CHAPTER II.NANTES TO VANNES

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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 haswound 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 theSardinières 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 bythe 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 neverbecome popular as such, in spite of the fact that a casino has already made its appearance.

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Pornic

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. Atthe 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.

enlarge-imageDonjon of ClissonDonjon of Clisson

Donjon of Clisson

The chapel, in which was celebrated the marriageof 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.

NEXTto 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 tobe 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 marblelie 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 seasidetowns, 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 ÉmirEst venu planter là ses innombrables tentesDont les cônes dressés en blancheurs éclatantesResplendissent parmi les tons bariolésDe tapis d’Orient sur le sol étalés;Ses cônes dont les tas de sel sur les ladures,Et ses riches tapis aux brillantes borduresNe sont que les Gabiers, les Fares, les Œillets.On l’évaporement laisse de gros feuilletsMétalliques, moirés flottant d’or et de soir.Par l’étier et le tour qu’un paludier fossoilLa 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.

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St. Nazaire

Modern navigation has replaced the old sailing-vessels, and to-day, with its coastwise andforeign 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 gruesomememory 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 conicalroofed towers of the time when feudalism ruled Brittany.

enlarge-imageAncient Fortifications of GuérandeAncient Fortifications of Guérande

Ancient Fortifications of Guérande

“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.

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Châteaubriant

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 owesits 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 MYCVLXPOUR LACHEVER IE DEVINS VIEVLX1538

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 merrymakingfor 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 maybe 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 ofLaval, 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, thetable 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.

enlarge-imagePan du menage

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, whichmakes 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 oftheDescartes. 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 heregiven, and it should have a double significance so far as travellers in Brittany are concerned.

enlarge-imageTour d’ElvenTour d’Elven

Tour d’Elven

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.

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 inthe 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 mauditeMarche 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 fenêtresCes mystérieuses chansons?Ce sont les âmes des ancêtresQui reconnaissent leurs maisons!”

enlarge-imageMarket-woman, VannesMarket-woman, Vannes

Market-woman, Vannes

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.

enlarge-imageThe Country near VannesThe Country near Vannes

The Country near Vannes

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 “likethe 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) andbihan(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 inthese 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 Brittanyin 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.

enlarge-imageAncient City Walls, VannesAncient City Walls, Vannes

Ancient City Walls, Vannes

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 thebandannavarietywaving 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.

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