So bright and charming is our little maid this morning that it is difficult to believe that she came out of a carved wooden bedstead let into the wall of the kitchen (a bed of two stories, holding four!), that she does most of the work of the hotel, and helps in the stable. It is enough for us to record that travellers are well cared for; that Englishmen come here for the fishing, and sometimes stay for weeks, living at the rate of four or five francs a day, including everything.
The streets of Guéméné are full of people on Sunday morning—men in short jackets, wide trousers, and black, broad-brimmed hats, old women in the comfortable coiffe sketched above, girls with white caps and stomachers, short dresses, and neat shoes, all coming into the church and afterwards meeting in the street. These are principally country people; but the inhabitant of Guéméné, the small propriétaire or employé, who lives in the town, often wears a semi-nautical attire, as sketched overleaf.
Five old women sit together in the road, their chairs drawn together for company, and to make an inclosure for two or three little tottering inhabitants of Guéméné, who at the age of three are dressed in the costume of their ancestors. Here the harmony of costume and architecture, both in form and colour, strikes the eye at once, and we want nothing to complete the picture. There is nothing, it seems, to add, nothing to leave out; let us stay for a month (we are inclined to say) and sketch in the high-street of Guéméné such figures as are standing talking together at an old-fashioned doorway, opposite to our inn. But the scene soon changes, and out of one of the old houses, dark in the interior, with a floor below the level of the street, comes a lady with a nurse and child; she has a light dress with a train, a hat with scarlet feathers, and a parasol. She is going for a promenade, and, as she passes down the street, is greeted by the old women thus: “See they carry their tails in their hands, these fine demoiselles!”
The Café du Nord is a favourite house of call, and thither the men resort to play at cards or billiards, whilst the women bring out their chairs and sit under the eaves, knitting, gossiping, and watching the passers-by.
There is no traffic in the streets, and no fear of being disturbed. A newspaper may arrive in the evening to inform the inhabitants of the last market prices, or that a workman has fallen out of a window in Paris. A very few items of local intelligence suffice for Guéméné, which is too much occupied with its own interests to care for what the rest of the world calls news. The sun and moon rise and set for Guéméné alone; it is the “boss” of their wheel of life.
