “widows’ -cross,” quite the most frequented shrine of all) Saint Cast, on the -coast of the Channel, or at Pontivy.</p> - -<p>Anatole le Braz, in the “Legend of the Dead,” has written a complete -history of the funeral superstitions which obtain in Brittany at this -season.</p> - -<p>The “Cult of the Dead,” as it is known, is unique among similar -observances in all France. Virtually it is a display of devotion and -respect for one’s ancestors. In the rural and seacoast parishes of -Morbihan, Finistère, and the Côtes du Nord the custom is found most -highly developed.</p> - -<p>The little cemeteries of Brittany are better than mere formal gardens -with rectangular walks and well-clipt trees and hedges. Mostly, they -have winding little alleys, and are set out with apple-trees and -wild-flowers.</p> - -<p>In downright bad taste, these cemeteries, in common with most others in -France, have an<a name="page_356" id="page_356"></a> abundance of wire and bead memorial wreaths and crowns. -Why it is that the French, with their usually highly developed artistic -sense, affect these artificialities, is a question to which no one has -had the temerity to devise an answer.</p> - -<p>At Ploubazlanec, a tiny village settled upon a cliff overlooking the Bay -of Paimpol, are the funeral monuments of many who have lost their lives -by drowning in a frozen sea, as you will be told.</p> - -<p>In 1901, three ships from these parts disappeared, crew and cargo, -following the sinister local expression, in the cold waters off Iceland, -whither the little fleet had gone for the fishing. In the cemetery, in -the side of the mortuary chapel, is a section known as “the wall of -those who disappeared,” and here you may read, many times repeated, such -inscriptions as the following:</p> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“En Mémoire de Gilles Brézellec, 17 ans, décédé à Islande.<br /></span> -<span class="i1">En Mémoire de Jean-Marie Brézellec, 16 ans, décédé à Islande.<br /></span> -<span class="i1">En Mémoire de Yves Brézellec, 37 ans, décédé à Islande.<br /></span> -<span class="i8">Priez Dieu pour eux!”<br /></span> -</div></div> - -<p class="nind">A whole family shattered and broken up, leaving perhaps a wife and an -old mother dependent<a name="page_357" id="page_357"></a> upon charity, or such a scanty living as can be -picked up intermittently.</p> - -<p>At Kérity, also, is an Icelanders’ cemetery, and here one may read the -names, beginning with that of the captain, of the crew of twenty, all -hailing from the home port of Kérity, who were lost in the white fiords -of Iceland in another catastrophe.</p> - -<p>Nowhere in the known world is there anything like the wholesale risk of -life which goes on yearly from the ports of Finistère and the Côtes du -Nord, unless it be that among the American fishermen on the Grand Banks, -hailing from Gloucester, on Massachusetts Bay.</p> - -<p>If the visitor to Brittany has not yet made the acquaintance of the -heroes of Loti’s “Iceland Fishermen,” he should do so forthwith, for it -was at Ploubazlanec that the great Yann Gaos was interred, and near him -reposed his father and little Sylvestre.</p> - -<p>The Celtic spirit of the modern Breton has preserved the legend or -superstition of “An-Ankou,” the spirit of death. In many villages one -may interrogate a peasant or a fisherman, who will affirm that it is -“Ankou” who leads the way for the funeral-car and who waits at the grave -to carry the soul of the departed away with him after the others have -left.<a name="page_358" id="page_358"></a></p> - -<p>Among the superstitious signs which presage the coming of the “Ankou” -are, a ball of fire, which rests upon the tiles of the roof over the -stricken one,—a most unlikely thing, one would think,—the theft of -grain by crows, the tapping of a window-pane by the beak of a sea-bird, -the prolonged bellowing of cattle by the light of the moon, a candle -which will not light, or for a peasant to split or cleave two pairs of -wooden shoes in one week.</p> - -<p> </p> - -<p class="c">THE END.<a name="page_359" id="page_359"></a></p> - -<h3><a name="APPENDICES" id="APPENDICES"></a>APPENDICES</h3> - -<h4><a name="I" id="I"></a>I.<br /><br /> -THE PROVINCES OF FRANCE</h4> - -<p>U<small>P</small> to 1789, there were thirty-three great governments making up modern -France, the twelve governments created by Francis I. being the chief, -and seven <i>petits gouvernements</i> as well.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 292px;"> -<a href="images/illpg_359_lg.jpg"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/illpg_359_sml.jpg" width="292" height="293" alt="The Provinces of France" -title="The Provinces of France" /></a> -<p class="caption">The Provinces of France</p> -</div> - -<p><a name="page_360" id="page_360"></a></p> - -<p>In the following table the <i>grands gouvernements</i> of the first -foundation are indicated in heavy-faced type, those which were taken -from the first in italics, and those which were acquired by conquest in -ordinary characters.</p> - -<table border="0" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="0" summary=""> -<tr><td align="left" colspan="2"><small>NAMES OF GOVERNMENTS</small></td> -<td align="left"><small>CAPITALS</small></td></tr> -<tr><td align="right">1.</td><td align="left">Ile-de-France</td><td align="left">Paris.</td></tr> -<tr><td align="right">2.</td><td align="left">Picardie</td><td align="left">Amiens.</td></tr> -<tr><td align="right">3.</td><td align="left">Normandie</td><td align="left">Rouen.</td></tr> -<tr><td align="right">4.</td><td align="left">Bretagne</td><td align="left">Rennes.</td></tr> -<tr><td align="right">5.</td><td align="left">Champagne et Brie</td><td align="left">Troyes.</td></tr> -<tr><td align="right">6.</td><td align="left">Orléanais</td><td align="left">Orléans.</td></tr> -<tr><td align="right">7.</td><td align="left"><i>Maine et Perche</i></td><td align="left">Le Mans.</td></tr> -<tr><td align="right">8.</td><td align="left"><i>Anjou</i></td><td align="left">Augers.</td></tr> -<tr><td align="right">9.</td><td align="left"><i>Touraine</i></td><td align="left">Tours.</td></tr> -<tr><td align="right">10.