The country round about Rochefort-en-Terre was brought into vogue by the landscape-painter, Pelouze, some years ago, and other artists have followed in his wake, making an over growing artist colony in the summer-time. Studies and sketches decorate the dining-room of the Hôtel Lecadre in a surprising number; at least surprising to one who comes upon this unassuming little town and its excellent, before named, little hotel while journeying to Finistère.
Still going toward Vannes one passes Elven, near which is the Manoir of Kerlean, the family estate of the Descartes. The birth certificate of the Descartes is in the records in the mayor’s office.
Three kilometres to the north are the remains of the ancient fortress of Largoet, whose tower, known as the Tour d’Elven, dates from the fifteenth century. This tower has been called the most beautiful castle keep in all Brittany, and so it is if one take into consideration its moss-and-ivy-grown walls and its general eerie aspect heightened perceptibly if seen by moonlight. This high, majestic tower of a feudal castle, whose other members have practically disappeared, is also a literary shrine of high rank, inasmuch as Octave Feuillet has placed here some of the most moving scenes in his “Story of a Poor Young Man.” Perhaps this true romance is not so well known to the present generation as to a former, but it should be, and accordingly the clue is here given, and it should have a double significance so far as travellers in Brittany are concerned.
Tour d’Elven
One enters Vannes, if it be a holiday or a Sunday, amid a gaiety and uproar that is apparently inexplicable. To be sure Vannes is the metropolis of the Morbihan, but one does not look for such continuous gaiety on the part of a people supposed to be wholly devout and not very rich, as possessors of this world’s goods count their gains. Devoutness need not necessarily mean glumness, and so as it all seems, around Vannes at least, to be for the general good, one is not sorry to have his first introduction to a great Breton town in a way so pleasant.
Really it is a sort of small gaiety, and strictly local, which goes on here. There is nothing of the riotous order, but it is all very gay, nevertheless.