in fine weather along the beautiful mall which surrounds the town from
gate to gate on the side toward the sea. Sometimes the image of this
town arises in the temple of memory; she enters, crowned with her
towers, clasped with her girdle; her flower-strewn robe floats onward,
the golden mantle of her dunes enfolds her, the fragrant breath of her
briony paths, filled with the flowers of each passing season, exhales
at every step; she fills your mind, she calls to you like some
enchanting woman whom you have met in other climes and whose presence
still lingers in a fold of your heart.

Near the church of Guerande stands a mansion which is to the town what
the town is to the region, an exact image of the past, the symbol of a
grand thing destroyed,--a poem, in short. This mansion belongs to the
noblest family of the province; to the du Guaisnics, who, in the times
of the du Guesclins, were as superior to the latter in antiquity and
fortune as the Trojans were to the Romans. The Guaisqlains (the name
is also spelled in the olden time du Glaicquin), from which comes du
Guesclin, issued from the du Guaisnics.

Old as the granite of Brittany, the Guaisnics are neither Frenchmen
nor Gauls,--they are Bretons; or, to be more exact, they are Celts.
Formerly, they must have been Druids, gathering mistletoe in the
sacred forests and sacrificing men upon their dolmens. Useless to say
what they were! To-day this race, equal to the Rohans without having
deigned to make themselves princes, a race which was powerful before
the ancestors of Hugues Capet were ever heard of, this family, pure of
all alloy, possesses two thousand francs a year, its mansion in
Guerande, and the little castle of Guaisnic. All the lands belonging
to the barony of Guaisnic, the first in Brittany, are pledged to
farmers, and bring in sixty thousand francs a year, in spite of