</td><td align="left"><i>Nivernais</i></td><td align="left">Nevers.</td></tr> -<tr><td align="right">11.</td><td align="left"><i>Berri</i></td><td align="left">Bourges.</td></tr> -<tr><td align="right">12.</td><td align="left"><i>Poitou</i></td><td align="left">Poitiers.</td></tr> -<tr><td align="right">13.</td><td align="left"><i>Aunis</i></td><td align="left">La Rochelle.</td></tr> -<tr><td align="right">14.</td><td align="left">Bourgogne (duché de)</td><td align="left">Dijon.</td></tr> -<tr><td align="right">15.</td><td align="left">Lyonnais, Forez et Beaujolais</td><td align="left">Lyon.</td></tr> -<tr><td align="right">16.</td><td align="left"><i>Auvergne</i></td><td align="left">Clermont.</td></tr> -<tr><td align="right">17.</td><td align="left"><i>Bourbonnais</i></td><td align="left">Moulins.</td></tr> -<tr><td align="right">18.</td><td align="left"><i>Marche</i></td><td align="left">Guéret.</td></tr> -<tr><td align="right">19.</td><td align="left">Guyenne et Gascogne</td><td align="left">Bordeaux.</td></tr> -<tr><td align="right">20.</td><td align="left"><i>Saintonge et Angoumois</i><sup><a name="a-ret" id="a-ret"></a>[<a href="#A">A</a>]</sup></td><td align="left">Saintes.</td></tr> -<tr><td align="right">21.</td><td align="left"><i>Limousin</i></td><td align="left">Limoges.</td></tr> -<tr><td align="right">22.</td><td align="left"><i>Béarn et Basse Navarre</i></td><td align="left">Pau.</td></tr> -<tr><td align="right">23.</td><td align="left">Languedoc</td><td align="left">Toulouse.</td></tr> -<tr><td align="right">24.</td><td align="left"><i>Comté de Foix</i></td><td align="left">Foix.</td></tr> -<tr><td align="right">25.</td><td align="left">Provence</td><td align="left">Aix.</td></tr> -<tr><td align="right">26.</td><td align="left">Dauphiné</td><td align="left">Grenoble.</td></tr> -<tr><td align="right">27.</td><td align="left"><i>Flandre et Hainaut</i></td><td align="left">Lille.</td></tr> -<tr><td align="right">28.</td><td align="left">Artois</td><td align="left">Arras.</td></tr> -<tr><td align="right">29.</td><td align="left">Lorraine et Barrois</td><td align="left">Nancy.</td></tr> -<tr><td align="right">30.</td><td align="left">Alsace</td><td align="left">Strasbourg.</td></tr> -<tr><td align="right">31.</td><td align="left">Franche-Comté ou Comté de Bourgogne</td><td align="left">Besançon.</td></tr> -<tr><td align="right">32.</td><td align="left">Roussilon</td><td align="left">Perpignan.</td></tr> -<tr><td align="right">33.</td><td align="left">Corse</td><td align="left">Bastia.</td></tr> -</table> - -<p class="bxsmcap">[<a name="A" id="A"></a><a href="#a-ret">A</a>] Under Francis I. the Angoumois was comprised in the Orléanais.<a name="page_361" id="page_361"></a></p> - -<p>The seven <i>petits gouvernements</i> were:</p> - -<ul><li>1. The ville, prévôté and vicomté of Paris.</li> -<li>2. Havre de Grâce.</li> -<li>3. Boulonnais.</li> -<li>4. Principality of Sedan.</li> -<li>5. Metz and Verdun, the pays Messin and Verdunois.</li> -<li>6. Toul and Toulois.</li> -<li>7. Saumur and Saumurois.</li></ul> - -<h4><a name="II" id="II"></a>II.<br /><br /> -THE ANCIENT PROVINCES OF FRANCE</h4> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 293px;"> -<a href="images/illpg_361_lg.jpg"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/illpg_361_sml.jpg" width="293" height="302" alt="map of France divided into provinces" -title="map of France divided into provinces" /></a> -</div> - -<p><a name="page_362" id="page_362"></a></p> - -<h4><a name="III" id="III"></a>III.</h4> - -<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary=""> -<tr><td align="center" colspan="2">THE PRINCIPAL PAYS AND PAGI OF BRITTANY</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left"> </td><td align="left"> </td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">Pays d’Alet</td><td align="left">Ille et Vilaine</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">Pays de Briere</td><td align="left">Loire Infr.</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">Cornouailles</td><td align="left">Finistère.</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">Le Desert</td><td align="left">Ille et Vilaine.</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">Dinannois</td><td align="left">Côtes du Nord.</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">Pays de Dol</td><td align="left">Côtes du Nord.</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">Pays de Grève</td><td align="left">Côtes du Nord.</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">Léonais</td><td align="left">Finistère.</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">Nantais</td><td align="left">Loire Infr.</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">Rennois</td><td align="left">Ille et Vilaine.</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">Pays de Vannes</td><td align="left">Morbihan.</td></tr> -</table> - -<h4><a name="IV" id="IV"></a>IV.</h4> -<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary=""> -<tr><td align="center" colspan="2">COUNTS AND DUKES OF BRITTANY</td></tr> -<tr><td align="right"> </td><td align="right"> </td></tr> -<tr><td>Nominoë</td><td align="right">824</td></tr> -<tr><td>Erispoë</td><td align="right">851</td></tr> -<tr><td>Salomon</td><td align="right">857</td></tr> -<tr><td>Pasqueten and Gurvaud</td><td align="right">874</td></tr> -<tr><td>Alain I.</td><td align="right">877</td></tr> -<tr><td>Gurmailhon</td><td align="right">907</td></tr> -<tr><td>Juhael Béranger</td><td align="right">930</td></tr> -<tr><td>Alain II. (Barbe Torte)</td><td align="right">937</td></tr> -<tr><td>Drogon</td><td align="right">952</td></tr> -<tr><td>Hoël I.</td><td align="right">953</td></tr> -<tr><td>Guerech</td><td align="right">980</td></tr> -<tr><td>Conan I.</td><td align="right">987</td></tr> -<tr><td>Geoffroy I.</td><td align="right">992</td></tr> -<tr><td>Alain III.</td><td align="right">1008</td></tr> -<tr><td>Conan II.</td><td align="right">1040</td></tr> -<tr><td>Hoël II.</td><td align="right">1066</td></tr> -<tr><td>Alain Fergent</td><td align="right">1084</td></tr> -<tr><td>Conan III.</td><td align="right">1112</td></tr> -<tr><td>Eudes and Hoël III.</td><td align="right">1148</td></tr> -<tr><td>Geoffroy II.