It is unkind to scoff at these miraculous fountains scattered here and there over the world, of course, but one has seen so many individual cases that were not benefited, and heard of so many that were, that one may be justified in a little skepticism.
To Auray is twenty kilometres by a road which gently rolls down a matter of 150 metres of elevation until it reaches sea-level at the little market-town seaport known in Breton as Alre.
CHAPTER IV.
AURAY AND THE MEGALITHIC MONUMENTS OF MORBIHAN
AURAY is the real centre from which to make the round of the vast collection of relics of the long lost civilization of Morbihan.
Many have attempted to explain the significance of these rude stone monuments. Some have said that the famous avenues of Carnac were the streets of one of Cæsar’s camps, its roofs having fallen and mouldered away, and that the famous “Merchants’ Table” at Locmariaquer was an ancient druidical altar, to which the helpless were led to be sacrificed.
All this and much more is for the antiquary alone, and a nodding acquaintance with the history of these curious stone formations or erections is about all for which most travellers will care.
He who arrives at Auray on a market-day will seem to himself to come into a region where every one speaks the Breton tongue. Not all, of course, for French is now compulsory with the school-children, but the frequency of it here in the booths and stalls in and around Auray’s lovely old timbered market-house is greatly to be remarked.
It is a question if this same market-house be not quite the most theatrical-looking thing of its kind in all France. It is for all the world like a successful piece of stage carpentry, with a great spectacular stairway running up into its garret above, quite in the manner that one has seen upon the stage over and over again, when the heroine or the villain—it does not much matter which—escapes from his, or her, pursuers. Low built, heavily raftered, and with a leaky roof allowing rays of sunlight to dribble through into the gloom within in a most entrancing manner, this old market-house is the centre of the life and activity of the place for fifty-two Mondays in each year.
Within and without the walls of the market-house is gathered the most varied conglomeration of wares imaginable. Beside the draper’s counter are baskets of vegetables, eggs, or fish. A poor little calf, tied by the legs and lying at full length on the ground, keeps company with his former farmyard neighbours, the ducks and geese, but on either side is a second-hand collection of ironmongery and old shoes, and it should be the envy of the provident, for two sous buy anything in the collection.