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I QUIMPER AND BONNE MAMAN 3

II ELIANE 44

V TANTE ROSE 83

VI THE DEMOISELLES DE COATNAMPRUN 98

X THE PARDON AT FOLGOAT 196

A CHILDHOOD IN BRITTANY

This little sheaf of childish memories has been put together from many talks, in her own tongue, with an old French friend. The names of her relatives have, by her wish, been changed to other names, taken from their Breton properties, or slightly altered while preserving the character of the Breton original.

A CHILDHOOD IN BRITTANY

QUIMPER AND BONNE MAMAN

I was born at Quimper in Brittany on the first of August, 1833, at four o'clock in the morning, and I have been told that I looked about me resolutely and fixed a steady gaze on the people in the room, so that the doctor said, "She is not blind, at all events."

Mr. Dobray wore knee-breeches, silk stockings, and a high stock. I see my father, too, very tall, robust, and fair, with the pleasantest face. But my father's figure fills all my childhood. I was his pet and darling. When I cried and was naughty, my mother would say: "Take your daughter. She tires me and is insufferable." Then my father would take me in his arms and walk up and down with me while he sang me to sleep with old Breton songs. One of these ran:

J?sus p?guen brasv?, Pl?gar douras n?n?; J?sus p?guen brasv?, Ad ondar garan t?!

This, as far as I remember, means, "May Jesus be happy, and may His grace make us all happy."

At other times my father played strange, melancholy old Breton tunes to me on a violin, which he held upright on his knee, using the bow across it as though it were a 'cello. He was, though untaught, exceedingly musical, and played by ear on the clavecin anything he had heard. It must have been from him that I inherited my love of music, and I do not remember the time that I was not singing.

I see myself, also, at the earliest age, held before my father on his saddle as we rode through woods. He wore an easy Byronic collar and always went bareheaded. He spent most of his time on horseback, visiting his farms or hunting.

"What's this?" said my father, laughing.

"We needed some new cards," said my mother, "and I dislike so much the name of Kerouguet."

But my father, laughing more than ever, said:

"Kerouguet you married and Kerouguet you must remain," and the new cards had to be relinquished.

The high walls that ran along the street and surrounded the garden were concealed by plantations of trees, so that one seemed to look out into the country. Flower beds were under the salon-windows, and there were long borders of wild strawberries that had been transplanted from the woods, as my mother was very fond of them. Fruit-trees grew against the walls, and beyond the groves and flower beds and winding gravel paths was an orchard, with apricot-, pear-, and apple-trees, and the clear little river Odel, with its washing-stones, where the laundry-maids beat the household linen in the cold, running water.

Beyond the river were the woods where I often rode with my father, and beyond the woods distant ranges of mountains. I looked out at all this from my nursery-windows, with their frame of climbing-roses and heliotrope. Near my window was a great lime-tree of the variety known as American. The vanilla-like scent of its flowers was almost overpowering, and all this fragrance gave my mother a headache, and she had to have her room moved away from the garden to another part of the house. How clearly I see this room of my mother's, with its high, canopied four-poster bed and the pale-gray paper on the walls covered with yellow fleurs-de-lis!

The servants were all under the orders of a very stately autocratic person, the steward or major-domo. It was he who directed the service from behind his master's chair at the head of the table and he who prescribed the correct costume for the servants. His wife had charge of Jeannie and of me; it was she who, when two little sisters and a brother had been added to the family, took us down to our breakfast and supervised the meal. We had it in a little tower-room on the ground floor, milk soup or gruel and the delicious bread and butter of Brittany.

We lunched and dined at ten and five--such were the hours of those days--with our parents in the dining-room, and it was here that one of the most magnificent figures of my childhood appears; for my devoted father brought me back from Paris one day a splendid mechanical pony, life-sized and with a real pony-skin, the apparatus by which he was moved simulating an exhilarating canter. Upon this steed, after dessert, we children mounted one by one, and we resorted to many ruses in order to get the first ride of the day. This dear pony accompanied all my childhood. He lost his hair as the result of an unhappy experiment we tried upon him, scrubbing him with hot water and soap, one day when we were unobserved. He had a melancholy look after that, but was none the less active and none the less loved. When I saw his dismembered body lying in the garret of a grand-niece not many years ago I felt a contraction of the heart. How he brought back my youth, and since that how many generations had ridden him!

We played at being horses, too, driving each other in the garden, where we spent most of our days when at Quimper. Strange to say, even while we were thus occupied, we always wore veils tightly tied over our bonnets and faces to preserve our skins from the sun. We all wore, even in earliest childhood, stiff little dresses with closely fitting boned bodices. My sister Eliane was delicate and wore flannel next her skin; but my only underclothing consisted of cambric chemise, petticoats, and drawers, these last reaching to my ankles and terminating in frills that fell over the foot in its little sandaled shoe. When I came back from a wonderful stay, later on, of four or five years in England, a visit that revolutionized my ideas of life, I wore the easy dress of English children, and had bare arms, much to my mother's dismay. Another change that England wrought in me was that I was filled with discomfort when I saw the peasants kneeling before us at Loch-ar-Brugg, our country home; for in those days, although the Revolution had passed over France, it was still the custom for peasants to kneel before their masters, and my mother felt it right and proper that they should do so. I begged her not to allow it, but she insisted upon the ceremony to her dying day, and only when I came as mistress to Loch-ar-Brugg with my children and grandchildren was it discontinued.

