Loch-ar-Brugg at that time was not suitably arranged for our habitation, and we drove on to the Château de Ker-Azel near by, where we were to stay with my tante de Laisieu. This elder sister of my mother's was a fat, untidy, shiftless woman who had once been a beauty, but whose abundant fair hair was now faded, and who went about her house and gardens in the mornings en camisole. When dressed for the day her appearance was hardly more decorous, for she wore no stays, and fastened the slender bodices of her old dresses across her portly person in a very haphazard fashion, so that intervals of white underclothing showed between the straining hooks. She was a singular contrast to my mother, always so freshly perfect in every detail of her toilet. The château was partly old and partly new and very ugly, though the park that sloped down to it was fine. Near the château stood a very old and beautifully carved font that must have belonged to a church long since destroyed. Later on, in the days of her descendants, it was kept filled with growing flowers and was a beautiful object, but my aunt merely used it as a sort of waste-paper basket for any scraps she picked up in the park. We children used to conceal ourselves in it in our games of hide-and-seek. I enjoyed myself among my many cousins, for I was at this time so young and so naughty that they tended to give way to me in everything. One of them, however, a singularly selfless and devout boy called France, was fond of me for myself, and though I never paid much attention to him, victim rather than play-mate as he usually was in the games of the others, I was always aware of his gentle, protecting presence, and happy when his peaceful gaze rested upon me. After long years of separation and in our great old age we discovered, France and I, that we had always been dear friends, and in the few years that remained to us before his recent death we saw each other constantly. But I must return to the fête.

My mother and my aunt were absorbed in preparations. It was a general hurly-burly, every one running north, south, east, and west—to Landerneau, to Morlaix, to Brest, to every place, in short, that could boast some special delicacy. And at last the great day came, and we children were up with the lark. There was first to be a luncheon for the huntsmen, friends of papa's, and the ladies were to follow in carriages and to enter Ker-Eliane from the highroad. But we preferred the shorter way, by the deep paths overgrown with hawthorn and blackberry. The boys rushed along on the tops of the talus, the sort of steep bank that in Brittany takes the place of hedges, and even with Jeannie to restrain me I was nearly as torn and tattered as they when we arrived at Ker-Eliane. What a fairy-land it was! Rocks and streams, heathery hills, and woods full of bracken. An old ruin, strange and melancholy, with only a few crumbling walls and a portion of ivy-clothed tower left standing, rose among trees on a little hill near the entrance, and farther on, surrounded by woods of beech or pine, were three lakes, lying in a chain one after the other. Water-lilies grew upon them, and at their brinks a pinkish-purple flower the name of which I never knew. The third lake was so somber and mysterious that my father had called it the Styx. An ancient laurel-tree—in Brittany the laurels become immense trees—had been uprooted in a thunderstorm and had fallen across the Styx, making a natural rustic bridge. We children were forbidden to cross on it, but on this day I remember my adventurous cousin Jules rushing to and fro from one bank to the other in defiance of authority. At the foot of the hill, below the ruin, a clear, delicious stream sprang forth from a stony cleft and wound through a valley and out into the lower meadows, and at the entrance to the valley, among heather and enormous mossy rocks, rose a cross of gray stone without Christ or ornaments. The peasants made pilgrimages to it on Good Friday, but I never learned its history.

It was among the lower meadows, in a charming, smiling spot planted with chestnuts, poplars, and copper beeches, that the table for the thirty huntsmen was laid in the shade of a little avenue. Already the crêpe-makers from Quimper, renowned through all the country, were laying their fires upon the ground under the trees, and I must pause here to describe this Breton dish. A carefully compounded batter, flavored either with vanilla or malaga, was ladled upon a large flat pan and spread thinly out to its edge with a wooden implement rather like a paper-cutter. By means of this knife the crêpes, when browned on one side, were turned to the other with a marvelous dexterity, then lifted from the pan and folded at once into a square, like a pocket-handkerchief, for, if allowed to cool, they cracked. They were as fine as paper—six would have made the thickness of an ordinary pancake, and were served very hot with melted butter and fresh cream, of which a crystal jar stood before each guest, and was replenished by the servants as it was emptied.