</td><td align="right">1156</td></tr> -<tr><td>Constance and Arthur</td><td align="right">1171</td></tr> -<tr><td>Pierre Mauclerc and Alix</td><td align="right">1186</td></tr> -<tr><td>Jean I.</td><td align="right">1213</td></tr> -<tr><td>Jean II.</td><td align="right">1237</td></tr> -<tr><td>Arthur II.</td><td align="right">1286</td></tr> -<tr><td>Jean III.</td><td align="right">1305</td></tr> -<tr><td>Charles de Blois</td><td align="right">1312</td></tr> -<tr><td>Jean IV. de Montfort</td><td align="right">1341</td></tr> -<tr><td>Jean V.</td><td align="right">1365</td></tr> -<tr><td>François I.</td><td align="right">1399</td></tr> -<tr><td>Pierre II.</td><td align="right">1450</td></tr> -<tr><td>Arthur III.</td><td align="right">1457</td></tr> -<tr><td>François II.</td><td align="right">1458</td></tr> -<tr valign="bottom"><td>Duchess Anne, who<br /> - married Charles<br /> - VIII. and afterward<br /> - Louis XI. of France,</td><td align="right">488-1513</td></tr> -</table> - -<h4><a name="V" id="V"></a>V.<br /><br /> -THE METRIC SYSTEM</h4> - -<p class="c"><small>METRICAL AND ENGLISH WEIGHTS AND MEASURES</small></p> - -<ul><li>Mètre = 39.3708 in. = 3.231. 3 ft. 3 1-2 in. = 1.0936 yard.</li> -<li>Square Mètre (mètre carré) = 1 1-5th square yards (1.196).</li> -<li>Are (or 100 sq. mètres) = 119.6 square yards.</li> -<li>Cubic Mètre (or Stere) = 35 1-2 cubic feet.</li> -<li>Centimètre = 2-5ths inch.</li> -<li>Kilomètre = 1,093 yards = 5-8 mile.</li> -<li>10 Kilomètres = 6 1-4 miles.</li> -<li>100 Kilomètres = 62 1-10th miles.</li> -<li>Square Kilomètre = 2-5ths square mile.</li> -<li>Hectare = 2 1-2 acres (2.471).</li> -<li>100 Hectares = 247.1 acres.</li> -<li>Gramme = 15 1-2 grains (15.432).</li> -<li>10 Grammes = 1-3d oz. Avoirdupois.</li> -<li>15 Grammes = 1-2 oz. Avoirdupois.</li> -<li>Kilogramme =2 1-5th lbs. (2.204) Avoirdupois.</li> -<li>10 Kilogrammes = 22 lbs. Avoirdupois.</li> -<li>Metrical Quintal = 220 1-2 lbs. Avoirdupois.</li> -<li>Tonneau = 2,200 lbs. Avoirdupois.</li> -<li>Litre = 0.22 gal. = 1 3-4 pint.</li> -<li>Hectolitre = 22 gallons.</li></ul> - -<p><a name="page_364" id="page_364"></a></p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 513px;"> -<a href="images/illpg_364_lg.jpg"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/illpg_364_sml.jpg" width="513" height="320" alt="Comparative Metric Scale" -title="Comparative Metric Scale" /></a> -<p class="caption">Comparative Metric Scale</p> -</div> - -<p><a name="page_365" id="page_365"></a></p> - -<p class="c"><small>ENGLISH AND METRICAL WEIGHTS AND MEASURES</small></p> - -<ul><li>Inch = 2.539 centimètres = 25.39 millimètres.</li> -<li>2 inches = 5 centimètres nearly.</li> -<li>Foot = 30.47 centimètres.</li> -<li>Yard = 0.9141 mètre.</li> -<li>12 yards = 11 mètres nearly.</li> -<li>Mile =1.609 kilomètre.</li> -<li>Square foot = 0.093 mètre carré.</li> -<li>Square yard = 0.836 mètre carré.</li> -<li>Acre = 0.4046 hectare = 4,003 sq. mètres nearly.</li> -<li>2 1-2 acres = 1 hectare nearly.</li> -<li>Pint = 0.5679 litre.</li> -<li>1 3-4 pint = 1 litre nearly.</li> -<li>Gallon = 4.5434 litres = 4 nearly.</li> -<li>Bushel = 36.347 litres.</li> -<li>Oz. Troy = 31.103 grammes.</li> -<li>Pound Troy (5,760 grains) = 373.121 grammes.</li> -<li>Oz. Avoirdupois = 8.349 grammes.</li> -<li>Pound Avoirdupois (7,000 grains) = 453.592 grammes.</li> -<li>2 lbs. 3 oz. = kilogramme nearly.</li> -<li>100 lbs. = 45.359 kilogrammes.</li> -<li>Cwt. = 50.802 kilogrammes.</li> -<li>Ton = 1,018.048 kilogrammes.</li> -</ul> - -<p><a name="page_366" id="page_366"></a></p> - -<h4><a name="VI" id="VI"></a>VI.</h4> - -<p>Sketch Map of Circular Tour in Brittany. Fares from Rennes, 65 francs, -1st class; 50 francs, 2d class.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 290px;"> -<a href="images/illpg_366_lg.jpg"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/illpg_366_sml.jpg" width="290" height="246" alt="Map of Brittany showing routes" -title="Map of Brittany showing routes" /></a> -</div> - -<p>Itinerary: Rennes, Saint-Malo-Saint-Servan, Dinard, Saint-Brieuc, -Guingamp, Lannion, Morlaix, Roscoff, Brest, Quimper, Douarnenez, -Pont-l’Abbé, Concarneau, Lorient, Auray, Quiberon, Vannes, Savenay, Le -Croisic, Guérande, Saint-Nazaire, Pont-Château, Redon, Rennes.<a name="page_367" id="page_367"></a></p> - -<h4><a name="VII" id="VII"></a>VII.</h4> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 292px;"> -<a href="images/illpg_367_lg.jpg"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/illpg_367_sml.jpg" width="292" height="384" alt="Architectural Names of the Various Parts of a Feudal Château" -title="Architectural Names of the Various Parts of a Feudal Château" /></a> -<p class="caption">Architectural Names of the Various Parts of a Feudal -Château</p> -</div> - -<p><a name="page_368" id="page_368"></a></p> - -<h4><a name="VIII" id="VIII"></a>VIII.</h4> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 278px;"> -<a href="images/illpg_368_lg.jpg"> -<br /> -<img class="enlargeimage" -src="images/enlarge-image.jpg" -alt="enlarge-image" -title="enlarge-image" -width="18" -height="14" /> -<br /> -<img src="images/illpg_368_sml.jpg" width="278" height="443" alt="Tide and Weather Signals in the Ports of Brittany" -title="Tide and Weather Signals in the Ports of Brittany" /></a> -<p class="caption">Tide and Weather Signals in the Ports of -Brittany</p> -</div> - -<p><a name="page_369" id="page_369"></a></p> - -<p>By day the signals showing the depth of water—in mètres—at the harbour -entrance are shown by balls or small balloons; at night these are -replaced by lanterns. (See top diagram.) The flag signals of the other -diagrams explain themselves.</p> - -<h4><a name="IX" id="IX"></a>IX.</h4> - -<p class="c">THE PRINCIPAL PARDONS OF BRITTANY</p> - -<p class="c"><small>DEPARTMENT OF FINISTÈRE</small></p> - -<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Plougastel-Daoulas.</span>—Easter Monday, the Monday of Pentecôte, -29th June, and 15th August.</p> - -<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Pont l’Abbé.</span>—25th March, Monday of Pentecôte, 3d Sunday of -July, 4th Sunday of September.</p> - -<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Concarneau.