“La Tour d'Auvergne, 1^er Grenadier de France, né à Carhaix le 23 Decembre, 1715; mort au champ d'honneur le 27 Juin, 1800.
“Ecrivain, Citoyen, Soldat, sa vie toujours glorieusement remplie ne laisse que de sublimes exemples à la posterité.
“Tant de talens, et de vertus, appartenaient à l'histoire et au premier Consul, de les devancer.
“Celui qui meurt dans une lutte sacrée trouve pour le repos une patrie même sur la terre etrangère.”
Preferring the title of "Premier Grenadier de France" to higher honours, La Tour d'Auvergne remained as a private soldier to his death; but in a decree of Buonaparte, then First Consul, preserved in the Musée des Archives, he orders that La Tour d'Auvergne's name should still be kept on [pg 299] the muster-roll of his old regiment; and, when called, the corporal should answer, "Mort au champ d'honneur!"
The moderation and absence of ambition in the character of La Tour d'Auvergne is expressed in a letter to Le Coq, Bishop of Ille-et-Vilaine. He writes,—"Je me prosterne bien plus volontiers devant la Providence pour le remercier que pour rien demander; du pain, du lait, la liberté; et une cœur qui ne puisse jamais s'ouvrir à l'ambition, voilà l'objet de tous mes désirs."
La Tour d'Auvergne had a learned dog, which he educated as a soldier; he went through the whole drill, and his master made him always wear boots. He marched in them, on one occasion, the whole distance from Paris to Guingamp.
A horse fair and market were going on at Carhaix. Some of the women wore curious flannel hoods, edged with colours. There were baskets of burnt limpet shells and lime, used in washing as substitutes for soap. In the porch of the church dedicated to St. Tremeur (son of the Bluebeard Comorre) are some of the little skull-boxes so common in the north of Brittany. One was labelled, "Ci gît le chef de Mr. Thomas François Nonet, ancien notaire et maire de la ville de Carhaix le 28 J^ier 1776, décédée le 8 7^bre 1842." The curfew bell rings at Carhaix at a quarter to ten.
We left next day for Huelgoat, fifteen miles distant, the road up and down, wild and dreary. At Pont Pierre, about nine miles from Carhaix, we crossed the Aulne, even here a considerable river, with a beautiful thick forest on our right. At a place called La Grande Halte, we turned off the road to the right for Huelgoat, about a mile and a half off. It is prettily situated on a large pond or lake, nearly a mile and a half in circumference, and of great depth (20 feet). It was market day; the men wore brown serge coats, close white breeches and black gaiters, with straw hats bound with black. The countrymen from Saint Herbot were there in their black shaggy goat or sheepskin overcoats, the hair turned outwards (there are flocks of black sheep throughout Finistère), without sleeves, and the white breeches, black gaiters, and straw hats. The women of Huelgoat wear large white turnover collars and caps with long ends turned up.
We first walked to the rocking stone on the slope of a steep hill, considered the third largest in Brittany; the block forming a kind of double cube, that is, about twice the length of its height. It requires a very slight impulse to make it rock. This "fairy stone" is often consulted by the peasants. In the ravine close by, below the path, is what is called the "Cuisine de Madame Marie," but termed in the guide-books the "Ménage de la Vierge;" a recess [pg 301] formed of large masses of fantastically shaped granite rocks, through which a small stream of water flows, arriving thither from the pond, by a subterranean course. One stone, hollowed out, is called the écuelle of the Virgin, and others have each the name of some different utensil requisite for the "Ménage" of our Lady. The young people managed to scramble to the bottom.