Often these great stretches of Breton roadway show an aspect of human nature that is probably the same the world over; a peasant man or woman is leading a cow,—always on the wrong side of the road, of course,—or a sleepy farm-hand is drawing his cart to or from market,—still on the wrong side of the road,—when the whirr and snort of a motor-car does something more than awaken echoes.
The cows entangle themselves in their leading ropes, and the usually placid horses bolt with the cart into the ditch. The native, of course, reviles the car and its occupants, not because he hates them,—for they are one of the mainstays of the inns of the countryside,—but merely to display that untamable spirit of independence, which every mother’s son of a French peasant has developed to a high degree.
In Brittany, as in most other lands,—in summer,—the traveller by road gathers in a fine crop of wingy, stingy things, which project themselves into one’s eyes with a formidable force when one goes at them with a swift-moving car.
Occasionally one thinks he has come upon a vast convention of them, so many are they in numbers and variety—flies, wasps, bees, and what not, with a peculiar Gallic species of fly so infinitesimal that one only stops to clear them out when he feels that his eyes are so full of them that they may be uncomfortably crowded. The real or fabled Jersey mosquito would go out of business with his Breton brother as a competitor. Truly this is a new terror, and one that certainly was not apparent, to anything like the present extent, before the advent of the motor-car.
One comes upon a dull week in Brittany often, even in summer, when the sky remains overcast, and great clouds roll up from out of the western ocean. Often it is not cold, but it is bitterly damp and sticky, even though it does not rain, but the native does not seem to mind it, at least, he never complains.
The only objector ever met with by the writer was a Gascon who kept a pharmacy at Quimper. He discussed it as follows: “Hideous country! The wind blows here every day in the year, and the rest of the time it rains,” he continued, enigmatically. “Yes, that abominable wind always plays the same trick on me! What a country!” He was probably thinking of his own bright and sunny home in the South, where seldom, if ever, are conditions other than brilliantly tranquil.
There are three great highroads which cross Brittany from east to west, the main road of Brittany from Alençon in Normandy, through Mayenne, Fougères, Dol, Dinan, Guingamp, and Morlaix to Brest; the southern road from Paris via Le Mans, or even following the Loire valley down from Orleans to Nantes, and thence westward via Vannes, Lorient, and Quimper to Brest, thus making the complete circuit of the Breton coast. A midway course lies in almost a direct line east and west through Laval, Vitré, Rennes, Ploërmel, Pontivy, and Carhaix.
These three highroads cover completely the itinerary of Brittany, in so far as they follow the north and south coast and the country-side lying between.
Cross country, from the Bay of Mont St. Michel to the mouth of the Loire, one “route nationale” lies directly through Rennes, and another ends at Vannes, in Morbihan.
These cover practically all the regular lines of traffic, and include all the chief points of historical and topographical instances.