</span>—(Ste. Guénolé) First Sunday in May, (Sainte Croix) -14th September, (Pardon du Rosaire) First Sunday in October.</p> - -<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Bannalec.</span>—Ascension Day.</p> - -<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Quimperlé.</span>—Trinity Sunday, second Sunday of May, last Sunday -of July, third Sunday in September.</p> - -<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Quimperlé.</span>—Easter Monday.</p> - -<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Rumengal.</span>—Trinity Sunday.</p> - -<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Loctudy.</span>—Sunday following 11th May, and 2d Sunday of August.</p> - -<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Pont Aven.</span>—Second Sunday of May and third Sunday of September.</p> - -<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Saint Jean du Doigt.</span>—23d and 24th June.</p> - -<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Roscoff.</span>—Mid-June and 15th August.</p> - -<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Camaret</span> (Fête de la Pêche et Bénédiction de la Mer).—Third -Sunday in June.</p> - -<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Locronan</span> (Petite Troménie every year; Grande Troménie every six -years).—Second Sunday of July.</p> - -<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Rosporden.</span>—Second Sunday in July.</p> - -<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Le Folgoët.</span>—15th August, and 7th and 8th September.<a name="page_370" id="page_370"></a></p> - -<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Quimper.</span>—15th, 16th, and 17th August.</p> - -<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Huelgoat.</span>—Three days—first Sunday of August.</p> - -<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Ste. Anne de la Palude.</span>—Saturday evening and last Sunday of -August.</p> - -<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Scaër.</span>—Last Sunday of August.</p> - -<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Audierne.</span>—Last Sunday of August.</p> - -<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Penmarc’h</span> (Pardon du Rosaire).—First Sunday of October.</p> - -<p class="c"><small>DEPARTMENT OF THE MORBIHAN</small></p> - -<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">St. Gildas de Rhuis.</span>—29th of January.</p> - -<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Auray.</span>—(Ouverture du Pardon de St. Anne) 7th March, (Principal -Pardon) 25th and 26th of July.</p> - -<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Locminé.</span>—Three days from the Sunday nearest 27th June.</p> - -<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Ste. Barbe en Faouët.</span>—Last Sunday of June.</p> - -<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">St. Fiacre près le Faouët.</span>—Fourth Sunday in July.</p> - -<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Locmariaquer.</span>—Second Sunday in September.</p> - -<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Pontivy.</span>—Second Sunday in September.</p> - -<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Carnac.</span>—Third Sunday in September, (Pardon of St. Cornely) the -Sunday nearest the 14th September.</p> - -<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Pont Scorff.</span>—Third Sunday in September.</p> - -<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Le Faouët.</span>—First Sunday in October.</p> - -<h4><a name="X" id="X"></a>X.</h4> - -<p class="hang">A BRIEF LIST OF SOME OF THE MORE IMPORTANT PREFIXES OF PLACE-NAMES IN -BRITTANY, WITH THEIR DEFINITIONS</p> - -<p><i>Bod, Bot.</i>—A place surrounded by a wood. Bodilis, Botsorhel.</p> - -<p><i>Bras, Bré.</i>—High, elevated. Braspart, Brelevené.</p> - -<p><i>Conc.</i>—A harbour or bay. Concarneau, le Conquet.</p> - -<p><i>Car.</i>—A manor or château. Carhaix.</p> - -<p><i>Coat.</i>—A wood or forest. Coatascorn, Coatreven.</p> - -<p><i>Crug.</i>—Amid the rocks. Cruguel.</p> - -<p><i>Faou.</i>—A place planted with oaks. Le Faouët.</p> - -<p><i>Guic.</i>—Bourg. Guichen (old bourg).<a name="page_371" id="page_371"></a></p> - -<p><i>Hen.</i>—Old. Henvie, Henpont.</p> - -<p><i>Ker or Kaer.</i>—Manor, château. Kerlouan, Kervignac.</p> - -<p><i>Lan.</i>—Church or consecrated spot. Lannion, Lanildut.</p> - -<p><i>Les, Lis.</i>—Court or jurisdiction. Lesneven, Lezardrieux.</p> - -<p><i>Loc.</i>—Oratoire or hermitage. Locmaria.</p> - -<p><i>Méné.</i>—Mountain. Méné Bré.</p> - -<p><i>Mor.</i>—The sea. Morbihan (<i>la petite mer</i>).</p> - -<p><i>Pen.</i>—Promontory summit or extremity. Penmarc’h, Paimbœuf (<i>par -corruption</i>).</p> - -<p><i>Plé, Pleu, Plo, Plou, Plu.</i>—Parish. Pléhédel, Pleudihen, Plouha.</p> - -<p><i>Poul.</i>—Hole or basin. Pouldergat.</p> - -<p><i>Ros.</i>—Hill or slope. Roscoff, Rosporden.</p> - -<p><i>Tref, Tré.</i>—Part of a parish. Trégastel, Trémelior.</p> - -<h4><a name="XI" id="XI"></a>XI.</h4> - -<p class="c">THE BRETON TONGUE IN BRITTANY TO-DAY<sup><a name="b-ret" id="b-ret"></a>[<a href="#B">B</a>]</sup></p> - -<table border="1" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="" -style="text-align:center;font-size:85%;"> -<tr valign="middle"><td>DÉPARTEMENT</td> -<td>INDIVIDUALS<br /> -UNDERSTANDING<br /> -ONLY BRETON</td> -<td>INDIVIDUALS<br /> -UNDERSTANDING<br /> -BRETON AND<br /> -FRENCH</td></tr> - -<tr><td align="left"> -Côtes du Nord</td><td align="center"> 145,000</td><td align="center"> 150,000</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">Finistère</td><td align="center"> 352,000</td><td align="center"> 302,000</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">Morbihan</td><td align="center"> 182,700</td><td align="center"> 190,000</td></tr> -</table> - -<p class="bxsmcap">[<a name="B" id="B"></a><a href="#b-ret">B</a>] This table takes no cognizance of those speaking French only -and not Breton, whilst the three departments given are those -only in which the knowledge of the Breton tongue is in excess -of that in other parts.