were content, and in his abundance they felt themselves rich.  Being convinced that money gained must be taken from some one else, they despised greed.  A like idea of political economy is very old-fashioned, but human opinion will perhaps come back to it some day.  In the meanwhile, let me claim immunity for these few survivors of another world, in which this harmless error has kept alive the tradition of self-sacrifice.  Do not improve their worldly lot, for they would be none the happier; do not add to their wealth, for they would be less unselfish; do not drive them into the primary schools, for they would perhaps lose some of their good qualities without acquiring those which culture bestows; but do not despise them.  Contempt is the one thing which tells upon those of simple nature; it either shakes their faith in what is right or makes them doubt whether the better classes are good judges upon this point.

This disposition, for which I can find no better name than moral romanticism, was inherent in me from my birth, and in some measure by descent.  I had, so Code, the old sorceress, often told me, been touched by some fairy’s wand before my birth.  I came into the world before my time, and was so weak for two months that they did not think I should live.  Code informed my mother that she had an infallible way of ascertaining my fate.  She went one morning with one of the little shifts which I wore to the sacred lake, and returned in high glee, exclaiming:  “He means to live!  No sooner had I thrown the little shift on to the surface than it lifted itself up.”  In later years she used often to say to me with much animation of feature:  “Ah! if you had seen how the two arms stretched themselves out.”  The fairies were attached to me from my childhood, and I was very fond of them.  You must not laugh at us Celts.  We shall never build a Parthenon, for we have not the marble; but we are skilled in reading the heart and soul; we have a secret of our own for inserting the probe; we bury our hands in the entrails of a man, and, like the witches in Macbeth, withdraw them full of the secrets of infinity.  The great secret of our art is that we can make our very failing appear attractive.  The Breton race has in its heart an everlasting source of folly.  The “fairy kingdom,” which is the most beautiful on earth, is its true domain.  The Breton race alone can comply with the strange conditions exacted by the fairy Gloriande from all who seek to enter her realm; the horn which will give no sound except when touched by lips that are pure, the magic cup which is filled only for the faithful lover, are our special appurtenances.