SAINTLY WAY TO CURE BOILS.-IGNORANCE OF THE PEASANTS. --LA ROCHE BERNARD.-ARRIVAL AT NANTES.-PREPARATIONS FOR A FÊTE. THE CATHEDRAL.-TOMB OF THE LAST DUKE OF BRITTANY.-THE HEART OF THE DUCHESS ANNE. THE NOYADES. -THE SALORGES.-A MANIAC.-CONSERVES ALIMENTAIRES.-MAISON DES ENFANS NANTAIS.-PICTURESQUE HOUSES.-THE CASTLE. -THE OPERA.-THE FÊTE.-FRENCH APPRECIATION OF THE ENGLISH ARMY.-THE ENGLISH PRESS.-TE DEUM.-FIREWORKS.LEAVE NANTES.-CONCLUSION.

I was made very sensible that my pleasant tour in Brittany was drawing to a close on finding myself journeying to Nantes in a Diligence which announced, in large letters, that it was en correspondance with the railway from that city to Paris. Fortune, or misfortune, willed

it that I shared the coupé with two fond mothers, who spent the evening and the greater part of the night in lulling, or rather endeavouring to lull, two babies to sleep, who manifested by their incessant screaming that they were extremely uncomfortable. But besides the babies we had two fretful children, who acted as wedges in the narrow coupé.

There is a story told of the poet Campbell, who, having had the misfortune to confess to a loving Mamma that he doted on children, had the office of nurse to some half-dozen forced on him for the evening. When asked whether his love for infants had not been on this occasion fully gratified, he is said to have replied with a groan, that he had been longing for Herod all the time.

Now although my desires were not quite of so murderous a hue as those of the poet, I could not help more than once speculating on the effects of chloroform upon infants, and wishing that by any innocuous means we could have suppressed the screams of the unquiet children. But then there would have remained the smell,-that peculiar baby-smell, which waxes in intensity as the cries of the little wretches rage and swell. Would any known or unknown chemical agent have destroyed that? Happily I had a corner seat, which gave me control over one window, which I kept open during the journey, to the great

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discomfiture of my companions; but I verily believe that had it not been for this safety-valve I should have been suffocated.

A short way from Vannes we came to St. Laurent, a small village which apparently possesses no features of interest. But if you travel this road, you must not omit pausing for a few minutes at St. Laurent, to see the chapel dedicated to this Saint. This is frequented by vast numbers of people, who observe a very curious practice, which, according to Breton authorities, is extremely ancient. This consists in offering nails on the Saint's shrine instead of money; the contact of the nails with the shrine causing them, in the estimation of the people, to become endowed with miraculous power, when they are sold by the priests for the benefit of the chapel. You will naturally suppose that the nails are used for some household purpose. By no means; and in all probability you would never guess the use to which they are applied.

The Bretons, or at least the Morbihan Bretons, are, it seems, greatly troubled by boils: a complaint, by the way, considerably on the increase in England. The pain of these plagues is compared by the Morbihan peasants to that which St. Laurent suffered when he was roasted alive. If this be a faithful comparison, we must congratulate ourselves that English boils do not yet occasion the exquisite agony of those

:

which torment the Bretons. Well, the French for boils being clous (nails), the peasants offer these articles, as I have said, on St. Laurent's shrine, imagining that when they have been rendered holy, their contact with a boil will effect a speedy cure. This superstition is so absurd as to provoke ridicule; and yet it is not only tolerated, but even encouraged by the priests, who find in it a profitable revenue. Hear what a Canon of Vannes Cathedral says on the subject : "Cet usage populaire manque de gravité et prête à la raillerie; mais ceux qui en feraient tomber le ridicule sur la religion seraient bien peu équitables. C'est le peuple qui l'a imaginé; c'est le peuple qui le perpétue, et il ne serait pas aussi facile qu'on s'imagine de l'y faire renoncer. On est même obligé de tolérer les pratiques qui ne sont que bizarres, pour combattre avec plus de hardiesse et de succès celles qui sont criminelles."*

The logic of this is almost as diverting as the superstition which the easy Canon encourages. Truly the schoolmaster has not walked abroad in the Morbihan! This is borne out by State Educational Statistics. Among the eighty-six Departments into which France is divided, that of the Morbihan ranks as the eighty-second in the order of enlightenment. In the Meuse, seventy-four out of one hundred can

* Mahé, 'Antiquités du Morbihan.'

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read and write in the Morbihan only fourteen per

cent.

As the night fell we arrived at La Roche Bernard, a small town on the Vilaine, here spanned by one of the finest wire suspension-bridges in France. The distance between the points of suspension is 626 feet, and the height of the roadway above the water 122 feet. This was the last object seen by me before we arrived at Nantes; but if guide-books are veracious, the country between that city and La Roche Bernard is singularly uninteresting and dreary; the fine swelling hills of Brittany, with their varied picturesque features of rock, wood, and water, subsiding, east of Vannes, into that vast plain which characterizes the greater portion of central France. I should in all probability have slept through the rest of the journey, had not the odour of my infantine neighbours compelled me to keep my head out of the window,-a position highly unfavourable to somnolency. However, as all things come to an end, so did my miseries; and at three in the morning we rattled into the great city of Nantes, clattering through the unpeopled streets with a noise that must have aroused many an uneasy sleeper. What can be the object to start from Vannes at such an hour as to bring the traveller into Nantes in the middle of the night, long before the trains leave for Paris, is beyond my comprehension.