</p> - -<p>It is a regrettable fact that the Morbihan has the greatest number -of illiterates of any of the departments of France. Among a hundred -conscripts for the army, often thirty or forty are classed as -illiterate, while in Finistère and the Côtes du Nord, the number falls -to thirty or less, and in Ille et Vilaine to less than twenty.</p> - -<p><a name="page_372" id="page_372"></a></p> - -<p><a name="page_373" id="page_373"></a></p> - -<h3><a name="INDEX_OF_PLACES" id="INDEX_OF_PLACES"></a>INDEX OF PLACES</h3> - -<p class="c"><a href="#A-ind">A</a>, -<a href="#B-ind">B</a>, -<a href="#C">C</a>, -<a href="#D">D</a>, -<a href="#E">E</a>, -<a href="#F">F</a>, -<a href="#G">G</a>, -<a href="#H">H</a>, -<a href="#J">J</a>, -<a href="#K">K</a>, -<a href="#L">L</a>, -<a href="#M">M</a>, -<a href="#N">N</a>, -<a href="#O">O</a>, -<a href="#P">P</a>, -<a href="#Q">Q</a>, -<a href="#R">R</a>, -<a href="#S">S</a>, -<a href="#T">T</a>, -<a href="#V-ind">V</a>. -</p> - -<p class="nind"> -<a name="A-ind" id="A-ind"></a>Alre, <a href="#page_158">158</a>.<br /> -Ancenis (and château), <a href="#page_099">99-101</a>.<br /> -Angers (and castle), <a href="#page_024">24</a>, <a href="#page_030">30</a>, <a href="#page_108">108</a>, <a href="#page_119">119</a>, <a href="#page_146">146</a>, <a href="#page_243">243</a>, <a href="#page_311">311</a>, <a href="#page_316">316</a>.<br /> -Audierne, <a href="#page_089">89</a>, <a href="#page_212">212</a>, <a href="#page_213">213-214</a>, <a href="#page_370">370</a>.<br /> -Auray, <a href="#page_032">32</a>, <a href="#page_157">157</a>, <a href="#page_158">158</a>, <a href="#page_159">159-167</a>, <a href="#page_172">172</a>, <a href="#page_175">175</a>, <a href="#page_178">178</a>, <a href="#page_192">192</a>, <a href="#page_309">309</a>, <a href="#page_370">370</a>.<br /> -<br /> -<a name="B-ind" id="B-ind"></a>Bannelec, <a href="#page_194">194-195</a>, <a href="#page_369">369</a>.<br /> -Batz, Isle of, <a href="#page_121">121</a>, <a href="#page_240">240-242</a>.<br /> -Baud, <a href="#page_157">157</a>, <a href="#page_158">158</a>.<br /> -Baule, <a href="#page_127">127</a>.<br /> -Becherel, <a href="#page_306">306</a>.<br /> -Beg-Meil, <a href="#page_201">201</a>.<br /> -Belle Ile en Mer, <a href="#page_027">27</a>, <a href="#page_034">34</a>, <a href="#page_036">36</a>, <a href="#page_171">171</a>, <a href="#page_173">173-175</a>.<br /> -Benzec Capcaval, <a href="#page_211">211</a>.<br /> -Béré, Fair of, <a href="#page_129">129-130</a>.<br /> -Binic, <a href="#page_267">267-268</a>, <a href="#page_270">270</a>.<br /> -Black Mountains, <a href="#page_218">218</a>.<br /> -Bourg de Batz, <a href="#page_111">111</a>, <a href="#page_121">121</a>, <a href="#page_127">127</a>.<br /> -Bréhat, <a href="#page_043">43</a>, <a href="#page_259">259-260</a>.<br /> -Brest, <a href="#page_026">26</a>, <a href="#page_032">32</a>, <a href="#page_039">39</a>, <a href="#page_041">41</a>, <a href="#page_043">43</a>, <a href="#page_044">44</a>, <a href="#page_047">47</a>, <a href="#page_051">51</a>, <a href="#page_054">54</a>, <a href="#page_056">56</a>, <a href="#page_072">72</a>, <a href="#page_087">87</a>, <a href="#page_150">150</a>, <a href="#page_212">212</a>, <a href="#page_220">220</a>, <a href="#page_221">221-224</a>, <a href="#page_225">225</a>, <a href="#page_227">227</a>, <a href="#page_228">228</a>, <a href="#page_229">229</a>, <a href="#page_230">230</a>, <a href="#page_236">236</a>, <a href="#page_309">309</a>, <a href="#page_310">310</a>, <a href="#page_340">340</a>, <a href="#page_350">350</a>.<br /> -<br /> -<a name="C" id="C"></a>Camaret, <a href="#page_089">89</a>, <a href="#page_219">219-220</a>, <a href="#page_369">369</a>.<br /> -Cancale, <a href="#page_298">298-300</a>.<br /> -Cape de la Chèvre, <a href="#page_214">214</a>, <a href="#page_217">217</a>.<br /> -Cap Fréhel, <a href="#page_290">290</a>.<br /> -Carhaix, <a href="#page_054">54</a>, <a href="#page_310">310</a>, <a href="#page_337">337-339</a>.<br /> -Carnac, <a href="#page_159">159</a>, <a href="#page_163">163</a>, <a href="#page_167">167</a>, <a href="#page_168">168-171</a>, <a href="#page_345">345</a>, <a href="#page_370">370</a>.<br /> -Cesson, Tower of, <a href="#page_266">266</a>.<br /> -Cezon, <a href="#page_044">44</a>.<br /> -Champ Dolent, <a href="#page_303">303</a>.<br /> -Champtoceaux (and château), <a href="#page_104">104-105</a>.<br /> -Châteaubriant (and château), <a href="#page_128">128-132</a>.<br /> -Chateaulin, <a href="#page_027">27</a>, <a href="#page_217">217-218</a>, <a href="#page_219">219</a>.<br /> -Chatelaudren, <a href="#page_263">263</a>.<br /> -Clisson (and château), <a href="#page_042">42</a>, <a href="#page_111">111</a>, <a href="#page_114">114-115</a>.<br /> -Combourg (and château), <a href="#page_305">305-308</a>.<br /> -Concarneau, <a href="#page_043">43</a>, <a href="#page_089">89</a>, <a href="#page_197">197-201</a>, <a href="#page_202">202</a>, <a href="#page_205">205</a>, <a href="#page_212">212</a>, <a href="#page_215">215</a>, <a href="#page_216">216</a>, <a href="#page_219">219</a>, <a href="#page_224">224</a>, <a href="#page_351">351</a>, <a href="#page_369">369</a>.<br /> -Corseul, <a href="#page_146">146</a>.<br /> -Creac’higuel, <a href="#page_351">351</a>.<br /> -Croisic, <a href="#page_042">42</a>, <a href="#page_111">111</a>, <a href="#page_121">121</a>, <a href="#page_127">127</a>.<br /> -Crozon, <a href="#page_217">217</a>, <a href="#page_219">219</a>.<br /> -<br /> -<a name="D" id="D"></a>Daoulas, <a href="#page_229">229</a>, <a href="#page_369">369</a>.<br /> -Dinan (and château), <a href="#page_024">24</a>, <a href="#page_054">54</a>, <a href="#page_249">249</a>, <a href="#page_271">271</a>, <a href="#page_291">291-297</a>.<br /> -Dinard, <a href="#page_039">39</a>, <a href="#page_249">249</a>, <a href="#page_271">271</a>, <a href="#page_273">273</a>, <a href="#page_288">288-289</a>, <a href="#page_290">290</a>.<br /> -Dol, <a href="#page_019">19</a>, <a href="#page_039">39</a>, <a href="#page_043">43</a>, <a href="#page_054">54</a>, <a href="#page_249">249</a>, <a href="#page_303">303-305</a>.<br /> -Douarnenez (and bay), <a href="#page_032">32</a>, <a href="#page_038">38</a>, <a href="#page_043">43</a>, <a href="#page_051">51</a>, <a href="#page_089">89</a>, <a href="#page_187">187</a>, <a href="#page_212">212</a>, <a href="#page_214">214-216</a>, <a href="#page_217">217</a>, <a href="#page_219">219</a>, <a href="#page_351">351</a>.