We passed all this and went our way down the right bank of the river.  The scenery is very picturesque; the heights are well wooded, broken and undulating.  Some of the richer inhabitants of Morlaix have built themselves houses on the heights; charming chateaux where they spend their summers, and luxuriate in the fresh breezes that blow up from the sea.  Across there on the left bank of the river, rises the convent of St. Francois, a large building, where the religieux retire from the world, yet are not too isolated.

And on this side, on the Cours Beaumont, a lovely walk planted with trees, we come to the Fontaine des Anglais, so called because here, in 1522, six hundred English were surprised asleep by the people of Morlaix, and slain.  They had, however, courted their own doom.  Henry VIII. had picked a quarrel with Francis I. for seizing the ships of English merchants in French ports.  The English king had escorted with his fleet the Emperor Charles V., of Spain, under command of the Earl of Surrey, and in returning, it entered the river, surprised Morlaix, burnt and sacked the town, and murdered many of its inhabitants.  They left it loaded with spoil; and when the inhabitants surprised these six hundred English they revenged themselves upon them without mercy.

To-day, we had no sooner reached the spot than suddenly the clouds gathered, the sky was overcast, a squall rose shrieking and whistling amidst the trees, and there was every appearance of a downpour.  We were not prepared for it, but we rashly continued our way.  At last, just before we reached a small road-side cabaret, down it came, as if the whole reservoir of cloudland had been let loose.

We hastily stopped at the auberge, already half-drenched, and H.C. crying out “Any port in a storm,” we entered it.  It was humble enough, yet might every benighted traveller in every storm find as good a refuge!

The good woman of the house was standing at her poele, preparing the mysteries of the mid-day dinner.  Her husband, she said, had gone into Morlaix, with fish to sell—­it was one of their chief means of livelihood.  He bought the fish from the fishermen who came up the river, and sold it again to the hotels.  One of his best customers was the Hotel d’Europe, and M. Hellard was a brave monsieur, who never beat them down in their prices, and had always a pleasant word for them.  Madame was very amiable too, for the matter of that.

It was rather a hard life, but what with that and the little profit of the auberge, they managed to make both ends meet.

She had three children.  The eldest was a girl, and had her wits about her.  She had been to Paris with her father, and had seen the Exhibition, and talked about it like a grown-up person.  But her father had taken her one night to the Theatre des Varietes in the Champs Elysees, and the girl had been mad ever since to become a chanteuse and an actress.