and occasionally he rode to Rennes on business. Witnesses were
found to declare that during these absences he led a life
different from the one he was known to lead at Kerfol, where he
busied himself with his estate, attended mass daily, and found
his only amusement in hunting the wild boar and water-fowl. But
these rumours are not particularly relevant, and it is certain
that among people of his own class in the neighbourhood he passed
for a stern and even austere man, observant of his religious
obligations, and keeping strictly to himself. There was no talk
of any familiarity with the women on his estate, though at that
time the nobility were very free with their peasants. Some
people said he had never looked at a woman since his wife's
death; but such things are hard to prove, and the evidence on
this point was not worth much.

Well, in his sixty-second year, Yves de Cornault went to the
pardon at Locronan, and saw there a young lady of Douarnenez, who
had ridden over pillion behind her father to do her duty to the
saint. Her name was Anne de Barrigan, and she came of good old
Breton stock, but much less great and powerful than that of Yves
de Cornault; and her father had squandered his fortune at cards,
and lived almost like a peasant in his little granite manor on
the moors. . . I have said I would add nothing of my own to this
bald statement of a strange case; but I must interrupt myself
here to describe the young lady who rode up to the lych-gate of
Locronan at the very moment when the Baron de Cornault was also
dismounting there. I take my description from a rather rare
thing: a faded drawing in red crayon, sober and truthful enough
to be by a late pupil of the Clouets, which hangs in Lanrivain's
study, and is said to be a portrait of Anne de Barrigan. It is