<a name="page_374" id="page_374"></a><br /> -<br /> -<a name="E" id="E"></a>Elven, <a href="#page_138">138</a>.<br /> -Ernée (and château), <a href="#page_312">312</a>.<br /> -Etables, <a href="#page_267">267</a>.<br /> -<br /> -<a name="F" id="F"></a>Falaise, <a href="#page_130">130</a>.<br /> -Faou, <a href="#page_220">220</a>, <a href="#page_221">221</a>.<br /> -Faouët (Finistère), <a href="#page_192">192-194</a>.<br /> -Folgoët, <a href="#page_224">224</a>, <a href="#page_237">237-238</a>, <a href="#page_369">369</a>.<br /> -Fontaine-Daniel, Abbey of, <a href="#page_312">312</a>.<br /> -Fougères (and forest), <a href="#page_054">54</a>, <a href="#page_262">262</a>, <a href="#page_309">309</a>, <a href="#page_310">310</a>, <a href="#page_312">312</a>, <a href="#page_313">313-315</a>, <a href="#page_316">316</a>, <a href="#page_321">321</a>, <a href="#page_340">340</a>.<br /> -Fouquet, Château, <a href="#page_027">27</a>, <a href="#page_174">174</a>.<br /> -<br /> -<a name="G" id="G"></a>Grand Brière, <a href="#page_125">125</a>.<br /> -Guérande, <a href="#page_121">121</a>, <a href="#page_125">125-127</a>.<br /> -Guibray, Fair of, <a href="#page_130">130</a>.<br /> -Guingamp (and castle), <a href="#page_054">54</a>, <a href="#page_086">86</a>, <a href="#page_087">87</a>, <a href="#page_250">250</a>, <a href="#page_260">260-262</a>, <a href="#page_351">351</a>.<br /> -<br /> -<a name="H" id="H"></a>Hédé, <a href="#page_306">306</a>.<br /> -Hennebont, <a href="#page_146">146</a>, <a href="#page_179">179</a>, <a href="#page_182">182-185</a>.<br /> -Huelgoat, <a href="#page_310">310</a>, <a href="#page_339">339-340</a>, <a href="#page_370">370</a>.<br /> -<br /> -<a name="J" id="J"></a>Javron, <a href="#page_313">313</a>.<br /> -Joie, Abbaye de la, <a href="#page_185">185</a>.<br /> -Josselin (and château), <a href="#page_150">150</a>, <a href="#page_152">152-157</a>, <a href="#page_309">309</a>, <a href="#page_337">337</a>.<br /> -<br /> -<a name="K" id="K"></a>Kerérault, <a href="#page_229">229</a>.<br /> -Kérity, <a href="#page_357">357</a>.<br /> -Kerlean, Manoir of, <a href="#page_138">138</a>.<br /> -Kerlescan, <a href="#page_169">169</a>.<br /> -Kerlouan, <a href="#page_224">224</a>.<br /> -Kermario, <a href="#page_169">169</a>.<br /> -Kermartin, Manor of, <a href="#page_255">255</a>.<br /> -<br /> -<a name="L" id="L"></a>Lacroix, <a href="#page_044">44</a>.<br /> -La Houle, <a href="#page_299">299</a>.<br /> -“La Joyeuse Garde,” Château of, <a href="#page_227">227</a>.<br /> -Lamballe, <a href="#page_268">268-269</a>.<br /> -Landeau, <a href="#page_315">315-316</a>.<br /> -Landerneau, <a href="#page_221">221</a>, <a href="#page_224">224-227</a>, <a href="#page_310">310</a>, <a href="#page_340">340</a>.<br /> -Landivisiau, <a href="#page_221">221</a>, <a href="#page_227">227-228</a>.<br /> -Lannion, <a href="#page_024">24</a>, <a href="#page_074">74</a>, <a href="#page_089">89</a>, <a href="#page_250">250-252</a>.<br /> -Largoet, Fortress of, <a href="#page_138">138</a>.<br /> -La Roche-Bernard, <a href="#page_128">128</a>.<br /> -La Trinité, <a href="#page_177">177-178</a>.<br /> -Laval (and château), <a href="#page_054">54</a>, <a href="#page_056">56</a>, <a href="#page_310">310</a>, <a href="#page_316">316-318</a>, <a href="#page_322">322</a>.<br /> -Le Conquet, <a href="#page_230">230-231</a>, <a href="#page_236">236</a>.<br /> -Lehon, <a href="#page_297">297-298</a>.<br /> -Le Légué, <a href="#page_266">266</a>.<br /> -Le Mans, <a href="#page_054">54</a>, <a href="#page_310">310</a>.<br /> -Locmariaquer, <a href="#page_146">146</a>, <a href="#page_159">159</a>, <a href="#page_167">167</a>, <a href="#page_175">175-176</a>, <a href="#page_370">370</a>.<br /> -Locminé, <a href="#page_157">157-158</a>, <a href="#page_370">370</a>.<br /> -Lorient, <a href="#page_043">43</a>, <a href="#page_044">44</a>, <a href="#page_054">54</a>, <a href="#page_089">89</a>, <a href="#page_144">144</a>, <a href="#page_175">175</a>, <a href="#page_179">179-181</a>, <a href="#page_182">182</a>.<br /> -Loudéac, <a href="#page_310">310</a>, <a href="#page_334">334-335</a>.<br /> -<br /> -<a name="M" id="M"></a>Mayenne (and château), <a href="#page_054">54</a>, <a href="#page_309">309</a>, <a href="#page_310">310</a>, <a href="#page_311">311-312</a>, <a href="#page_316">316</a>, <a href="#page_322">322</a>.<br /> -Ménac, <a href="#page_169">169</a>.<br /> -Minden, Fort, <a href="#page_044">44</a>.<br /> -Miniac, <a href="#page_306">306</a>.<br /> -Molène, Ile, <a href="#page_232">232-233</a>.<br /> -Montauban, <a href="#page_334">334</a>.<br /> -Mont Dol, <a href="#page_303">303</a>.<br /> -Montfort-sur-Meu, <a href="#page_310">310</a>, <a href="#page_333">333-334</a>.<br /> -Mont St. Michel (and bay), <a href="#page_034">34</a>, <a href="#page_039">39</a>, <a href="#page_043">43</a>, <a href="#page_046">46</a>, <a href="#page_054">54</a>, <a href="#page_060">60</a>, <a href="#page_249">249</a>, <a href="#page_298">298</a>, <a href="#page_300">300-302</a>, <a href="#page_303">303</a>.<br /> -Morlaix, <a href="#page_043">43</a>, <a href="#page_054">54</a>, <a href="#page_063">63</a>, <a href="#page_094">94</a>, <a href="#page_238">238</a>, <a href="#page_244">244-247</a>, <a href="#page_249">249</a>, <a href="#page_340">340</a>.<br /> -Motte-Broons, <a href="#page_293">293</a>.<br /> -<br /> -<a name="N" id="N"></a>Nantes (and castle), <a href="#page_004">4</a>, <a href="#page_007">7</a>, <a href="#page_019">19</a>, <a href="#page_022">22</a>, <a href="#page_024">24</a>, <a href="#page_026">26</a>, <a href="#page_030">30</a>, <a href="#page_036">36</a>, <a href="#page_038">38</a>, <a href="#page_039">39</a>, <a href="#page_054">54</a>, <a href="#page_056">56</a>, <a href="#page_057">57</a>, <a href="#page_067">67</a>, <a href="#page_102">102</a>, <a href="#page_104">104</a>, <a href="#page_105">105-110</a>, <a href="#page_111">111</a>, <a href="#page_112">112</a>, <a href="#page_115">115</a>, <a href="#page_116">116-121</a>, <a href="#page_124">124</a>, <a href="#page_127">127</a>, <a href="#page_146">146</a>, <a href="#page_174">174</a>, <a href="#page_211">211</a>, <a href="#page_221">221</a>, <a href="#page_243">243</a>.