"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.
"I had only to sweep up the rubbish ... and carry it out of the wood in my little wheelbarrow"
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.