ease when in
the company of the dead, by the side of the cavaliers and proud dames,
sleeping peacefully with their hound at their feet, and a massive
stone torch in their grasp. The outskirts of the town had the same
religious and idealistic aspect, and were enveloped in an atmosphere
of mythology as dense as Benares or Juggernaut. The church of
St. Michael, from which the open sea could be discerned, had been
destroyed by lightning and was the scene of many prodigies. Upon
Maunday Thursday the children of Treguier were taken there to see the
bells go off to Rome. We were blindfolded, and much we then enjoyed
seeing all the bells in the peal, beginning with the largest and
ending with the smallest, arrayed in the embroidered lace robes which
they had been dressed in upon their baptismal day, cleaving the air on
their way to Rome for the Pope's benediction.

Upon the opposite side of the river there was the beautiful valley
of the Tromeur, watered by a sacred fountain which Christianity had
hallowed by connecting it with the worship of the Virgin. The chapel
was burnt down in 1828, but it was at once rebuilt, and the statue of
the Virgin was replaced by a much more handsome one. That fidelity
to the traditions of the past which is the chief trait in the Breton
character was very strikingly illustrated in this connection, for the
new statue, which was radiant with white and gold over the high altar,
received but few devotions, the prayers of the faithful being said to
the black and calcined trunk of the old statue which was relegated
to a corner of the chapel. The Bretons would have thought that to
pay their devotions to the new Virgin was tantamount to turning their
backs upon their predecessor.

St. Yves was the object of even deeper popular devotion, the patron
saint of the lawyers having been born in the _minihi_ of Treguier,
where the church dedicated to him is held in great veneration. This
champion of the poor, the widows and the orphans, is looked upon as
the grand justiciary and avenger of wrong. Those who have been badly
used have only to repair to the solemn little chapel of _Saint Yves de
la Verite_, and to repeat the words: "Thou wert just in thy lifetime,
prove that thou art so still," to ensure that their oppressor will die
within the year. He becomes the protector of all those who are left
friendless, and at my father's death my mother took me to his chapel
and placed me under his tutelary care. I canno