HONOR BRIGHT.
The rush of men, the clash of arms,
The morning stillness broke,
And followed fast the fresh alarms,
The clouds of battle-smoke.
The Seine still bore a lurid light,
As down its ripples run,
Where late had shone the fires at night,
The rosy rifts of sun.
“Shoot every man,” the captain cried,
“That dares our way oppose!”
Like water ran the crimson tide,
Like clouds the smoke arose.
They forward rushed, the streets they cleared,—
But ere the work was done,
Before the troop a boy appeared,
And bore the boy a gun.
“Thou too shalt die,” the captain said.
The boy stopped calmly there,
And sweet and low the music played
Amid the silenced air.
“Hold!” cried the boy; “a moment wait.
For, ere I meet my end,
I would return this watch, that late
I borrowed of my friend.”
“Return a watch?” The captain frowned.
“Your meaning I discern;
Such honest lads are seldom found:
And when would you return?”
“At once!” the hero makes reply;
“As soon as e’er I can;
I will return, and I will die
As nobly as a man!”
“Well, go!” The lordly bugle blew,
And said the man, with joy,
“Right glad am I to lose him, too,
I would not harm the boy.”
Some moments passed; the deadly rain
Fell thickly through the air;
The smoke arose, and, lo! again
The boy stood calmly there.
The muskets ceased, the smoke-wreath passed
O’er sunlit dome and spire,—
“Here, captain, I have come at last,
And I am ready. Fire!”
As marble grew the captain’s cheek,
He could not speak the word.
The shout of Vive la République!
Adown the ranks was heard.
The bugle blew a note of joy,
“Advance!” the captain cried,—
They marched, and left the happy boy
The colonnade beside.
We sing Vialla’s sweet romance,
Of Barra’s death we read,
But few among the boys of France
E’er did a nobler deed.
The palace burns, the columns fall,
The works of art decay,
But deeds like these the good recall
When empires pass away.
CHAPTER XVI.
BRITTANY.
Avranches.—Riding on Diligences.—Mont St. Michel.—Chateaubriand.—Madame de Sévigné.—Brittany.—Breton Stories.—Story of the Old Woman’s Cow.—Story of the Wonderful Sack.—Nantes.—Scenes of the Revolution at Nantes.—Fénelon and Louis XV.
THE Class went by rail from Paris to the bright Norman district of Calvados, visiting Caen and Bayeux, whose attractions have been briefly sketched in the letter of George Howe to Master Lewis. The next journey was to Avranches, or the “Village of the Cliff,” by the way of Falaise, the residence of Duke Robert, father of William the Conqueror, and to the quaint town of Vire, famous for its cleanly, industrious inhabitants its grand old hills buried in woods, its great wayside trees, and its ancient clock-tower.
CLOCK TOWER AT VIRE.
The Class met few people on this journey. The cantonniers were evidently busy with their own simple industries. Once or twice the boys saw gentlemen, whom Master Lewis said were curés, at work in cool, green gardens; and often they met the pretty sight of women and girls at work in the fields. The cottages were thatched, and some were moss-grown, and all the canton wore the appearance of simple contentment, virtue, and thrift.
Avranches is a favorite summer resort for English tourists, owing to the beauty of its situation, its health-giving air, and the ease and cheapness with which one may live.
The journey from Caen, along the bowery Norman highways, was made in diligences. The boys seemed to brim over with pleasure at the prospect of a ride in a diligence.
“There is one place where contentment and happiness may surely be found,” said Tommy Toby, one day.
“Where?” asked Master Lewis.
“On the top of a diligence.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, sure.”
The next day the Class was overtaken, while travelling in the French coach, by a pouring rain. Tommy, as usual, was on the seat with the driver. He became very impatient, saying, every few minutes, “I wish it would stop raining, I wish—” this, that, and the other thing.
“Tommy,” said Master Lewis, from within the coach, “are you sure?”
After a time the sunlight overspread the landscape, making the watery leaves shine like the multitudinous wavelets of the sea.
Tommy’s merry voice was heard again, talking bad French.
“Contentment and happiness,” said Master Lewis to Frank, “have evidently returned again.”
From Avranches the Class visited that wonderful castle, church, and village of the sea, Mont St. Michel.
The journey from the mainland was by a tramway across the Grève, or sands, at low tide. At neap tides the Mount is not surrounded by water at any time, but at spring tides it is washed by the sea twice a day, and sometimes seems like a partly sunken hill in the sea. The fortress is girt about the base with feudal walls and towers colored by the sea; above these rises a little town, the houses being set on broken ledges of rock; above the town stand the fortifications, and a church and its tower crown all. It is one of the most curious places in the world.
Pagan priests here worshipped the god of high places; monks succeeded them; Henry II held court here, then it became a place to which saints made yearly pilgrimages. The Revolution drove out the monks, and turned it into a prison. In an iron cage called the Cage of St. Michel, a torturous contrivance, state prisoners used to be confined.
The Class next went to St. Malo, by the way of Dol; a breezy journey, with the sea in view.
“St. Malo,” said Master Lewis, “was the birthplace of Chateaubriand, who visited our country after the American Revolution, and in 1801 wrote an Indian romance, ‘Atala,’ a prose Hiawatha, if I may so call it, which charmed all Europe. He published a political work on America, which had great influence in France. He was in early life a sceptic, but the memory of a good mother made him a Christian, and he published a book on religion which arrested the infidel tendencies of the times. Louis XVIII. declared that one of his pamphlets was worth an army of one hundred thousand men. He was one of the most brilliant writers France ever produced. You should read on your return ‘Atala’ in French. You will find an edition, I think, illustrated by Doré, in which the pictures will compel you to read the story.”
“I have read ‘Atala,’” said Frank.
“Would you like to visit Chateaubriand’s birthplace with me?” asked Master Lewis.
Frank was very desirous to see the place at once, and Master Lewis and he went to the house, now a hotel, immediately on their arrival in the town. From the windows of the house could be seen the tomb of Chateaubriand, which is on a little island in the harbor.
When Master Lewis returned to the hotel he was alone.
“Where is Frank?” asked Tommy.
“He is to spend the night in Chateaubriand’s room,” said Master Lewis. “Visitors at St. Malo are allowed to sleep there on paying a small sum.”
“Is Chateaubriand living yet?” asked Tommy. “I thought you said he came to our country after the Revolution.”
“No, he died many years ago. Frank and I have just been looking from the windows of his birthplace at his tomb on one of the little islands.”
“But Frank is not going to stay all night in the room of one that is dead! What good will that do?”
“It is the respect that appreciation pays to genius,” said Master Lewis.
Ernest Wynn wished to spend the night with Frank, and received Master Lewis’s permission.
“Why, Ernest!” said Tommy, “I thought you had more sense. I am glad I am not literary. This is the strangest thing I have met with yet.”
Chateaubriand’s birthplace is the Hotel de France. His room is among those offered to visitors, at a little extra cost. Master Lewis had stopped at the hotel during a previous tour.
If Tommy was surprised at the “respect appreciation pays to genius,” in the incident of sleeping in Chateaubriand’s room, he was more so by a conversation which 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 détour to Vitré.”
“What shall we see there?” asked Tommy.
“The residence of Madame de Sévigné.”
“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 Sévigné?”
“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 Sévigné.’”
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