AN OLD WOMAN
The great square in front of the cathedral is a jumble of gold and silver, embroidery, ribbons, muslin, and lace—a joyous feast of colour in the sun. The crowd moves slowly, forming into groups by the porch and round the stalls, with much gossip. The square and the neighbouring streets are bordered by stalls trading in fabrics and faiences, gingerbread, sweets, lotteries, cider, and fancy-work of all kinds. Young men and girls stop in couples to buy mirrors or coloured pins, surmounted with gold, that jingle, to fasten in their caps or in their bodices. Others gather round the lotteries, and watch with anxious eyes the wheel with the rod of metal that clicks all the way round on its spokes, and stops at a certain number. 'C'est vingt-deux qui gagne!' cries the proprietor. A pretty little peasant woman has won. She hesitates, wavering between a ball of golden glass and a vase painted with attractive flowers. The peasants laugh loudly.
There are all kinds of attractions and festivities at the pardons—hurdy-gurdies, swing-boats, voyages to the moon, on which you get your full and terrible money's worth of bumps and alarms; for not only are you jerked up hill and down dale in a car, but also, when you reach the moon, you are whirled round and round at a tremendous rate and return backwards. There are side-shows in which are exhibited fat women, headless men, and bodiless girls, distorted thus by mirrors, the deception of which even we children saw through plainly. There are jugglers and snake-charmers. A cobra was fed on rabbits. We children haunted that tent at feeding-times, and used to watch with fascination the little dead bunnies disappearing, fur and all, afterwards noticing with glee the strange bumps they formed in the animal's smooth and shiny coils. How bloodthirsty children are at heart!
It is not always in large towns like Quimperlé that pardons are held. More often they are to be witnessed in the country, perhaps miles away from any town, whence the people flock on foot. There you see no grand cathedral, no magnificent basilicas and superb architecture, but some simple little gray church with moss-grown walls and trees growing thickly about it. The rustic charm of the pardons it is impossible to describe. Round you are immense woods and flowered prairies; in the woods the birds are singing; a mystic vapour of incense fills the air. Peasants gather round this modest house of prayer, which possesses nothing to attract the casual passer-by. The saints that they have come to venerate have no speciality: they heal all troubles, assuage all griefs: they are infallible and all-powerful. Inside the church it is very dim and dark. Not a single candle is alight on the altar; only the lamp of the sanctuary shines out with red gleam like an ever-seeing eye. In the gray darkness of the choir the silent priests cross themselves. They look like ghosts of the faithful. The bells ring out in noisy peals, filling the air with vibrations. Over the fields the people hurry—girls in their smartest clothes, accompanied by their gallants; children brought by their mothers in their beautiful new suits to attend service and to have their faces bathed in the fountain, which cures them of all diseases, and makes them beautiful for ever; old men come to contemplate the joy of the young people, to be peaceful, and to ask forgiveness before leaving this world and the short life over which their own particular saint has watched. The bells peal so loudly that one is afraid they will crack under the efforts of the ringers. Still the people swarm over the fields and into the church, until at last the little edifice is full, and men and women and children are compelled to kneel outside on the hard earth; but the doors are opened, and those outside follow the service with great attention.
A PIG-MARKET
One must be a Breton born and cradled in the country in order to realize the important place that the pardon of his parish occupies in the peasant's mind. It is a religious festival of great significance: it is the day above all others on which he confesses his sins to God and receives absolution. Throughout his life his dearest and sweetest thoughts cling round this house of prayer and pardon.