[Illustration:  LE FOLGOET.]

We found Lesneven very dull and sleepy, but picturesque.  There was a singular old market-house of timber work, the quaintest we had ever seen; and some of the houses formed ancient and interesting groups.  Our coachman had made an excellent dejeuner, if we were to judge by the self-satisfied expression of his face, which resembled the sun at mid-day seen through a red fog.  He was now sitting in the courtyard under a very lovely creeper, drinking his coffee out of a tall glass, and of course smoking the pipe of peace.  The creeper distinctly lent enchantment to the view:  the coachman did not.

We wandered about whilst he made his preparations for starting.  The market-place was broken and diversified in its outlines; one or two of the streets turning out of it looked quite gabled and mediaeval.  The covered market-house, with its curious roof and ancient timbers, gave it a very distinctive and very individual appearance; so that it now rises up in the memory as one of the many Breton pictures which make one’s experience of the little country a very exceptional pleasure.

Out of the College poured a small stream of boys, startling the silence of the sleepy little town.  We were mutually surprised at seeing each other.  They looked and gazed, and walked around and about us—­at a certain distance—­and seemed as interested and perplexed as if we had been visitants from other regions clothed in unknown forms.  But they manifested none of the delicacy of our little guide, and were not half so interesting.  Yet probably the roughest and rudest boy amongst them might be the maiden’s brother; for we have just said that Nature delights in surprises, and not infrequently in contradictions.  The building they poured out of, now the College, was an ancient convent of the Recollets, dating from 1645.

A commotion in the courtyard of the “Grande Maison,” which was just opposite the timber market-house, and the appearance of the driver on his box, in all the dignity of office, was our signal for departure.  We looked back after leaving the town, and there in the distance, uprising towards the sky, was the lovely spire of le Folgoet, a monument to departed greatness, superstition, and religious fervour; a dream of beauty which will last, we may hope, for many ages to come.

We soon re-entered the road we had travelled earlier in the day; and in due time, after one or two narrow escapes of being overturned, so high was the wind, so blinding the dust, we re-entered Landerneau, a haven of refuge from the boisterous gale.

Our host had prepared us a sumptuous repast, of which the crowning glory was a pyramid of strawberries flanked on one side by a ewer of the freshest cream, and on the other by a quaint old sugar basin of chased silver, of the First Empire period.  Could mortals have desired more, even on Olympus—­even in the Amaranthine fields of Elysium?