“Montez, s’il vous plait, Monsieur!”
The storm is so severe at Le Faouet that “slates are blown from the roofs of the houses, men grasp their hats, women tack hither and thither across the square, and geese take advantage of the breeze and try to fly.” On the way to Ste. Barbe, “a tall tree crashes across the path, which is strewn with unripe acorns, chestnuts, apples, fir cones, leaves, and twigs.”
The hurricane that was experienced here swept over the whole of Brittany with great violence, and, according to the Journal de Rennes, “laid low at least a thousand trees.”
Up and down again on a good road, a drive of seventeen miles from Le Faouet takes us to Guéméné, meeting a few reapers, and a cart drawn by bullocks in charge of men who have succumbed to thirst and heat.
We halt halfway at the poor village of Kernascléden, where there is hardly an inhabitant to be seen, but where, abutting on the high-road, is a beautiful Gothic church, rich in carving and grand in proportion, a striking contrast to the hovels which immediately surround it. It is a good example of fifteenth-century work, built at the same time as the church of St. Fiacre, and by the same founder. There is a legend here too curious not to repeat, that angels aided in the building of these two beautiful churches, carrying the tools, which were scarce in those days, backwards and forwards from one church to the other, to aid the workmen.
At Guéméné, a little town on the river Scorff, we are still in the interior of the country. It is in some ways more civilised than Le Faouet, but as far removed from railways, and with as little communication with the outer world.
Let us first give our experiences of the principal inn, which is on the left, looking up the street in the sketch, where travellers are driven under an archway into a wide stable-yard, and enter the house by the kitchen. The beds are clean and comfortable enough, the fare is homely but plentiful, and there is nothing to scare away the most fastidious. At the midday meal we have trout, caught a little way down the river Scorff, one or two dishes of meat, an omelette if desired, and, as usual, very good bread, butter, and cider. The dinner, or evening meal, is rather more elaborate, especially if a fresh traveller has come in. The view, across the table at breakfast time, of the presiding genius of the inn, the bottle of cider, the large wineglass, and the half cut loaf, are all depicted exactly. The vacant chair is soon to be occupied by a commercial traveller, who has been busy all the morning in the town, doing more havoc in the one day that he devotes to Guéméné than we like to think of. He represents a cheap clothier’s house at L’Orient, and has tempted many of the quiet inhabitants to change their simple stuffs and white caps for the more fashionable dresses and hats of the town. It should be remembered, however, that it is to this very commis voyageur, whom we travellers are apt to treat with scant courtesy and whose proceedings we often regard with anything but pleasure, that we owe the comforts of these inns, and the possibility of travel in remote places. The commercial traveller, coming from Vannes or L’Orient is the pioneer in such towns as Guéméné; he teaches the Breton innkeeper the mysteries of civilised life, and the art of living differently from the lower animals. It is a heavy penalty to pay, from the artistic point of view, that he should bring his patterns and his sham jewellery, and leave so much of it behind in Guéméné. But our little waiting-maid is not yet converted to the policy of adopting modern ways. Her spotless white cap and sleeves, neat dress, and rows of pendent coins, are of a pattern as old and characteristic as the gables of the houses of Guéméné.