The crêpes were eaten at the end of the luncheon as a sweet, and among the other dishes that I remember was the cold salmon,—invariable on such occasions, salmon abounding in our Breton rivers,—with a highly spiced local sauce, filet de boeuf en aspic, York ham, fowls, Russian salad, and the usual cakes and fruits. The huntsmen seated at this feast did not wear the pink coats and top-hats of more formal occasions, but dark jackets and knee-breeches and the small, round Breton cap with upturned brim that admitted of a pipe being tucked into it at one side. And so they carried their pipes, as the peasants did, and the legitimists among them had a golden fleur-de-lis fixed in front. The ladies of the party, in summer dresses and wide-brimmed hats, arrived when the more substantial part of the repast was over, and their carriages filled the highroad outside the precincts of Ker-Eliane. A feast was spread at a little distance for the peasants, and wine flowed all day. After the feasting two famous biniou-players took up their places on the high talus that separated Ker-Eliane from Loch-ar-Brugg and played the farandol, the jabadao, and other country-dances for the peasants to dance to. The biniou is rather like a small bagpipe and produces a wild, shrill sound. The players wore a special costume: their caps and their stockings were bright red; their jackets and waistcoats bright blue, beautifully embroidered; their full white breeches of coarse linen. Like all the peasants at that time, they wore their hair long, falling over the shoulders. It was a charming sight to see the peasants dancing, all in their local costumes. The women's skirts were of black or red stuff, with three bands of velvet, their bodices of embroidered velvet, and they all wore a gold or silver Breton cross, hung on a black velvet ribbon, round their necks, and a Saint Esprit embroidered in gold on the front of their bodices. Among the coifs I remember several beautiful tall hennins. What a day it was! Landerneau talked of it for years, and I have never forgotten it. We children had our luncheon sitting on the grass near the big table, and afterward there were endless games among the heather and bracken. My little sister Eliane appeared, carried in her pink basket, and seemed to look about her with great approval.

Later on in the day, when the dancing had begun, we went to look on at that, and I wanted very much to dance, too; but nobody asked me, for I was too little. I must by that time have begun to get very tired and troublesome, for I remember that maman promised me a little wheelbarrow if I would be good and allowed Jeannie to take me back to Ker-Azel. I was already sleepy, as I had drunk a quantity of champagne, with which the servants had replenished my little liqueur-glass, and I allowed myself at last to be carried away by Jeannie, and fell asleep in her arms.

CHAPTER IV

THE OLD HOUSE AT LANDERNEAU

During these early years of my life our time, though mainly spent with bonne maman at Quimper, was also given for many months of the year to Landerneau, and a little later on was divided between these two houses and Loch-ar-Brugg. At Landerneau we lived in a vast old house that had been part of my mother's marriage dowry. The family house, equally old and vast, of the Kerouguets was also at Landerneau, and the house of dear Tante Rose, my father's eldest sister. Landerneau was a picturesque old town, so near the sea that the tides rose and fell in the River Elorn, which flowed through it. A legend ran that the part of Landerneau lying on the southern banks of the river, still all wild with great rocks that seemed to have been hurled together by some giant's hand, had been reduced to this condition by the devil. He had been traveling through the country, and the inhabitants of the southern half of Landerneau had refused to give him food and drink, whereas those of the northern half had suitably and diplomatically entertained him; and it was in vengeance that he had hurled these great rocks across the river, to remain as permanent, if picturesque, embarrassments to southern Landerneau. The morality of the story was disconcerting, and very much puzzled me when I was told it by old Gertrude. Our house formed a corner of the principal street in the northern side of the town. In the days of the Terror, not so far distant in my childhood, it had been used, with the house of Tante Rose across the way, as a prison where the condemned were put on their way to be guillotined at Brest, and a subterranean passage that ran between the two houses, under the street, conveyed the unfortunates swiftly and unobtrusively, if occasion required it, from one prison to the other. Another lugubrious memento of that terrible time were the small square openings in the floors of the upper rooms in these houses. In our days they were used to summon servants from below, but their original purpose had been for watching the captives unobserved. In the panels of the great oaken door that opened on the street, in our house, were little grated squares through which those who knocked for admittance could be cautiously examined, and this feature gave a further idea of the strange and perilous circumstances of bygone days. The kitchen, which was entered from a stone hall, was our delight; it was called the every-day kitchen. Enormous logs burned in a vast open fireplace, archaically carved. At that time coal was little known in the country, and the joints were roasted on a spit before this fire, which looked like the entrance to an inferno. There was a little oven for stews and sweets, etc. Under a square glass case on the mantel-shelf, lifted high above the busy scene, stood a statue of the Virgin, very old and very ugly, dressed in tinsel, a necklace of colored beads around its neck. This was a cherished possession of Nicole's, an old cook of my grandmother's, who followed us everywhere, and at its foot, under the glass cover, lay her withered orange-flower wedding-wreath. The kitchen was lighted at night by numbers of tallow candles that burned in tall brass candlesticks, each with its pincers and snuffer. (A candle with us does not "take snuff"; it has "its nose blown"—on mouchait la chandelle.) Brass warming-pans, which we children called Bluebeard's wives, were ranged along the walls, and a multitude of copper saucepans hung in order of size, glittering with special splendor on those spaces that could be seen from the street, for "où l'orgueil ne va t'il pas se nicher?" Through an opening in the wall opposite the big windows dishes could be passed to the servants in the dining-room during meals.

