illage, and here nearly a
thousand inhabitants manage to stow themselves away. But nothing strikes
you more in these Breton villages than their silent and apparently
deserted condition, even at midday. Nine times out of ten, there is
scarcely a creature to be seen in the streets, the house doors are for
the most part closed, no face peers curiously from the windows, and no
sound breaks upon the stillness of the air.

So was it to-day. The tramp of our horses, the rumbling of wheels alone
startled the silence as we approached the church. The small houses
forming the village in no way took from its grandeur or interfered with
its solitude and solemnity.

There in the desolate plain it rose, "a thing of beauty and a joy for
ever." Its charm fell upon us in the first moment, its wonderful tone
and colouring held us spellbound. Our first wonder was to find a
building so perfect in the midst of this desolate plain, so far away
from the world and civilization. It was our first wonder; and when
presently we turned away from it I think it was our last. But this
solitude and desolation add infinitely to its charm; just as the mystery
and romance that enshroud the far-off monasteries in their desolate
mountain retreats would fall away as "the baseless fabric of a vision"
if they were brought into the crowded and commonplace atmosphere of town
life.

The legend of le Folgoet is a curious one:

Towards the middle of the fourteenth century, there lived in a
neighbouring forest a poor idiot named Soloman, or Salaun, as it is
written in the Breton tongue. This idiot was known as the Fool of the
wood--le Folgoet.

There, in the quiet solitude, his voice might constantly be heard
singing, in his own strange way, hymns to the Virgin; and often during
the night, chanting an Ave Maria. Daily he begged his bread in the
neighbouring town of Lesneven, always using the same form of words: Ave
Maria: adding in Breton, "Salaun a zebre bara." "Soloman would eat some
bread."

Thus for forty years he lived, never having injured anyone, or made an
enemy. Then he fell ill, and one morning was found dead in the wood,
near the little spring from which he had drunk daily and the hollow tree
that had been his nightly shelter.

Soloman the fool was already fading from men's minds, when a miracle
happened. Above the little grave in the wood where he had been buried
there suddenly sprang a white lily, remarkable for its beauty and the
exquisite per