n assume free scope, and, as so often happens
with old people, the recollections of her early days came back with
special force and clearness. She could remember what Treguier and
Lannion were before the Revolution, and she would describe what the
different houses were like, and who lived in them. I encouraged her
by questions to wander on, as it amused her and kept her thoughts away
from her illness.

Upon one occasion we began to talk of the hospital, and she gave me
the complete history of it. "Many changes," to use her own words,
"have occurred there since I first knew it. No one need ever feel any
shame at having been an inmate of it, for the most highly respected
persons have resided there. During the First Empire, and before the
indemnities were paid, it served as an asylum for the poor daughters
of the nobles, who might be seen sitting out at the entrance upon cane
chairs. Not a complaint ever escaped their lips, but when they saw the
persons who had acquired possession of their family property rolling
by in carriages, they would enter the chapel and engage in devotions
so as not to meet them. This was done not so much to avoid regretting
the loss of goods, of which they had made a willing sacrifice to God,
as from a feeling of delicacy lest their presence might embarrass
these _parvenus_. A few years later the parts were completely
reversed, but the hospital still continued to receive all sorts
of wreckage. It was there that your uncle, Pierre Renan, who led
a vagabond life, and passed all his time in taverns reading to the
tipplers the books he borrowed from us, died; and old Systeme, whom
the priests disliked though he was a very good man; and Gode, the old
sorceress, who, the day after you were born, went to tell your fortune
in the Lake of the Minihi; and Marguerite Calvez, who perjured herself
and was struck down with consumption the very day she heard that St.
Yves had been implored to bring about her death within the year."[1]

"And who," I asked her, "was that mad woman who used to sit under the
screen, and of whom Guyomar and myself were so afraid?"

Reflecting a moment to remember whom I meant, she replied, "Why, she
was the daughter of the flax-crusher."

"Who was he?"

"I have never told you that story. It is too old-fashioned to be
understood at the present day. Since I have come to Paris there are
many things to which I have never alluded.... These country nobles
were so much respected. I al