The dining-room windows looked out at a garden full of flowers, the high walls embroidered with espalier fruit-trees, plum-, cherry-, mulberry-, and medlar-trees growing along the paths. At the bottom of the garden was a large aviary containing golden and silver pheasants, magpies, canaries, and exotic birds that my father's naval friends had brought him from their long Oriental voyages. My father himself tended these birds, and I can answer for it that they lacked nothing. I must tell here of the strange behavior of a golden pheasant. Despite papa's gentleness and care, this bird seemed to detest him and would not let him enter the aviary; but when I came with papa, the pheasant would run to the wires and eat the bread I held out to it from my hand. Papa was surprised and interested, and suggested one day that I should go with him into the aviary and "see what the pheasant would say." No sooner said than done. The bird rushed at papa and pecked at his feet with a singular ferocity; then, feeling, evidently, that he had disposed of his enemy, he turned to me, spread out his wings before me, bowed up and down as if an ecstasy of reverent delight, and taking the bread I held out to him, he paid no more attention at all to papa.

The principal rooms on the ground floor of the house opened on a stone hall with an inlaid marble floor, where, in a niche carved in the wall, and facing the wide stone staircase, stood another Virgin, much larger and even older than Nicole's. She was of stone, with a blunted, gentle countenance, and hands held out at each side in a graceful, simple gesture that seemed to express surprise as much as benediction. As we came down from our rooms every morning it was as if she greeted us always with a renewed interest. Fresh flowers were laid at her feet every day, and we were all taught, the boys to lift their hats, the girls to drop deep curtseys before her. Indeed, these respects were paid by us to all the many statues of the Virgin that are seen on our Breton roads. From the hall one entered the salon, with its inlaid parquet floor, so polished that we were forbidden to slide upon it, for it was as slippery as ice, and falls were inevitable for disobedient children. On the mantelpiece was a clock representing Marius weeping over the ruins of Carthage. His cloak lay about his knees, and we used to feel that he would have done much better had he drawn it up and covered his chilly-looking bronze shoulders. On each side of the clock were white vases with garlands in relief upon them of blue convolvulus and their green leaves. But what bewitched us children were the big Chinese porcelain figures, mandarins sitting cross-legged, with heads that nodded gently up and down at the slightest movement made in the room. Their bellies were bare, their eyes seemed to laugh, and they were putting out their tongues. Black ibises upon their robes opened wide beaks to catch butterflies. I remember crossing the hall on tiptoe and opening the salon-door very softly and looking in at the mandarins sitting there in their still merriment; and it required a little courage, as though one summoned a spell, to shake the door and rouse them into life. The heads gently nodded, the eyes seemed to laugh with a new meaning at me now; and I gazed, half frightened, half laughing, too, until all again was motionless. It was as if a secret jest had passed between me and the mandarins. In an immense room to the left of the salon that had once, perhaps, been a ball-room, but was now used as a laundry, was a high sculptured fireplace that was my joy. On each side the great greyhounds, sitting up on their hind legs, sustained the mantelpiece, all garlanded with vines. Among the leaves and grapes one saw a nest of little birds, with their beaks wide open, and the father and mother perched above them. And, most beautiful of all, a swallow in flight only touched with the tip of a wing a leaf, and really seemed to be flying. Only my father appreciated this masterpiece, which must have been a superb example of Renaissance work, and when, years afterward, my mother sold the house, the new owner had it broken up and carted away because it took up too much room!

On the two floors above were many bedrooms not only for our growing family, but for that of my Aunt de Laisieu, who, with all her children, used to pay us long and frequent visits, so that even in the babyhood of Eliane and Ernest and Maraquita I never lacked companionship.

My mother's room was called la chambre des colonnes, because at the foot of the bed, and used there instead of bedposts, were two great stone pillars wreathed with carving and reaching to the ceiling. What a pretty room it was! In spring its windows looked down at a sea of fruit-blossoms and flowers in the garden beneath. The bed had a domed canopy, with white muslin curtains embroidered in green spots. Above the doors were two allegorical paintings, one of Love, who makes Time pass, and one of Time, who makes Love pass. A deep, mysterious drawer above the oaken mantelpiece was used by maman for storing pots of specially exquisite preserves that were kept for winter use. On her dressing-table, flowing with muslin and ribbons, I specially remember the great jar of eau de Cologne, which one used to buy, as if it were wine, by the liter.

