IN A BRETON VILLAGE.

PART I.


In a wild and little-known part of the coast of Brittany, where, in
place of sandy beach or cliff, huge granite boulders lie strewn along
the shore, like the ruins of some Titan city, and assuming, here the
features of some uncouth monster, there the outline of some gigantic
fortress, present an aspect of mingled farce and solemnity, and give the
whole region the air of some connection with the under-world,--on this
coast, and low down among the boulders out to sea, stands a little
fishing village.

The granite cottages with their thatched roofs--bits of warm colour
among the bare rocks--lie on a tongue of land between the two inlets of
the sea, which, when the tides run high, nearly cut them off from the
mainland. Opposite the village on the other side of the little inland
sea, is a second cluster of piled-up rocks thrust forth, like the fist
of a giant, to defy the onslaught of Neptune, and on a plateau near the
summit, is the skeleton of a house, built for a summer residence by a
Russian Prince, who had a fancy for solitude and sea air, but abandoned
for some reason before the interior was completed. Solitary and
lifeless, summer and winter, it looks silently down like a wall-eyed
ghost over the waste of rocks and sea.

Below the house and close down by the seashore, is a low, thatched