a man of chimeras, a disciple of St. Tudwal, St. Iltud, and St. Cadoc,
in an age when their teaching is no longer of any practical use.
When I went to the more secular town of Guingamp, where I had some
relatives of the middle class, I felt very ill at ease, and the only
pleasant companion I had there was an aged servant to whom I used
to read fairy tales. I longed to be back in the sombre old place,
overshadowed by its cathedral, but a living protest, so to speak,
against all that is mean and commonplace. I felt myself again when
I got back to the lofty steeple, the pointed nave, and the cloisters
with their fifteenth century tombs, being always at my ease when in
the company of the dead, by the side of the cavaliers and proud dames,
sleeping peacefully with their hound at their feet, and a massive
stone torch in their grasp. The outskirts of the town had the same
religious and idealistic aspect, and were enveloped in an atmosphere
of mythology as dense as Benares or Juggernaut. The church of
St. Michael, from which the open sea could be discerned, had been
destroyed by lightning and was the scene of many prodigies. Upon
Maunday Thursday the children of Tréguier were taken there to see the
bells go off to Rome. We were blindfolded, and much we then enjoyed
seeing all the bells in the peal, beginning with the largest and
ending with the smallest, arrayed in the embroidered lace robes which
they had been dressed in upon their baptismal day, cleaving the air on
their way to Rome for the Pope's benediction.

Upon the opposite side of the river there was the beautiful valley
of the Tromeur, watered by a sacred fountain which Christianity had
hallowed by connecting it with the worship of the Virgin. The chapel
was burnt down in 1828, but it was at once rebuilt, and the statue of
the Virgin was replaced by a much more handsome one. That fidelity
to the traditions of the past which is the chief trait in the Breton