to iron rings, and killed in order to
feed their masters, who would eat their flesh from tables of carved
ivory and wipe their lips on fine linen. Would their attitudes be more
dejected, their eyes sadder or their prayers more pitiful?

While we were in Quimper, we went out one day through one side of the
town and came back through the other, after tramping about eight hours.

Our guide was waiting for us under the porch of the hotel. He started in
front of us and we followed. He was a little white-haired man, with a
linen cap and torn shoes, and he wore an old brown coat that was many
sizes too large for him. He stuttered when he spoke, and when he walked
he knocked his knees together; but in spite of all this, he managed to
advance very quickly, with a sort of nervous, almost febrile
perseverance. From time to time, he would pull a leaf off a tree and
clap it over his mouth to cool his lips. His business consists in going
from one place to another, attending to letters and errands. He goes to
Douarnenez, Quimperle, Brest and even to Rennes, which is forty miles
away (a journey which he accomplished in four days, including going and
coming). His whole ambition, he said, was to return to Rennes once more
during his lifetime. And only for the purpose, mind you, of going back,
of making the trip, and being able to boast of it afterwards. He knows
every road and every _commune_ that has a steeple; he takes short cuts
across the fields, opens gates, and when he passes in front of a farm,
he never fails to greet its owners. Having listened to the birds all his
life, he has learned to imitate their chirpings, and when he walks along
the roads, under the trees, he whistles as his feathered friends do, in
order to charm his solitude.

Our first stop was at Loc-Maria, an ancient monastery, given in olden
times by Conan III to the abbey of Fontevrault; it is situated a quarter
of a mile from the town. This monastery has not been shamefully utilised
like the abbey of poor Robert d'Arbrissel.[2] It is deserted, but has
not been sullied. Its Gothic portal does not re-echo the voices of
jailers, and though there may not be much of it, one experiences neither
disgust nor rebellion. In that little chapel, of a rather severe Romance
style, the only curious thing is a large granite holy-water basin which
stands on the floor and is almost black. It is wide and deep and
represents to perfection the real Catholic holy-water basin, made to