"Sophie does not know her Pater," she said to my mother. "She must learn it."

When she found us both, except for a few bruises, safe and sound, she went off into a peal of laughter, and I followed suit, much relieved; for I had imagined for one moment that I had made a mistake in my answer, and I found the punishment too severe.

It was not until my brother's tutor came to us, when I was eight or nine years old, that I ever had any teacher but Ghislaine.

ELIANE

"Why not, dear?"

It must have been at about this time that I first saw the sea and had my first sea-bath. Papa said one day that he would take me to the beach of Loctudiy, near Quimper, with old Gertrude. It is a vast sandy beach, with scattered rocks that, to my childish eyes, stood like giants around us. Gertrude took off my shoes and stockings, and we picked up the shells that lay along the beach in the sunlight like a gigantic rainbow. What a delight it was! Some were white, some yellow, some pink, and some of a lovely rosy mauve. I could not pick them up fast enough or carry those I already had. My little pail overflowed, and the painful problem that confronts all children engaged in this delicious pursuit would soon have oppressed me if my thoughts had not been turned in another direction by the sight of papa making his way toward the sea in bathing-dress. The sea was immense and mysterious, and my beloved papa looked very small before it. I ran to him crying:

"Don't go, papa! Don't go! You will be drowned!"

"There is no danger of that, my pet," said my father. "See how smooth and blue the water is. Don't you want to come with me?"

I felt at once that I did, and in the twinkling of an eye Gertrude had undressed me, my father had me in his arms, and before I could say "Ouf!" I was plunged from head to foot in the Atlantic Ocean. It was my second baptism, and I still feel an agreeable shudder when I remember it. My father held me under the arms to teach me to swim, and I vigorously agitated my little legs and arms. Then I was given back to Gertrude, who dried me and, taking me by the hand, made me run up and down on the hot sand until I was quite warm.

"Oh, no," I replied. "They do not eat children. I patted it."

Perhaps my tendency to tell tall stories dates from this time.

THE F?TE AT KER-ELIANE

It was shortly after Eliane's christening, and to celebrate my mother's recovery, that my father gave a great entertainment at Ker-Eliane, near Loch-ar-Brugg.

Loch-ar-Brugg, which means Place of Heather, was an old manor and property that my father had bought and at that time used as a hunting-lodge, and Ker-Eliane was a wild, beautiful piece of country adjoining it, a pleasure resort, called after my mother's name.

To reach Loch-ar-Brugg we all went by the traveling carriage to my father's native town of Landerneau. I dreaded these journeys, since inside the carriage I always became sick; but on this occasion I sat outside near an old servant of my grandmother's called Soisick, the diminutive of Fran?ois, and was very happy, since in the open air I did not suffer at all. Soisick was an old Breton from Brest. He wore the costume of that part of the country, a tightly fitting, long, black jacket opening over a waistcoat adorned with white-bone buttons, full knee-breeches of coarse, white linen girded over the waistcoat with a red woolen sash, with white woolen stockings, and black shoes. One still sees very old Bretons wearing this costume, but nowadays the peasants prefer the vulgar, commonplace dress of modern work-people.

My father was waiting for us on the quay of Landerneau. What joy I felt when I saw him! When he climbed up beside me and Soisick my happiness was complete.

THE OLD HOUSE AT LANDERNEAU

The dining-room windows looked out at a garden full of flowers, the high walls embroidered with espalier fruit-trees, plum-, cherry-, mulberry-, and medlar-trees growing along the paths. At the bottom of the garden was a large aviary containing golden and silver pheasants, magpies, canaries, and exotic birds that my father's naval friends had brought him from their long Oriental voyages. My father himself tended these birds, and I can answer for it that they lacked nothing. I must tell here of the strange behavior of a golden pheasant. Despite papa's gentleness and care, this bird seemed to detest him and would not let him enter the aviary; but when I came with papa, the pheasant would run to the wires and eat the bread I held out to it from my hand. Papa was surprised and interested, and suggested one day that I should go with him into the aviary and "see what the pheasant would say." No sooner said than done. The bird rushed at papa and pecked at his feet with a singular ferocity; then, feeling, evidently, that he had disposed of his enemy, he turned to me, spread out his wings before me, bowed up and down as if an ecstasy of reverent delight, and taking the bread I held out to him, he paid no more attention at all to papa.

