ch took place next day, when Master Lewis made his
plans for the last zigzag journeys.

"The last place we will visit," he said, "is Nantes. We will go by
rail to Rennes, and by diligences the rest of the way, which will
afford you a fine view of Brittany. At Rennes, we will make, if you
like, a detour to Vitre."

"What shall we see there?" asked Tommy.

"The residence of Madame de Sevigne."

"Is _she_ living?" asked Tommy.

"Oh, no."

"What did she do?"

"She wrote letters to her daughter," said Frank.

"Who was her daughter?"

"The prettiest girl in France."

"Is _she_ living?"

"Oh, no," said Frank, impatiently. "Why, did you never hear of the
Letters of Madame de Sevigne?"

"I never did. Are her letters there?"

"No."

"What is?"

"The room where she wrote them," said Master Lewis.

"They must be very wonderful letters, I should think," said Tommy, "to
make a traveller take all that trouble."

"They are," said Master Lewis. "Lord Macaulay says, 'Among modern
works I only know two perfect ones; they are Pascal's Provincial
Letters, and the Letters of Madame de Sevigne.'"

The Class was now in Brittany, a province old and poor, whose very
charm is its simplicity and quaintness. Normandy smiles; Brittany
wears a sombre aspect everywhere. Normandy is a bed of flowers;
Brittany seems to be a bed of stone. Here and there may be seen a
church buried in greenery, but the landscape is one of heath, fern,
and broom.

The people are as peculiar as the country. Their costumes are odd,
some of them even wear goat-skins. Many of them lead a sea-faring
life; it is the Bretons who chiefly man the French navy.

They cling to old legends and superstitions with great fondness; the
wild country abounds with wonder-stories. Nearly all of these stories
are striking from their very improbability. They relate to an
imaginary period when the Apostles travelled in Brittany, or to men
and women who were transformed during some part of their lives into
animals, especially into wolves. The story-telling beggars furnish
much of the fiction to the unread people.

Those legends which are the chief favorites are undoubtedly very old.
The Class listened to several of them at their hotel at St. Malo. Some
of them begin in a way that at once arrests attention; as the
following story of the

OLD WOMAN'S COW.

When St. Peter and St. John were visiting the poor in Brittany they
stopped one day to rest at a farm-house a