<br /> -Notre Dame de la Clarté, <a href="#page_350">350-351</a>.<br /> -<br /> -<a name="O" id="O"></a>Oudon, <a href="#page_104">104</a>.<br /> -Ouessant, Ile, <a href="#page_043">43</a>, <a href="#page_044">44</a>, <a href="#page_232">232</a>, <a href="#page_233">233-236</a>.<br /> -Our Lady of Langonnet, Abbey of, <a href="#page_194">194</a>.<a name="page_375" id="page_375"></a><br /> -<br /> -<a name="P" id="P"></a>Paimbœuf, <a href="#page_042">42</a>, <a href="#page_111">111</a>, <a href="#page_112">112</a>.<br /> -Paimpol, <a href="#page_257">257-259</a>.<br /> -Palais, <a href="#page_044">44</a>, <a href="#page_173">173</a>, <a href="#page_175">175</a>.<br /> -Paramé, <a href="#page_039">39</a>, <a href="#page_271">271</a>, <a href="#page_272">272</a>, <a href="#page_274">274-276</a>.<br /> -Penmarc’h, <a href="#page_031">31</a>, <a href="#page_208">208</a>, <a href="#page_210">210-211</a>, <a href="#page_370">370</a>.<br /> -Penthièvre, <a href="#page_007">7</a>, <a href="#page_044">44</a>, <a href="#page_171">171</a>.<br /> -Pilier, <a href="#page_044">44</a>.<br /> -Ploërmel, <a href="#page_054">54</a>, <a href="#page_150">150-152</a>.<br /> -Ploubazlanec, <a href="#page_355">355</a>, <a href="#page_356">356</a>, <a href="#page_357">357</a>.<br /> -Ploudalmézeau, <a href="#page_236">236-237</a>.<br /> -Plougasnou, <a href="#page_025">25</a>, <a href="#page_064">64</a>.<br /> -Plougastel, <a href="#page_221">221</a>, <a href="#page_228">228-230</a>, <a href="#page_350">350</a>, <a href="#page_369">369</a>.<br /> -Plouharnel, <a href="#page_167">167</a>, <a href="#page_171">171</a>.<br /> -Pointe de Kerpenhir, <a href="#page_145">145</a>.<br /> -Point of Primel, <a href="#page_247">247</a>.<br /> -Point of Raz, <a href="#page_212">212</a>, <a href="#page_213">213</a>, <a href="#page_214">214</a>.<br /> -Point Sizun, <a href="#page_212">212</a>.<br /> -Point St. Mathieu, <a href="#page_212">212</a>.<br /> -Pont Aven, <a href="#page_082">82</a>, <a href="#page_187">187</a>, <a href="#page_201">201</a>, <a href="#page_202">202-205</a>, <a href="#page_351">351</a>, <a href="#page_369">369</a>.<br /> -Pont Croix, <a href="#page_214">214</a>.<br /> -Pontivy (and castle), <a href="#page_054">54</a>, <a href="#page_334">334-337</a>, <a href="#page_355">355</a>, <a href="#page_370">370</a>.<br /> -Pont l’Abbé, <a href="#page_027">27</a>, <a href="#page_082">82</a>, <a href="#page_187">187</a>, <a href="#page_208">208-210</a>, <a href="#page_369">369</a>.<br /> -Pont Scorff, <a href="#page_179">179</a>, <a href="#page_185">185-186</a>, <a href="#page_370">370</a>.<br /> -Pornic (and château), <a href="#page_042">42</a>, <a href="#page_111">111</a>, <a href="#page_112">112-114</a>.<br /> -Port Haliguen, <a href="#page_172">172</a>.<br /> -Port Louis, <a href="#page_044">44</a>, <a href="#page_181">181-182</a>.<br /> -Port Maria, <a href="#page_172">172</a>.<br /> -Port Navalo, <a href="#page_043">43</a>, <a href="#page_145">145</a>.<br /> -Portz, <a href="#page_355">355</a>.<br /> -Pouldu, <a href="#page_190">190</a>.<br /> -Poulgoazec, <a href="#page_214">214</a>.<br /> -Pré-en-Pail, <a href="#page_309">309</a>.<br /> -Primelin, <a href="#page_214">214</a>.<br /> -<br /> -<a name="Q" id="Q"></a>Questembert, <a href="#page_136">136</a>.<br /> -Quiberon, <a href="#page_044">44</a>, <a href="#page_163">163</a>, <a href="#page_167">167</a>, <a href="#page_170">170</a>, <a href="#page_171">171-173</a>, <a href="#page_175">175</a>.<br /> -Quimper, <a href="#page_019">19</a>, <a href="#page_027">27</a>, <a href="#page_032">32</a>, <a href="#page_038">38</a>, <a href="#page_041">41</a>, <a href="#page_053">53</a>, <a href="#page_054">54</a>, <a href="#page_060">60</a>, <a href="#page_072">72</a>, <a href="#page_075">75</a>, <a href="#page_082">82</a>, <a href="#page_093">93</a>, <a href="#page_128">128</a>, <a href="#page_205">205-208</a>, <a href="#page_212">212</a>, <a href="#page_224">224</a>, <a href="#page_370">370</a>.<br /> -Quimperlé, <a href="#page_187">187-190</a>, <a href="#page_191">191</a>, <a href="#page_309">309</a>, <a href="#page_351">351</a>, <a href="#page_369">369</a>.<br /> -<br /> -<a name="R" id="R"></a>Redon, <a href="#page_024">24</a>, <a href="#page_128">128</a>, <a href="#page_132">132-136</a>.<br /> -Rennes, <a href="#page_019">19</a>, <a href="#page_022">22</a>, <a href="#page_024">24</a>, <a href="#page_025">25</a>, <a href="#page_041">41</a>, <a href="#page_054">54</a>, <a href="#page_057">57</a>, <a href="#page_075">75</a>, <a href="#page_118">118</a>, <a href="#page_128">128</a>, <a href="#page_146">146</a>, <a href="#page_150">150</a>, <a href="#page_310">310</a>, <a href="#page_316">316</a>, <a href="#page_329">329-333</a>, <a href="#page_343">343</a>.<br /> -Rimains, Fort des, <a href="#page_044">44</a>.<br /> -Rochefort-en-Terre (and château), <a href="#page_027">27</a>, <a href="#page_136">136-138</a>.<br /> -Rochers, Château of, <a href="#page_324">324-328</a>.<br /> -Roc’hquérezen, <a href="#page_229">229</a>.<br /> -Roc’hquillion, <a href="#page_229">229</a>.<br /> -Roc’huivlen, <a href="#page_229">229</a>.<br /> -Roscanvel, <a href="#page_217">217</a>.<br /> -Roscoff, <a href="#page_043">43</a>, <a href="#page_075">75</a>, <a href="#page_238">238-240</a>, <a href="#page_369">369</a>.<br /> -Rosporden, <a href="#page_031">31</a>, <a href="#page_194">194</a>, <a href="#page_195">195-196</a>, <a href="#page_201">201</a>, <a href="#page_351">351</a>, <a href="#page_369">369</a>.<br /> -Rostrenen, <a href="#page_337">337</a>.<br /> -Rothéneuf, <a href="#page_286">286-287</a>.<br /> -Rumengal, <a href="#page_346">346</a>, <a href="#page_350">350</a>, <a href="#page_369">369</a>.<br /> -<br /> -<a name="S" id="S"></a>Sauzon, <a href="#page_175">175</a>.<br /> -Savenay, <a href="#page_041">41</a>, <a href="#page_124">124-125</a>, <a href="#page_128">128</a>, <a href="#page_130">130</a>.<br /> -Scaër, <a href="#page_349">349</a>, <a href="#page_351">351</a>, <a href="#page_370">370</a>.<br /> -Seven Isles, <a href="#page_256">256-257</a>.<br /> -St. Briac, <a href="#page_027">27</a>, <a href="#page_290">290-291</a>.