From this room led papa's, more severe and masculine. Here there were glass cabinets fitted on each side into the deep window-seats and containing bibelots from all over the world. A group of family miniatures hung on the wall near the fireplace.

On a turning of the staircase was a bath-room, with a little sort of sentry-box for cold douches, and at the top of the house an enormous garret, filled with broken old spinning-wheels and furniture, bundles of old dresses, chests full of dusty papers. I found here one day bonne maman's betrothal-dress. It was of stiff, rich satin, a wide blue and white stripe, with a dark line on each side of the blue and a little garland of pink roses running up the white. The long, pointed bodice was incredibly narrow. A strange detail was the coarseness with which this beautiful dress was finished inside. It was lined with a sort of sacking, and the old lace with which it was still adorned was pinned into place with brass safety-pins. Finally, for my description of the house, there was a big courtyard, with the servants' quarters built round it, and a clear little stream ran through a basse-cour stocked with poultry.

I had not seen this house for over fifty years when, some time ago, I went to visit it. The new proprietor, an unprepossessing person, was leaning against the great oaken door. He permitted me, very ungraciously, to enter.

I went through all these rooms that two generations ago had rung with the sounds of our happy young life, and it was misery to me. In the kitchen, which had been so beautiful, the window-panes were broken, and the dismantled walls daubed with whitewash, with dusty, empty bottles where Nicole's Virgin had stood. Upon the table was a greasy, discolored oil-cloth, where one saw M. Thiers, with knitted eyebrows and folded arms, surrounded by tricolor flags. The salon—I sobbed as I stood and looked about it; all, all that I had known and loved had disappeared. The stone Virgin was gone from her niche in the hall. Trembling, I mounted to my dear parents' rooms. What desolation! Unmade beds and rickety iron bedsteads; dust, disorder, and dirt. The carved chimneypiece, with its great drawer, was gone; the paper was peeled from the walls. Only over the doors, almost invisible under their cobwebs, were the painted panels of Love, who makes Time pass, and Time, who makes Love pass. The garden was a dung-heap.

When I came out, pale and shaken, the proprietor, still complacently leaning against the door, remarked, "Eh bien, Madam is glad to have seen her house, isn't she!"

The animal! I could have strangled him!

CHAPTER V

TANTE ROSE

Over the way lived Tante Rose. We children liked best to go to her house by means of the subterranean passage. It was pitch-dark, and we felt a fearful delight as we galloped through it at full speed, and then beat loudly upon the door at the other end, so that old Kerandraon should not keep us waiting for a moment in the blackness. In the salon, between the windows, her tame magpie hopping near her, we would find Tante Rose spinning at her wheel. There were pink ribbons on her distaff, and her beautiful, rounded arms moved gently to and fro drawing out the fine white linen thread. Sitting, as I see her thus, with her back to the light, her white tulle head-dress and the tulle bow beneath her chin surrounded her delicate, rosy face with a sort of aureole. She had a pointed little chin and gay, blue eyes, and though she had snowy hair, she looked so young and was so active that she seemed to have quicksilver in her veins. A tranquil mirth was her distinguishing characteristic, and even when hardly more than a baby I felt that Tante Rose was enchanting. Her first question was sure to be, "Are you hungry?" and even if we had just risen from a meal we were sure to be hungry when we came to see Tante Rose. She would blow into a little silver whistle that hung at her waist, and old Kerandraon (we children pronounced it Ker-le dragon) would appear with his benevolent, smiling face.

"Take Mademoiselle Sophie's orders, Kerandraon," Tante Rose would say; but the dear old man, who was a great friend, did not need to wait for them.

"Demoiselle would like crêpes and fresh cream; and there is the rest of the chocolate paste which Demoiselle likes, too."

