In a corner of the quiet churchyard of Paimpol there reposes at full length, in stone, “L’Abbé Jean Vincent Moy,” many years curé of this place and honorary canon of St. Brieuc; and round about him, placed thickly in rows, the former inhabitants of Paimpol rest under black wooden crosses. The curé is carved in dark green stone, from which time has taken the sharpness of the chiselling; but the expression is life-like, representing him in the popular act of blessing. There is a cup of holy water at his feet, supplied by an old woman who kneels before the tomb on the damp ground. It is her pious office to guard the tomb of her pastor, and brush off the leaves which fall thickly from the grove of elms overhead. They move slowly and die leisurely at Paimpol; this old woman’s time is not yet, for she “has only eighty years.” In four newly made graves there repose Eugénie, Marie, Mathilde, and Hortense, and their respective ages are eighty-two, eighty-four, eighty-eight, and eighty-nine!
At Paimpol in summer every one seems to take life easily, the French visitors driving about, bathing, boating, and living perpetually in the fresh, pure air; the native inhabitants getting up boat-races, and dancing the “gavotte” at night, in streets lighted by paper lanterns in old Breton fashion, as we see sketched at Châteauneuf du Faou. There is unusual brightness on this sombre, storm-washed shore; there is the dazzle of a crimson pennant, and the flashing of a snow-white sail; there are green banks, in contrast to water of the deepest blue, for in these little inlets of the sea the summer sun clothes everything with brightness in a moment. Perhaps we have seen Paimpol en couleur de rose, for there has been blue sky overhead nearly every day for a fortnight, and the sun is so hot at midday that the market-women put up their red umbrellas, and the men descend into cool cellars for shelter and refreshment.
There is a favourite walk, of about a mile, to a promontory on the south side of the port, by a pathway skirting fields of corn and buckwheat, which brings us to high ground and a shady plantation of firs, where we lose sight of Paimpol itself, but obtain the best idea of the surrounding scenery. We choose this walk a little before sunset on a day when there is a high tide. At our feet, on the left hand, is a steep bank with tree-tops below, their dark foliage contrasting with the blue of the water and the orange stems of weather-worn firs. Looking far away northward and eastward across the water, dotted with white sails coming in with the tide, the island rocks light up brilliantly in the setting sun. The air is so clear seaward that we can distinguish little houses on the island which guards the port, and on more distant rocks far out to sea, all glittering in the sun. Turning southward, to the real bay of Paimpol, which we cannot see from the town, the opposite banks are in shadow, and the foliage which reaches to the water’s edge takes a rich purple tinge. The outlines are soft and indistinct, excepting on a tongue of land in the middle of the bay, where in the midst of a garden of fruit-trees, and surrounded by ivy-grown walls, we can just trace the Gothic lines of the abbey of Beauport.
It is a shaded walk of about a mile and a half from Paimpol to Beauport. The road and the by-paths are shut in by high banks, so that we come upon it rather suddenly, looking down upon the ruins, through the bare windows of which we can see the sea. The Gothic chapel is a complete ruin, but part of the abbey building is in good preservation, and inhabited. One room is turned into a school-house, and a great roofless hall, once the refectory, is used as a threshing-floor. The romantic aspect of the ruins of Beauport, with its surrounding scenery, has been described in every book on Brittany, and the view of it by moonlight over the bay of Paimpol is as famous as that of “fair Melrose.” To this ancient abbey come pilgrims of the nineteenth century to study and wonder at the art of life shown by the monks of the thirteenth. If ever there was a spot where nature and art seem combined for man’s special enjoyment, it must have been at Beauport. Here the fruitful land meets the bountiful sea, and there is no arid line of demarcation; the corn waves at the water’s edge, and the flowers bloom and shed their leaves into the water. The soil is rich, and the air is soft, and in this autumn time the harvest seems everywhere ready to man’s hand—a harvest of fruit and grain on land, a harvest of fish and rich seaweed spread at every tide upon the shore.
The abbey of Beauport is considered by M. Merrimée to be “the most perfect example of the monastic architecture of the thirteenth century”—in fact, the most important and beautiful ruin in Brittany.
“It lies
Deep-meadow’d, happy, fair with orchard-lawns
And bowery hollows, crown’d with summer sea.”
As we wander round the gardens and through the avenues of trees that line the raised walks on the breakwater, or under the shadow of high brick walls, laden with old fruit-trees, it is easy to realise in our minds the lives of its former occupants. The picturesqueness of Beauport, especially the view, from the eastern side, of the chapter-house and other dwellings, should attract artists. This afternoon there is one large white umbrella planted firmly in the gravel of its deserted walks, and one canvas spread with a green landscape in which old, grey, mullioned windows, and the stems of weather-beaten trees, form prominent features.
From Paimpol to Lannion is twenty miles by the road, crossing the river Trieux by a lofty suspension bridge at Lézardrieux, and halting at the ancient cathedral town of Tréguier by the way.