The principal rooms on the ground floor of the house opened on a stone hall with an inlaid marble floor, where, in a niche carved in the wall, and facing the wide stone staircase, stood another Virgin, much larger and even older than Nicole's. She was of stone, with a blunted, gentle countenance, and hands held out at each side in a graceful, simple gesture that seemed to express surprise as much as benediction. As we came down from our rooms every morning it was as if she greeted us always with a renewed interest. Fresh flowers were laid at her feet every day, and we were all taught, the boys to lift their hats, the girls to drop deep curtseys before her. Indeed, these respects were paid by us to all the many statues of the Virgin that are seen on our Breton roads. From the hall one entered the salon, with its inlaid parquet floor, so polished that we were forbidden to slide upon it, for it was as slippery as ice, and falls were inevitable for disobedient children. On the mantelpiece was a clock representing Marius weeping over the ruins of Carthage. His cloak lay about his knees, and we used to feel that he would have done much better had he drawn it up and covered his chilly-looking bronze shoulders. On each side of the clock were white vases with garlands in relief upon them of blue convolvulus and their green leaves. But what bewitched us children were the big Chinese porcelain figures, mandarins sitting cross-legged, with heads that nodded gently up and down at the slightest movement made in the room. Their bellies were bare, their eyes seemed to laugh, and they were putting out their tongues. Black ibises upon their robes opened wide beaks to catch butterflies. I remember crossing the hall on tiptoe and opening the salon-door very softly and looking in at the mandarins sitting there in their still merriment; and it required a little courage, as though one summoned a spell, to shake the door and rouse them into life. The heads gently nodded, the eyes seemed to laugh with a new meaning at me now; and I gazed, half frightened, half laughing, too, until all again was motionless. It was as if a secret jest had passed between me and the mandarins. In an immense room to the left of the salon that had once, perhaps, been a ball-room, but was now used as a laundry, was a high sculptured fireplace that was my joy. On each side the great greyhounds, sitting up on their hind legs, sustained the mantelpiece, all garlanded with vines. Among the leaves and grapes one saw a nest of little birds, with their beaks wide open, and the father and mother perched above them. And, most beautiful of all, a swallow in flight only touched with the tip of a wing a leaf, and really seemed to be flying. Only my father appreciated this masterpiece, which must have been a superb example of Renaissance work, and when, years afterward, my mother sold the house, the new owner had it broken up and carted away because it took up too much room!

On the two floors above were many bedrooms not only for our growing family, but for that of my Aunt de Laisieu, who, with all her children, used to pay us long and frequent visits, so that even in the babyhood of Eliane and Ernest and Maraquita I never lacked companionship.

From this room led papa's, more severe and masculine. Here there were glass cabinets fitted on each side into the deep window-seats and containing bibelots from all over the world. A group of family miniatures hung on the wall near the fireplace.

I had not seen this house for over fifty years when, some time ago, I went to visit it. The new proprietor, an unprepossessing person, was leaning against the great oaken door. He permitted me, very ungraciously, to enter.

I went through all these rooms that two generations ago had rung with the sounds of our happy young life, and it was misery to me. In the kitchen, which had been so beautiful, the window-panes were broken, and the dismantled walls daubed with whitewash, with dusty, empty bottles where Nicole's Virgin had stood. Upon the table was a greasy, discolored oil-cloth, where one saw M. Thiers, with knitted eyebrows and folded arms, surrounded by tricolor flags. The salon--I sobbed as I stood and looked about it; all, all that I had known and loved had disappeared. The stone Virgin was gone from her niche in the hall. Trembling, I mounted to my dear parents' rooms. What desolation! Unmade beds and rickety iron bedsteads; dust, disorder, and dirt. The carved chimneypiece, with its great drawer, was gone; the paper was peeled from the walls. Only over the doors, almost invisible under their cobwebs, were the painted panels of Love, who makes Time pass, and Time, who makes Love pass. The garden was a dung-heap.

The animal! I could have strangled him!

TANTE ROSE

Over the way lived Tante Rose. We children liked best to go to her house by means of the subterranean passage. It was pitch-dark, and we felt a fearful delight as we galloped through it at full speed, and then beat loudly upon the door at the other end, so that old Kerandraon should not keep us waiting for a moment in the blackness. In the salon, between the windows, her tame magpie hopping near her, we would find Tante Rose spinning at her wheel. There were pink ribbons on her distaff, and her beautiful, rounded arms moved gently to and fro drawing out the fine white linen thread. Sitting, as I see her thus, with her back to the light, her white tulle head-dress and the tulle bow beneath her chin surrounded her delicate, rosy face with a sort of aureole. She had a pointed little chin and gay, blue eyes, and though she had snowy hair, she looked so young and was so active that she seemed to have quicksilver in her veins. A tranquil mirth was her distinguishing characteristic, and even when hardly more than a baby I felt that Tante Rose was enchanting. Her first question was sure to be, "Are you hungry?" and even if we had just risen from a meal we were sure to be hungry when we came to see Tante Rose. She would blow into a little silver whistle that hung at her waist, and old Kerandraon would appear with his benevolent, smiling face.

"Take Mademoiselle Sophie's orders, Kerandraon," Tante Rose would say; but the dear old man, who was a great friend, did not need to wait for them.

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