"Bring what pleases you," Tante Rose would say, "and take my key, Kerandraon, and fetch the box of sucre d'orge from the shelf in my wardrobe." When Kerandraon had come ambling back with his laden tray he would stop and talk with us while we ate. He was seventy years old and had a noble air in his long Louis XV jacket. Tante Rose's mother had taken him from the streets when he was a little beggar-boy of twelve. He lived in the family service all his life, and when he died at seventy-five he was buried in the family vault. Jacquette, the magpie, sometimes became very noisy on these festive occasions, and Tante Rose would say: "Go into the garden, Jacquette. Tu m'annuis" (so she pronounced ennuies). And Jacquette, who seemed to understand everything she said, would go obediently hopping off. In the garden, adjoining the salon, was a greenhouse full of grapes and flowers, and that was another haven of delight on our visits to Tante Rose. It was the prettiest sight to see her mounted on a step-ladder cutting the grapes. A servant held the ladder, and another the basket into which the carefully chosen bunches were dropped. Tante Rose's little feet were shod in a sort of high-heeled brown-satin slipper called cothurnes, probably because they tied in classic fashion across the instep, little gold acorns hanging at the ends of the ribbons. I have the most distinct recollection of these exquisite feet as I stood beside the ladder looking up at Tante Rose and waiting for her to drop softly a great bunch of grapes into my hands. The fruit-trees of Tante Rose's garden were famous. A great old fig-tree there was so laden with fruit that supports had to be put under the heavy branches; there were wonderful Smyrna plums, and an apple-tree covered with tiny red apples that were our joy. From a high terrace in the garden one could watch all that went on in the town below. Tante Rose's cream, too, was famous. Great earthenware pans of milk stood on the wide shelves of her dairy, and when maman came to see her she would say, "May I go into the dairy, Rose?" It was always known what this meant. Maman would skim for herself a bowlful of the thick, golden cream.

Even the kitchen had an elegance, a grace, and sparkle all its own, and it is here that I can most characteristically see Tante Rose distributing milk for the poor of Landerneau. Her farmers' wives had brought it in from the country in large, covered pails, and Tante Rose, dressed in a morning-gown of puce-colored silk (like bonne maman in this, she wore no other color), her full sleeves, with their wide lawn cuffs turned back over her arms, ladled it into jars, giving her directions the while to the servants: "This for Yann. This for Hervé [an old cripple]. Did this milk come from the yellow? It is sure, then, to be very good; take it to the hospital and—wait! This little jug of cream to the supérieure; she is so fond of it. And, Laic, this large jar is for the prison," for Tante Rose forgot nobody, and all with such quiet grace and order. The poor of Landerneau adored her. The thread she spun was woven at her country place, La Fontaine Blanche, into linen to make clothes for them, and she knitted socks and waistcoats even as she went about the streets on her errands of mercy. If the poor loved her, it was respect mingled with a little fear that the bourgeoisie felt, for she had no patience with scandal-mongering and sharply checked their gossiping, provincial habits. The chatelaines of the surrounding country sought her out and delighted in her charm, her accomplishments, and her devil-may-care wit. Tante Rose was married to a wealthy and excellent Landernean, Joseph Goury, whom we called Tonton Joson, and his friends, Jason. He had a placid, kindly face, and stout, fine calves incased in silk stockings. Still in love with his wife, he was patiently submissive to her gay sallies; for though very fond of him, she did not conceal that she found him a dull companion. Very drolly, though she tutoyéd him, she used always to address him as "Monsieur Goury." "Tais-toi, Monsieur Goury," she would say; "you are as tiresome as the flies." And after enduring his prosy talk for some time she would say quite calmly: "I am beginning to drink hemlock. Go away, Monsieur Goury—va t'en. You bore me to distraction. You stun and stupefy me. Go away. Je n'en puis plus." And poor Tonton Joson remaining helplessly gazing, she would lift the little trap-door beside her chair, if the scene took place in her room, and call out to the servants below, "Tell Laic to come up and help monsieur on with his coat."

"But, my dear, I was not thinking of going out," Tonton Joson would protest; and Tante Rose would reply:

"Mais tu sors, Monsieur Goury."

Tante Rose was very devout, but after her own fashion. She read the office to herself every day, but had many librepensant friends, with whom she used good-temperedly to argue. Any bishop who came to Landerneau stayed always with Tante Rose.

Her cuisine was the best I have ever eaten; and oh, the incredible abundance of those days! All the courses were served at once upon the immense table. The great silver soup-tureen, big enough for a baby's bath, and so tall that she had to stand up to it, was in front of Tante Rose, and before she began to ladle out the platefuls, with the light, accurate movements of her arms characteristic of her, a servant carefully fastened behind her her long sleeves à la pagode. It was really charming to watch her serving the soup, and I remember one guest asserting that he would eat potage four times if Mme. Goury helped him to it.

