Its quaint old streets certainly have an unmistakable, an undying charm, which seems to be in touch with all seasons.  Blue skies will light them up and cause them to stand out with almost a joyous air; the declining sun will illumine their latticed panes with a fire and flame mysterious with the weight of generations; strong lights and shadows will be thrown by gables and deep recesses, and sculptured porches; by the “aprons” that protect the carven beams, and the eaves that stand out so strongly in outline against the background of the far-off sky.  And if those skies are sad and sorrowful, immediately the quaint houses put on all the dignity of age:  from every gable end, from every lattice, every niche and grotesque, the rain trickles and falls, and they, too, you would say, are weeping for their lost youth.

But they are too old to do that.  It is not the very aged who weep for their early days; they have forgotten what is now too far off to be realised.  They weep who stand upon the boundary line separating youth from age; who at once look behind and beyond:  look back with longing upon the glow and romance which have not yet died out of the heart, and forward into the future where romance can have no place, and nothing is visible excepting what has been called the calmness and repose of old age.

    “There’s not a joy the world can give like that it takes away,
      When the glow of early thought declines in feeling’s dull decay;
    ’Tis not on youth’s smooth cheek the blush alone which fades so fast,
      But the bloom of early youth is gone ere youth itself be past.”

The reader will probably quote the remainder for himself; Byron never wrote truer or sadder lines.  And we all know of a great man in history who, at eighty years old, turned to his friend and, pointing to a young chimney-sweeper, exclaimed:  “I would give my wealth, fame, coronet—­all, to be once more that boy’s age, even if I must take his place!” One of the saddest sentences, perhaps, that one of eighty could utter.

To-day every house was weeping.  Even the women who kept the stalls in the covered market-place dispensed their butter and poultry, their fruit and flowers, with a melancholy air, and looked as if they had not the courage to keep up the prices.  Ladies and housekeepers wandered from stall to stall followed by their maids, a few of whom wore picturesque caps, conspicuous in their rarity:  for even Breton stubbornness has yielded very much, where, for once, it should have been firm as a rock, and it is only in the remoter districts that costume is still general.  We were invited to many purchases as we looked around, and had we yielded to all might have stocked Madame Hellard’s larder to overflowing:  a very unnecessary attention, for the table is kept on the most liberal principles.