We were to be entertained for the day at Folgoat by the curé, and to lunch with him and with the bishops at the presbytery; but we were already ravenously hungry, so, although papa and maman must continue to fast until after taking communion at the early service, we children had a splendid picnic breakfast in the presbytery garden, and a jellied breast of lamb is my first recollection of the day at Folgoat! Then we went out to see the great festival. Seventy-five years or more have passed since that day, and it still lives in my mind with a beauty more than splendid, a divine beauty. In the vast plain, under the vast, blue sky, six bishops, glittering with gold and precious stones, celebrated mass simultaneously at six great altars among thousands of worshipers. It was a sea of color under the August sun, and the white coiffes of the women were like flocks of snowy doves. There was an early mass, and the high mass at eleven. When this was over, we assembled at the presbytery to lunch with the bishops. The table was laid in Anne de Bretagne's council-chamber, its stone walls covered with archaic figures, and it must have been a picturesque sight to see the bishops sitting in all their splendor against that ancient background; but what I most remember are the stories they told of Louis XI and his misdeeds, which seemed to me more interesting and more cruel than the Arabian Nights and Ali Baba and his forty thieves. In the church itself was shown a superbly carved bench where, it was said, while praying, he ordered with a nod the death of a Breton noble who had refused to do him homage. When we went into the church after lunch to see this bench, I sat down on it, and my long golden curls were caught in the claws of the interlaced monsters on the back, and I hurt myself so much in wrenching myself free that I hated still more fiercely the wicked king who condemned men to death while he prayed. O the horrid monster!
Then at three came the great procession. First went the six bishops, mitered and carrying their croziers; then followed the children of the noblesse, we among them, all in white, with white wreaths on our heads; then all the vast multitude, twenty or thirty abreast, singing canticles, a stupendous sight and sound, all marching round the plain, from altar to altar, under the burning sun. I remember little after that. The Marquis de Ploeuc was there, his hair tied in the catogan, and wearing his black silk suit: I think he must have lunched with us at the curé's. It was arranged that he and his two eldest daughters were to drive back to Loch-ar-Brugg with maman and spend some days with us, and so, though I must have been very tired, I was to ride back beside papa on my pony, which had been duly blessed. It was already night when we started, and what a wonderful ride it was! I remember no fatigue. I still wore my white dress, and maman swathed my head and shoulders in a white lace shawl, and all the way back to Loch-ar-Brugg papa told me stories of hunts, of fairies, of saints, and of escaped convicts. Every group of trees, every rock, every turning in the road, had its legend or its adventure.
CHAPTER XI
BONNE MAMAN'S DEATH
We were at Quimper when bonne maman died. She had been failing for some time, and her character, until then so gentle, had altered. Mere trifles disquieted her, and she became fretful, alarmed, and even impatient. She seemed so little in her big bed, and, when I wanted to climb up beside her, after my wont, she signed to Jeannie to take me away and said that it tired her too much to see children and that the air of a sick-room was not good for them. "Tell my daughter—tell her. They must not come!" she repeated several times in a strange, shrill voice. I slid down from the bed, I remember, abashed and disconcerted, and while I longed to see my dear bonne maman as I had known her, I was afraid of this changed bonne maman; and it hurt me more for her than for myself that she should be so changed.
But one day when maman was in the room, she caught sight of me hanging about furtively in the passage, and called out gently to me to go away, that bonne maman was tired and was going to sleep. Then a poor little voice, no longer shrill, very trembling, came from the bed, saying: "Let her come, Eliane. It will not hurt me. I want to see her for a moment."
I approached the bed, walking on tiptoe; the curtains were drawn to shade bonne maman from the sunlight, and I softly came and stood within them. O my poor bonne maman! I could hardly recognize her. She seemed old—old and shrunken, and her eyes no longer smiled. She looked at me so fixedly that I was frightened, and she said to maman:
"Lift her up on the bed. I want to kiss her." She took my hand then, and looked at my little finger as she always used to do, and said: "I see that you have been very good with your mother, but that you don't obey your nurse. You must always be obedient. You understand me, don't you, Sophie? Do you say your prayers?"
"Yes, bonne maman," I answered.
"Have you said them this morning?"
"No, bonne maman."