An enormous salmon usually occupied the center of the table, and there were six entrées, four rôtis, two hot and two cold, and various entremets and desserts. A favorite entrée was a purée of pistachio nuts, with roasted sheeps' tails on silver spits stuck into it. The hot dishes stood on silver heaters filled with glowing charcoal. Between the courses little pots of cream, chocolate, vanilla, and coffee were actually passed and actually eaten! Chocolate cream to fill the gap between woodcock and foie-gras, for instance! Champagne-bottles stood in silver coolers at each corner of the table. I wonder that we all survived. On the other hand, when Tante Rose or my mother received the visits of their friends, there was no afternoon tea to offer them, as nowadays. The servants merely passed round little glasses of Spanish wines and plates of small biscuits. The good ladies of Landerneau afforded, I imagine, much amusement to my mother and to Tante Rose, who, though a native, was of a very different caliber. One little trait I remember was very illustrative of the bourgeois habit of mind. At that time, as now, lengths of velvet were included in every corbeille offered to a bride by the bridegroom's family, and the velvet dresses made from them were dignified institutions worn year after year. One knows how marked and unsightly velvet soon becomes if sat upon, and it was a wise and crafty fashion to have a breadth of perfectly matching silk introduced between the full folds at the back of these dresses, so that when one sat down it was upon the silk. It was in regard to this sensible contrivance that the ladies of Landerneau were reported to declare that it was strange indeed to see the noblesse so miserly that they could not afford a whole velvet dress, and therefore let silk into the back.

Some of Tante Rose's children were, like herself, very clever and charming, some very stupid, like Tonton Joson. It can be imagined what games we all had. Once, in the coach-house, my older cousins put young Raoul into a large basket with a number of smooth stones under him and told him that they were eggs and that if he were quiet and patient, they would hatch out. Then by means of a rope and pulley to which the basket was attached (it must have been used for raising and lowering hay and fodder) we pulled poor Raoul up to the rafters, and there we left him and forgot all about him. His desolate cries were heard after a time, and when he was rescued, it was found that the rocking of the basket had made him very seasick.

Of all our games the best were those in the woods of La Fontaine Blanche. This property of Tante Rose's, with its old manor-house dating from the time of Queen Anne of Brittany, was near Landerneau, and since papa went there nearly every day, caring for it as if it were his own, we were able to go with him and take full possession of the beautiful woods. We were given planks and tools, and we built a little hut on the banks of the stream. I was so young that my share of the labors was unexacting, as I had only to sweep up the rubbish left by the builders and carry it out of the wood in my little wheelbarrow; but I remember that pride with which I felt myself associated in any capacity with such marvels of construction. Not only was the hut entirely built by my cousins, but they made an oven inside it and even fabricated a sort of earthenware service with the clay soil found along the banks of the stream. It would never fire properly, however, and therefore our attempts to bake bread were not successful.

But crêpes, as pure-blooded young Bretons, we could make, and our parents were often entertained by us and regaled with them as they sat under the trees. Oh, how happy we were! The woods were full of lilies of the valley, and our hut had been baptized by the curé of Landerneau the château de la Muguetterie, while we were called Robinson Crusoes, and this was to us all our greatest glory.

CHAPTER VI

THE DEMOISELLES DE COATNAMPRUN

Across the way from our house in Landerneau lived two old maiden ladies, the Demoiselles de Coatnamprun. The Marquis and Marquise de Coatnamprun, their father and mother, had died many years ago, and most of the small fortune had been filched from them in some iniquitous lawsuit. I remember them very clearly, for I often went to see them with maman and Tante Rose, who watched over them and protected them; gentle, austere figures, dressed always in threadbare black, almost like nuns, with long, white bone rosaries hanging at their sides, and on their breasts, tied with a red cord, great crucifixes of brass and wood. Around their necks they wore white handkerchiefs folded, the points behind, and when they went out, old-fashioned black capotes, which were large bonnets mounted and drawn on wires, a quilling of white inside around the face. The elder was called Isménie, and the younger Suzette; they had the tenderest love for each other.

Their house was one of the oldest in Landerneau and was covered with strange carvings. The great knocker always fascinated me, for it represented a devil with his pitchfork, and one lifted the pitchfork to knock. Almost always it was one of the Demoiselles de Coatnamprun who answered, and she always held a clean white handkerchief by the center, the points shaken out, and always swept us, as she appeared before us in the doorway, a wonderful, old-fashioned, stately court curtsey. The sisters were plain, with dark, mild eyes, faded skins, and pale, withered lips; but their teeth were beautiful, and they had abundant hair. Isménie's features were harsh, and her half-closed, near-sighted eyes gave her a cold and haughty expression; but in reality she was a lamb of gentleness, and no one seeing the sisters in their poverty would have taken them for anything but grandes dames.

