'C'était à la campagne
Près d'un certain canton de la basse Bretagne
Appelé Quimper Corentin.
On sait assez que le Destin
Adresse là les gens quand il veut qu'on enrage.
Dieu nous préserve du voyage.'
So says La Fontaine. The capital of Cornouailles is a strange mixture of the old world and the new. There the ancient spirit and the modern meet. The Odet runs through the town. On one side is a mass of rock 70 metres high, covered by a forest so dark and dense and silent that in it one might fancy one's self miles away from any town. As one wanders among the chestnuts, pines, poplars, and other trees, a sadness falls, as if from the quiet foliage in the dim obscurity. On the other side of the narrow river is a multitude of roofs, encircled by high walls and dominated by the two lofty spires of the cathedral. Gray and full of shadows is the quiet little town, with its jumble of slanting roofs and its broken lines.
Quimper seems to have changed but little within the last six years. We arrived as the sun was setting. A warm light gilded the most ordinary objects, transforming them into things of beauty. We flashed by in the hotel omnibus, past a river resembling a canal, the Odet. The river was spanned by innumerable iron-railed bridges. The sky was of a fresh eggshell blue, with clouds of vivid orange vermilion paling in the distance to rose-pink, and shedding pink and golden reflections on the clear gray water, while a red-sailed fishing-boat floated gently at anchor. A wonderful golden light bathed the town. You felt that you could not take it all in at once, this glorious colouring—that you must rush from place to place before the light faded, and see the whole of the fine old town under these exceptional circumstances, which would most probably never occur again. You wanted to see the water, with its golden reflections, and the warm light shining on the lichen-covered walls, on the gardens sloping down to the river, on the wrought-iron gateways and low walls over which ivy and convolvulus creep, on the red-rusted bridges. You wanted to see the cathedral—a purple-gray mass, with the sun gilding one-half of the tower to a brilliant vermilion, and leaving the other half grayer and a deeper purple than ever. You wanted to see the whole place at once, for very soon the light fades into the gray and purple of night.
My first thought on waking next morning in the 'city of fables and gables,' as Quimper is called, was to see my old convent—the dear old convent where as a child I spent such a happy year. Only twelve more months, and the nuns will be ousted from their home—those dear women whom, as the hotel proprietress said with tears in her eyes, 'fassent que du bien.' How bitterly that cruel Act rankles, and ever will rankle, in the hearts of the Breton people!
'On dit que la France est un pays libre,' said my hostess; 'c'est une drôle de liberté!'