"This is your first visit to St. Pol," she said, as she gave us her hand in the English fashion; "I hope it will not be your last. Remember that if ever you come here again my doors will open to you, and a welcome will await you. Only, let your next visit be a longer one. You see that I speak with the freedom of age; and if you think me impulsive in thus tendering hospitality to one hitherto unknown, I must answer that I have lived in the world, and make no mistakes. I believe also in a certain mental mesmerism, which rarely fails. When I saw you enter, something told me that I might come to you. Fare you well!—Sans adieu!" she added as we expressed our gratitude and bent over her hand with an earnest "Au revoir!"
We went our way, both charmed into silence for a time. I felt that we were thinking the same thoughts—rejoicing in our happy fortune in these occasional meetings which flashed across the horizon of our lives and disappeared, not without leaving behind them an abiding effect; an earnest appreciation of human nature and the amount of leaven that must exist in the world. We thought instinctively of Mdlle. Martin, the little Receveuse des Postes de Retraite at Grâce: and of Mdlle. de Pressensé at Villeneuve, who had welcomed us even as the Comtesse had now done; and we felt that we were favoured.
Time was up, and we decided to make this our last impression of St. Pol de Léon. We passed down the quiet streets, under the shadow of the Creisker, out into the open country and the railway station. We were just in time for the train to Roscoff, and in a very few minutes had reached that little terminus.
Immediately we felt more out of the world than ever. There was something so primitive about the station and its surroundings and the people who hovered about, that this seemed a true finis terre. It was, however, sufficiently civilized to boast of two omnibuses; curiously constructed machines that, remembering our St. Pol experience, we did not enter. The town was only a little way off, and its church steeple served us as beacon.
We passed a few modern houses near the station, which looked like a settlement in the backwoods with the trees cut down, and then a short open road led to the quiet streets.
Quiet indeed they were, with a look about them yet more old-world, deadly and deserted even than St. Pol de Léon. The houses are nearly all built of that grey Kersanton stone, which has a cold and cheerless tone full of melancholy; like some of the far away Scotch or Welsh villages, where nature seems to have died out, no verdure is to be seen, and the very hedges, that in softer climes bud and blossom and put forth the promise of spring to make glad the heart of man, are replaced by dry walls that have no beauty in them.
Yet at once we felt that there was a certain charm about Roscoff, and a very marked individuality. Never yet, in Brittany, had we felt so out of the world and removed from civilization. Its quaint houses are substantial though small, and many of them still possess the old cellars that open by large winged doors into the streets, where the poorer people live an underground life resembling that of the moles. The cellars go far back, and light never penetrates into their recesses.
Again, some of the houses had courtyards of quaint and interesting architecture. One of them especially is worth visiting. A long narrow passage leads you to a quaint yard with seven arches supported by columns, with an upper gallery supported by more columns. It might have formed part of a miniature cloister in days gone by.
On the way towards the church, we passed the chapel dedicated to St. Ninian, of which nothing remains now but the bare enclosure and the ancient and beautiful gateway. This, ruined as it is, is the most interesting relic in Roscoff. It was here that Mary Queen of Scots landed when only five years old, to be married to the Dauphin of France. The form of her foot was cut out in the rock on which she first stepped, but we failed to see it. Perhaps time and the effect of winds and waves have worn it away. Footsteps disappear even on a stronger foundation than the sands of time. The little chapel was built to commemorate her landing, and its ruins are surrounded by a halo of sadness and romance. Four days after her landing she was betrothed. But the happy careless childhood was quickly to pass away; the "fevered life of a throne" was most essentially to be hers; plot and counterplot were to embitter her days; until at last, at the bidding of "great Elizabeth," those wonderful eyes were to close for the last time upon the world, and that lovely head was to be laid upon the block.
The sad history overshadows the little chapel in Roscoff as a halo; for us overshadowed the whole town.