When we were ushered into the house it was usually into the dining-room that we went. The drawing-room, which was called the salle de compagnie, was used only on ceremonious occasions, Easter, the bishop's visit, or when the noblesse from the surrounding country called, and the proudest among them were proud to do so. So in the salle de compagnie, where engravings of the family coats of arms hung along the walls, the ugly, massive mahogany furniture was usually shrouded in cotton covers, and it was in the dining-room that the sisters sat, making clothes for the poor. Here the pictures interested me very much; they were naif, brightly colored prints bought at the Landerneau fairs, and representing events in the lives of the saints. St. Christopher, bending with his staff in the turbulent stream, bore on his shoulder a child so tiny that I could never imagine why its weight should incommode him, and another doll-like child stood on the volume held by St. Anthony of Padua. The oil-cloth cover on the table had all the kings and queens of France marching in procession round its border, the dates of their reigns printed above their heads. The chairs were common straw-bottomed kitchen chairs. Maman sometimes tried to persuade the sisters to paint the chairs, saying that if they were painted bright red, for instance, it would make the room so much more cheerful. But to any such suggestion they would reply, with an air of gentle surprise: "Oh, but maman had them like that. We can't change anything that maman had." Their large bedroom was on the first floor, looking out at the street. It was a most dismal room. The two four-posted beds, side by side, had canopies and curtains of old tapestry, but this was all covered with black cambric muslin and had the most funereal air imaginable. At the head of Isménie's bed, crossed against the black, were two bones that she had brought from the family vault on some occasion when the coffins had been moved or opened. The only cheerful thing I remember was a childish little étagère fastened in a corner and filled with the waxen figures of the petit Jésus, and the tiny china dogs, cats and birds that had been among their presents on Christmas mornings. To give an idea of the extreme simplicity and innocence of the Demoiselles de Coatnamprun I may say here that to the end of their lives they firmly believed that le petit Jésus himself came down their kitchen chimney on Christmas eve and left their presents for them on the kitchen table. Le petit Jésus, as a matter of fact, was on these occasions impersonated by maman and Tante Rose. Tante Rose always had the key of the sisters' house, so that at any time she could go in and see that nothing was amiss with ses enfants, as she tenderly called them,—and indeed to the end they remained lovely and ingenuous children,—so she and maman, when the sisters were safely asleep, would steal into the house and pile every sort of good thing, from legs of mutton to galettes, upon the table, and fill the garden sabots that stood ready with bonbons, handkerchiefs, and the little china figures of animals the sisters so cherished. And always there was a waxen figure of le petit Jésus and the card with which he made his intention clear; for "Aux Demoiselles de Coatnamprun, du petit Jésus" was written upon it.

Other instances of the sisters' ignorance of life and the world I might give, but they would simply be received with incredulity. Such types no longer exist, and even then the sisters were unique. I do not believe that in all their lives they knew an evil thought; they were incapable of any form of envy or malice or uncharitableness, and filled with delight at any good fortune that came to others and with gratitude for their own lot in life. Sometimes Suzette, in the intimacy of friends, would refer with simple sadness to the one drama, if such it can be called, that had befallen them. "Oui," she would say, "Isménie a eu un chagrin d'amour." Once, when they were young, in their parents' lifetime, an officer had been quartered with them, a kindly, intelligent, honest young fellow of the bourgeoisie, and at once aware of the atmosphere of distinction that surrounded him. He showed every attention to the sisters, and poor Isménie found him altogether charming. He never even guessed at her attachment. Indeed, no such a marriage at that time would have been possible, but she was broken-hearted when he went away. Her sister was her confidante, and this was the chagrin d'amour to which Suzette sometimes referred.

I have said that when they walked out they wore capotes. On one occasion Mlle. Suzette found in a drawer, among old rubbish put away, a crumpled artificial rose, a pink rose, and had the strange idea of fastening it in front of her capote. Isménie, when her near-sighted eyes caught sight of it, stopped short in the street and peered at her sister in astonishment. "But, Suzette, what have you there?" she asked. Suzette bashfully told her that she had found the rose and thought it might look pretty. "No, no," said Isménie, turning with her sister back to the house, "you must not wear it. Maman never wore anything in her capote." It required all my mother's skill to persuade them to allow her to dress their hair for them on the occasion of an evening party at Tante Rose's, to which, as usual, they were going, as "maman" had gone, wearing black-lace caps. "Voyons, but you have such pretty hair," said maman. "Let me only show you how charmingly it can be done." They were tempted, yet uncertain and very anxious, and then maman had the opportune memory of an old picture of the marquise in youth, her hair done in puffs upon her forehead. She brought it out triumphantly, and the sisters yielded. They could consent to have their hair done as "maman's" had been done in her youth.