<br /> -St. Brieuc, <a href="#page_019">19</a>, <a href="#page_029">29</a>, <a href="#page_060">60</a>, <a href="#page_262">262</a>, <a href="#page_263">263-266</a>, <a href="#page_268">268</a>, <a href="#page_270">270</a>.<br /> -St. Cast, <a href="#page_026">26</a>, <a href="#page_067">67</a>, <a href="#page_290">290</a>, <a href="#page_355">355</a>.<br /> -Ste. Anne de la Palude, <a href="#page_346">346</a>, <a href="#page_350">350</a>, <a href="#page_370">370</a>.<br /> -Ste. Marguerite, <a href="#page_127">127</a>.<br /> -St. Énogat, <a href="#page_273">273</a>, <a href="#page_288">288</a>, <a href="#page_289">289-290</a>.<br /> -St. Fiacre, <a href="#page_026">26</a>, <a href="#page_191">191-192</a>, <a href="#page_370">370</a>.<br /> -St. Gildas de Rhuis, <a href="#page_027">27</a>, <a href="#page_148">148</a>, <a href="#page_370">370</a>.<br /> -St. Guénolé, <a href="#page_211">211</a>.<br /> -St. Jacut, <a href="#page_027">27</a>, <a href="#page_272">272-273</a>, <a href="#page_290">290</a>.<br /> -St. Jean-Brevelay, <a href="#page_352">352</a>.<br /> -St. Jean du Doigt, <a href="#page_247">247-248</a>, <a href="#page_346">346</a>, <a href="#page_350">350</a>, <a href="#page_352">352-353</a>, <a href="#page_369">369</a>.<br /> -St. Lunaire, <a href="#page_027">27</a>, <a href="#page_290">290</a>.<br /> -St. Malo (and bay), <a href="#page_009">9</a>, <a href="#page_019">19</a>, <a href="#page_027">27</a>, <a href="#page_039">39</a>, <a href="#page_043">43</a>, <a href="#page_044">44</a>, <a href="#page_054">54</a>, <a href="#page_056">56</a>, <a href="#page_057">57</a>, <a href="#page_061">61</a>, <a href="#page_063">63</a>, <a href="#page_067">67</a>, <a href="#page_094">94</a>, <a href="#page_249">249</a>, <a href="#page_271">271-274</a>, <a href="#page_276">276-283</a>, <a href="#page_285">285</a>, <a href="#page_288">288</a>, <a href="#page_291">291</a>, <a href="#page_300">300</a>.<a name="page_376" id="page_376"></a><br /> -St. Maurice, Abbey of, <a href="#page_190">190-191</a>.<br /> -St. Méen, <a href="#page_334">334</a>.<br /> -St. Nazaire, <a href="#page_039">39</a>, <a href="#page_109">109-111</a>, <a href="#page_112">112</a>, <a href="#page_121">121</a>, <a href="#page_122">122-124</a>, <a href="#page_128">128</a>, <a href="#page_144">144</a>.<br /> -St. Nicolas, <a href="#page_205">205</a>.<br /> -St. Pol de Léon, <a href="#page_019">19</a>, <a href="#page_027">27</a>, <a href="#page_060">60</a>, <a href="#page_206">206</a>, <a href="#page_238">238</a>, <a href="#page_242">242-244</a>.<br /> -St. Rénan, <a href="#page_236">236</a>.<br /> -St. Servan, <a href="#page_027">27</a>, <a href="#page_271">271</a>, <a href="#page_272">272</a>, <a href="#page_276">276</a>, <a href="#page_283">283-285</a>.<br /> -St. Thégonnec, <a href="#page_350">350</a>.<br /> -St. Yves, <a href="#page_346">346</a>, <a href="#page_350">350</a>.<br /> -Suscino, Château of, <a href="#page_148">148-150</a>.<br /> -<br /> -<a name="T" id="T"></a>Taureau, Château du, <a href="#page_044">44</a>.<br /> -Tentêniac, <a href="#page_306">306</a>.<br /> -Tombelaine, Isle of, <a href="#page_034">34</a>, <a href="#page_302">302-303</a>.<br /> -Trébone, <a href="#page_351">351</a>.<br /> -Tréguier, <a href="#page_019">19</a>, <a href="#page_024">24</a>, <a href="#page_060">60</a>, <a href="#page_094">94</a>, <a href="#page_206">206</a>, <a href="#page_250">250</a>, <a href="#page_252">252-256</a>.<br /> -Trélaze, <a href="#page_029">29</a>.<br /> -Tristan, Ile, <a href="#page_215">215-216</a>.<br /> -Troménie de St. Ronan, <a href="#page_346">346</a>.<br /> -<br /> -<a name="V-ind" id="V-ind"></a>Val André, <a href="#page_263">263</a>, <a href="#page_269">269-270</a>.<br /> -Vannes, <a href="#page_019">19</a>, <a href="#page_024">24</a>, <a href="#page_043">43</a>, <a href="#page_054">54</a>, <a href="#page_060">60</a>, <a href="#page_075">75</a>, <a href="#page_128">128</a>, <a href="#page_134">134</a>, <a href="#page_136">136</a>, <a href="#page_138">138</a>, <a href="#page_139">139</a>, <a href="#page_140">140-148</a>, <a href="#page_150">150</a>, <a href="#page_175">175</a>, <a href="#page_187">187</a>, <a href="#page_221">221</a>.<br /> -Ville Martin, <a href="#page_044">44</a>.<br /> -Vitré (and château), <a href="#page_024">24</a>, <a href="#page_054">54</a>, <a href="#page_262">262</a>, <a href="#page_310">310</a>, <a href="#page_318">318-324</a>.<br /> -</p> - -<p><a name="page_377" id="page_377"></a></p> - -<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="" -style="padding:2%;border:3px dotted gray;"> -<tr><th align="center">Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:</th></tr> -<tr><td align="left">Le trente-un du mois<span class="errata"> d’aôut</span>=> Le trente-un du mois d’août {pg 68}</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">is by no <span class="errata">mean</span> inexplicable=> is by no means inexplicable {pg 3}</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">must <span class="errata">known</span> these principal provinces by name=> must know these principal provinces by name {pg 7}</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">general eerie espect=> general eerie aspect {pg 138}</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">busy <span class="errata">litle</span> Breton port=> busy little Breton port {pg 214}</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">religious <span class="errata">architecure</span>.=> religious architecture. {pg 226}</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">in the sixth <span class="errata">entury</span>=> in the sixth century {pg 304}</td></tr> -</table> - 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/dev/null diff --git a/old/readme.htm b/old/readme.htm deleted file mode 100644 index c355465..0000000 --- a/old/readme.htm +++ /dev/null @@ -1,13 +0,0 @@ -<!DOCTYPE html> -<html lang="en"> -<head> - <meta charset="utf-8"> -</head> -<body> -<div> -Versions of this book's files up to October 2024 are here.<br> -More recent changes, if any, are reflected in the GitHub repository: -<a href="https://github.com/gutenbergbooks/42866">https://github.com/gutenbergbooks/42866</a> -</div> -</body> -</html> |
