al Brittany, is distinctly
different from it. The elm-tree promenade that follows the winding
river, which has quays and boats, renders the town very pretty and the
big Hotel de la Prefecture, which alone covers the little western delta,
gives it a thoroughly administrative and French appearance. You are
aware that you are in the _chef-lieu_ of a department, a fact brought
home to you by the latter's division in _arrondissements_, with their
large, medium, and small parishes, its committee of primary instruction,
its saving banks, its town council and other modern inventions, which
rob the cities of local colour, dear to the heart of the innocent
tourist.

With all due deference to the people who pronounce the name of
Quimper-Corentin as the synonyme of all that is ridiculous and
provincial, it is a most delightful place, and well worth other more
respected ones. You will not, it is true, find the charms and riotous
wealth of colouring possessed by Quimperle; still, I know of few things
that can equal the charming appearance of that alley following the edge
of the river and shaded by the escarpment of a neighbouring mountain,
which casts the dark shadows of its luxuriant foliage over it.

It does not take long to go through cities of this kind, and to know
their most intimate recesses, and sometimes one stumbles across places
that stay one's steps and fill one's heart with gladness.

Small cities, like small apartments, seem warmer and cosier to live in.
But keep this illusion! There are more draughts in such apartments than
in a palace, and a city of this kind is more deadly monotonous than the
desert.

Returning to the hotel by one of those paths we dearly love, that rises
and falls and winds, sometimes through a field, sometimes through grass
and brambles, sometimes along a wall, which are filled in turn with
daisies, pebbles and thistles, a path made for light thoughts and
bantering conversation,--returning, I said, to the city, we heard cries
and plaintive wails issue from under the slated roof of a square
building. It was the slaughter-house.

At that moment I thought of some terrible city, of some frightful and
immense place like Babylon or Babel, filled with cannibals and
slaughter-houses, where they butchered men instead of animals; and I
tried to discover a likeness to human agonies in those bleating and
sobbing voices. I thought of groups of slaves brought there with ropes
around their necks, to be tied