We children always went with our parents to the evening parties in Landerneau. Maman did not like to leave us, and it will be remembered that in those days one dined at five o'clock and that we children had all our meals except breakfast with our parents. It was at a dinner-party at Tante Rose's that Mlle. Suzette, next whom I sat, said to me smiling, with her shy dignity, "I have a present here for a little girl who has been good," and she drew a small paper parcel from the silk reticule that hung beside the rosary at her side. I opened it, and found, to my delight, a sugar mouse and a tiny pipe made of red sugar such as I knew maman would never allow us to eat when we went to the confectioner's. But here, in the presence of Mlle. Suzette, and the gift a gift from her, I felt that I was safe, and I devoured mouse and pipe at once, quite aware of maman's amused and rallying glance from across the table. "I saw you," she said to me afterward. "Little ne'er-do-well, you know that I could not forbid it when Mademoiselle Suzette was there!"

The only flower that grew in the Demoiselles de Coatnamprun's garden was heliotrope, for that had been "maman's" favorite flower. They were poor gardeners, and the little bonne who came in by the day to do the housework could give them no help in the garden. So it was Tante Rose, trotting on her high heels, a little garden fork on her shoulder, who appeared to do battle with the moss and dandelions and to restore a little order. She always gave to this service the air of a delightful game, and indeed, in her constant care of the poor old ladies, had the prettiest skill imaginable in making her gifts weigh nothing.

"My dears," she would say, leaning forward to look at their black robes, "aren't these dresses getting rather shabby? Hasn't the time come for new ones?"

"They are shabby," Isménie would answer sadly, "but que voulez-vous, chère Madame, our means, as you know, are so narrow. It costs so much to buy a dress. We could hardly afford new ones now."

"But, on the contrary, it doesn't cost so much," Tante Rose would say. "I know some excellent woolen material, the very thing for your dresses, and only five francs for the length. You can well afford that, can't you? So I'll buy it for you and bring it to-morrow."

And so she would, the innocent sisters imagining five francs the price of material for which Tante Rose paid at least thirty. Since the sisters were very proud, for all their gentleness, and could consent to accept nothing in the nature of a charity, and since indeed they could hardly have lived at all on what they had, Tante Rose had woven a far-reaching conspiracy about them. Her tradespeople had orders to sell their meat and vegetables to the Demoiselles de Coatnamprun at about a fifth of their value. Packets of coffee and sugar arrived at their door, and milk and cream every morning, and when they asked the messenger what the price might be, he would say: "Ces dames régleront le compte avec Monsieur le Curé," and since they did not like to refuse gifts from the curé, the innocent plot was never discovered. Of course fruits from Tante Rose's garden and cakes from her kitchen were things that could be accepted. She would bring them herself, and have a slice of galette or a fig from the big basketful with them. They were rather greedy, poor darlings, and since any money they could save went to the poor, they could never buy such dainties for themselves. One extravagance, however, they had: when they came out to pay a visit, a piece of knitting was always drawn from the reticule, and when one asked what it was one was told in a whisper: "Silk stockings—a Christmas present for Suzette," or Isménie, as the case might be. Beautifully knitted, fine, openwork stockings they were.

Another contrivance for their comfort was invented by Tante Rose. They were great cowards, afraid of the dark and in deadly fear of the possible robbers that might enter their house at night. Tante Rose arranged that when they went to bed a lighted, shaded lamp should be placed in their window, the shade turned toward their room, the light toward the street, so that any robbers passing by would be deceived into thinking the house still on foot and forego their schemes for breaking in.

Their hearts were tender toward all forms of life. I can see one of them rising from her work to rescue a fly that had fallen into trouble and, holding it delicately by the wings, lift the persiennes to let it fly away. One day in their garden I cried out in disgust at the sight of a great earthworm writhing across a border.

"Oh, the horrid worm! Quick! A trowel, Mademoiselle, to cut it in two."

But Mademoiselle Suzette came to look with grieved eyes.

"And why kill the poor creature, Sophie? It does us no harm," she said, and helped the worm to disappear in the soft earth.

The Demoiselles de Coatnamprun died one winter of some pulmonary affection and within a day of one another. They died with the simplicity and sincerity that had marked all their lives, and toward the end they were heard to murmur continually, while they smiled as if in sleep, "Maman—Papa."

Isménie died first; but since it was seen that Suzette had only a few hours to live, the body was kept lying on the bed near hers, and she did not know that her beloved sister had been taken from her. They were buried together on the same day.