Then the outsiders of the crowd get up and watch the proceedings (including a cook in white cap and apron, who sits upon the hotel wall), some eagerly from curiosity apparently, some with devotion, and some, it must be confessed, with an easy, jaunty air more appropriate to a show in a country fair. There are several hundreds on the grass before us in the bright sun, in the glare of which the sketch was taken, sitting together in parties, kneeling in prayer, or standing close together intent upon the scene.

What those upturned faces were, and what the good bishop saw beneath him in the crowd, as he rolled forth a discourse full of earnestness and eloquence, the pencil has recorded in the sketch. It gives, as no words could describe, the mingled expression of feeling on the faces of the pilgrims, and tells more eloquently than any argument that the influence of the Church is on the wane in Brittany. The words spoken are the old story: first the history of “the miracle of Ste. Anne,” then an exhortation as to the importance of confession and of works of charity and masses for the dead. The costume of the people that listen is nearly the same as in 1623, when Ste. Anne appeared in a wheat-field to a peasant; and yet—and in spite of all accounts of the earnest devotion of the people—if we look at the aspect of the crowd, we seem to understand the matter better than we ever did before.

They stand bareheaded in the sunshine, old and young, rich and poor; on the left, the pretty bourgeois’ daughter, from Auray, in plain cloth dress, with velvet body, dark green shawl, and neatest of shoes; behind her, in the background, a contingent from more remote districts, farmers and small traders, the majority being comfortable people who have come by train. The spare old woman with eccentric expression and worn hands, holding purchases, or plunder, in her apron, is not a pauper, but a hanger-on at a large household, who has saved money. Next, nearer to us, is a peasant farmer, with long grey hair, in white jacket and breeches and leathern girdle, who has come on foot from his home in the interior. He has walked all through the night to be present at the Pardon, as he has done every year, going through the round of services and exercises, contributing several francs in money to the church, buying a few charms and trinkets, and then plodding home. Behind him, with stick and umbrella under arm, holding beads in her hand, with fat red face, a white hood and apron, is a comfortable farmer’s wife from Baud; on her right an old woman in dark green coiffe, framing a screwed-up face, a study of colour in bronze and green. Behind them is a tall, bareheaded man with his daughter, two of the best types of Bretons in the crowd. On the right in the sketch is a pretty figure with a cross on her breast, with shining face, in the white cap and wide collar so common in FinistÈre; and, next, three peasants, old and wrinkled, bronzed with sun and grime, the common type at Pardons. Thus—leaving out some of the more hideous aspects of deformity and disease—this sketch gives an exact picture of the crowd, and a true idea of the strange mixture of curiosity, amusement, and religious awe with which the celebration of Ste. Anne is received in the present day.

Let us add a few notes of the scene on Sunday, the second day of the Pardon, when the crowd is greatest, and when there must be collected at least 10,000 people; when, besides the peasants and country people, visitors from Paris and other parts of France have filled to overflowing the large modern hotel, the courtyard of which is full of carriages and conveyances of all kinds. In the streets and round the open square there are booths for the sale of trinkets and toys, rosaries, tapers, statuettes, and medals of Ste. Anne, besides the more common objects for sale at a country fair. In the roadway women cook fish and cakes (galettes) at charcoal fires; there are itinerant vendors of gigantic wax candles, there are peep-shows and other amusements, skittles and games like quoits, played with leaden counters of the size of a five-franc piece. There is every kind of amusement in honour of Ste. Anne, and the family meetings and gatherings, that take place round the cafÉs and in the open fields, suggest a picnic more than a pilgrimage.

But it is in the street leading to the church door, and in the adjoining cloisters of a convent, that the more serious aspects of the Pardon are to be witnessed, some of which it would be impossible to record in a sketch.

From four o’clock in the morning masses have been said, and in and out of the church there has been a continual stream of people, all in holiday attire, and nearly all wearing strings of beads, crosses, or silver ornaments bearing the image of Ste. Anne. They form in groups on the grass in the centre of the cloistered square, close together, some kneeling, some standing erect, with eyes strained upwards at a cracked and weather-worn statue of the Christ; they tell their beads, and drop sous into a box at the foot of the cross, the poorest contributing something.

They pass round the cloisters in a continual stream, missing nothing set down for them, but stopping and kneeling at each “station” with expressions of devotion and awe at some grotesque paintings on the walls representing the Passion. They stop and pray, some on one knee only with beads in hand, some kneeling low on the pavement, sitting on the heels of their sabots for rest. They have come a long and weary march, they are at the end of their pilgrimage, and so it happens that sitting and praying they fall asleep. A heavy thwack from a neighbour’s umbrella falls upon the shoulders of the sleepers, and again they go the round.

By midday the crowd has increased so that movement in the road is difficult. Coming slowly up the narrow street—blocked by carriages, by vendors of “objets de dÉvotion,” and by the crowd that passes up and down—is an, apparently very poor, old man with long dark hair, a white sheepskin jacket and bragous bras, a leather girdle and sabots, holding in his hand a hollow candle three feet high; it has cost him six sous, and he will place it presently at the altar in the church with the rest. Following him is a farmer and his wife, well-to-do people, who have come by train, and combine a little marketing with their religious observances. Following them are two young married people with their child, all dressed in the latest costumes of Paris, the father manfully taking off his light-kid gloves, and carrying his candle to the church with the rest.

The scene in the church, where services have been held at intervals all day, and the people crowd to burn candles at the side altars, is of people handing up babies, beads, and trinkets to be blessed; of the flaring of candles, of the movements of tired priests, and the perpetual murmur of prayers.

We have spoken often of the simple, practical, and graceful dress of the women; but here at Auray we must confess that many of the country people in full holiday attire are anything but graceful in appearance. At a side altar of the chapel there is a young face, very fair, with large devotional eyes, deepened in colour and intensity by her white cap; but below it is a stiff, shapeless bodice as hard as wood, and a bundle of lower garments piled one upon the other, till the figure is a rather ungainly sight; her large capable hands hold her book, her rosary, and a stout umbrella; she is encumbered with clothing, but she differs from her modernised sisters in one thing: her dress is not on her mind when she says her prayers. She is on her knees nearly all day at Auray; but, working or praying, half her young life has been spent in this position. In spite of the grotesque element, which is everywhere at Pardons, the sight is often a sad one; sad, especially, to see so many young faces clouded by superstitious awe. The saying would seem to apply to Brittany, that “national piety springs from a fountain of tears.”

We have purposely said little of the repulsive side of the spectacle; of the terrible-looking men and women who have come out of their hiding-places to kneel at the shrine and to beg from strangers; who wander about like savages, and are propitiated with beads. Figures strange, weird, and grotesque, the like of which we shall see nowhere else in the world, pass round the cloisters of St. Anne d’Auray for two days in the year.

There is one half witted man from the sea-coast, evidently soon “going home”; as he drags himself along, the shadows seem to deepen, and the light from human eyes to burn more fiercely in their tenement. Fed with seaweed, thatched with straw, exposed to the wildest winds of the Atlantic, his home little better than a hole in the rocks, what wonder that he comes across the hills once a year to the Pardon of Ste. Anne for a blessing; that he prays for a land beyond the sea, visioned in his mind by innumerable candles, and paid for in advance through weary years in his Passage to the Cross!