Spring in Brittany.
In the twelfth century, the cantons of Fougères, Rennes, Bécherel, Dinan, Saint-Malo and Dol were covered by the Forest of Brécheliant, which had served as a battlefield to the Francs and the races peopling the Domnonée. Wace[80] tells of the wild man seen there, of the fountain of Berenton, and a golden basin. An historic document of the fifteenth century, the Usemens et coutumes de la forêt de Brécilien, confirms the statement of the Roman du Rou: it is, say the Usemens, of great and wide extent: "there are four castles, a very great number of fair pools, fine chaces where are found no venomous beasts nor insects, two hundred woods, as many springs, notably the fountain of Belenton, near which Sir Pontus wrought his feats of arms."
To this day the country-side retains traces of its origin: intersected by wooded ditches, it presents at a distance the aspect of a forest, and reminds one of England; it was the abode of the fairies, and you shall see that I did, in fact, meet a sylph there. Narrow dales are watered by shallow rivulets. These dales are separated by moors and by tufts and clusters of holly-trees. The coast presents an array of beacons, lookouts, dolmens, Roman structures, ruins of mediæval castles, Renascence steeples: all bordered by the sea. Pliny calls Brittany, Peninsula Oceani spectatrix[81].
Between the sea and the land stretch pelagian plains, the fickle frontier of the two elements: there the field-lark flies with the sea-lark; the plough and the bark furrow the earth and the water at a stone's throw one from the other. The sailor and the shepherd borrow each other's language: the seaman says, "The waves are fleecy;" the herd speaks of "fleets of sheep." Sands of changing colours, banks variegated with shells, wreckage, fringes of silver foam line the green or yellow edge of the corn-fields. I cannot recall the name of the island in the Mediterranean in which I saw a bas-relief representing nereids decorating with festoons the hem of Ceres' robe.
But what is most admirable in Brittany is to see the moon rising on land and setting upon the sea. The moon, by divine creation governess of the deep, has her clouds, her mists, her beams, her projected shadows like the sun; but, unlike the latter, she does not set alone: a retinue of stars accompanies her. As, upon my native coast, she descends the vault of heaven, she extends her silence, and communicates it to the sea; soon she sinks to the horizon, intersects it, shows but the half of her forehead, which diminishes, dips, and disappears in the yielding intumescence of the waves. The stars attendant upon their queen, before plunging in her train, seem to pause suspended upon the crest of the billows. No sooner has the moon set, than a gust of wind from the open sea shatters the picture of the stars, like candles extinguished after a celebration.
*
I was to accompany my sisters to Combourg: we set out in the first fortnight in May. We left Saint-Malo at sunrise, my mother, my four sisters and I, in a huge, antiquated berlin, with double-gilt panels, outside steps, and purple tassels at the four corners of the roof. To this were harnessed eight horses caparisoned like the mules in Spain, with bells at their collars and bridles, and housings and fringes of wool of many colours. While my mother was sighing and my sisters talking themselves out of breath, I looked with all my eyes, listened with all my ears, was wonderstruck at each turn of the road: the first steps of a Wandering Jew who was never to stop. Even then, if man changed only his surroundings! But his days change, and his heart.
First view of Combourg.
Our horses were rested at a fishing-village on Cancale Beach. We next went through the marshes and the fever-stricken town of Dol, and after passing the gate of the college to which I was soon to return, we plunged inland. For four mortal hours we saw nothing but heaths wreathed with woods, wastes scarce touched with the hoe, fields sown with poor, black, stunted corn, and poverty-stricken patches of oats. Charcoal-burners led teams of small horses with long and shaggy manes; lank-haired peasants in goat-skin great-coats drove lean bullocks with shrill cries or tramped behind a heavy plough, like laboring fauns. At last we caught sight of a valley at the bottom of which, not far from a pond, ascended the spire of a village church; the towers of a feudal castle rose amid the trees of a wood illumined by the setting sun.
I have been obliged to stop: my heart was beating so violently as almost to push back the table at which I am writing. The recollections awakened in my memory overpower me with their number and their force: and yet, what are they to the rest of the world?